By Dele Sobowale

“History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” Edward Gibbon, 1734-1794.

(VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ,  p 92).

If you want a short answer to the question: why is Nigeria not developing as fast as it should? Then take a look below, at the excerpts from an article published in 2007.

The full text will appear in the book to be published later this year. Two characters featured in that piece – Obasanjo and Fani-Kayode. In no other progressive country do you find people who left their nation in the dark, literally, still being called upon to influence decisions.

The two guys represent a nation spinning its wheels. So, why in 2015 were the PDP members still begging Obasanjo to support them? And why was Fani-Kayode running the PDP Presidential campaign in 2015? Please read on.

THE DAY AFTER MAY 29, 2007.

“Volat ambiguis

Mobilis alis hora, nec ulli

Praestat velox Fortuna fidem” (Latin)

Translation:

“On fickle wings the minutes haste

And Fortune’s favour never last”

Seneca, 4B.C-65A.D.

You are probably wondering why I have not written May 30, 2007 instead of “the day after May 29, 2007. That will be explained shortly and the meaning would become clearer after this true story. But remember a seasoned politician has once said:” A day is a long time in politics”. Now the story.

One day in 1972, I found myself in my car stopped at a traffic light on Commonwealth Avenue, in Boston, USA. Then, a car pulled up on the lane on my left hand side and stopped as well. I looked and looked again. In the back seat of the car was the governor of the State of Massachusetts. There was no outrider; no siren; no noise. He was on his way to work. I waved to him and he waved back just as the light turned green. When he left office he went back to driving himself to work in his law firm because the governor was and is still a servant of the people in America and I can’t recollect any governor in the 38 states I was fortunate to visit who considered himself a “Lord of the Manor”.

Last week, I was on Sir Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way in Lagos when the gangsters accompanying a State Governor, not even the Lagos State Governor, came upon a serious traffic hold-up caused by fuel scarcity.

FEMI FANI KAYODE

Within seconds, gun butts were hitting vehicles; horse-whips were lashing at bus and taxi drivers; all because a governor was in a hurry to get to the airport. That occurs because in Nigeria we have become slaves to those we elect; even those we didn’t elect.

In fact, no governor would cross his own state line and inflict on the citizens of another state in America the sort of insults we receive from our elected officials. The people simply would not stand for it.

Probably, none of those elected for two terms ever thought that the day would come when the sirens would stop; the outriders move in front of somebody else and they would become victims of a crazy system they have helped to establish and nurture. Well, for our President and outgoing governors the day would arrive on the day after May 29, 2007.

And whereas in the past, the departing “slave masters” could simply go home and join the horde of the humiliated, this time many of them are not even sure of going home after handing over to their successors.

From information available to me from my usually reliable scouts, the EFCC is planning mass arrest of those governors accused of corruption right after the inauguration of their successors. Thus, the people for whom streets were being cleared for eight years might not even return home on May 29, 2007. They will march from the palatial governors lodges to detention. The day after will meet them in unfamiliar surroundings.

That will be the beginning of unimaginable ordeals. But, I can tell them one for sure. And I will tell them with another true story, this time from the Nigerian political experience. On the night he was elected governor of Bendel State in 1979, late Professor Ambrose Ali, was seating in his sitting room with his wife, mother and a very close friend.

But, from the next morning, he had more “friends” than he could count. His close friend for the next four years had to fill form to see Ali in government house. Finally, the friend gave up. …defeated in 1983, all the “friends” deserted Ali except his one true friend. And when Buhari/Idiagbon regime detained all the politicians and Ali ended up in the University College Hospital, Ibadan, it was the same friend who would travel from Benin to Ibadan twice a week to visit him; despite the security details around him.

What is the moral of this story? Most of the governors are in for the shocks of their lives on the day after May 29, 2007. The crowd they see around them will disappear. With luck they will be left with three or four faithful friends; especially if their travails mount.

Three governors I will visit, even in hell, for personal reasons: Victor Attah; Bola Tinubu and Makarfi. I hope it does not get to that….

I was not amused last week when President Jonathan disclosed that his friends had deserted him. Not amused, because Jonathan got it wrong again. Those people were never his friends. They were opportunists. My friendship with Obong Attah blossomed after he left office, for instance, and my one meeting with Bola Tinubu, ever in life, also occurred after he left office.

I like each of them for a personality trait I admire – despite their human frailties; some of which I know too well. Jonathan will find out sooner or later who his true friends are. They will not include Fani-Kayode, Jerry Gana, Orji Uzo Kalu, Nuhu Ribadu, Bode George, Tanko Yakasai etc. For those people, he had served his purpose. They have moved on…

TRUTH AT LAST

“If you shut up truth and bury it underground, it will but grow and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it burst through it will blow up everything in its way.” E. Zola, 1840-1902. (VANGUARD BOOK p255)

“Buhari did not arrest me.” Tunde Thompson, PUNCH, May 17, 2015, p1

During the last presidential campaigns, President Jonathan, Mrs Jonathan, Fani-Kayode, pro-Jonathan columnists in all the newspapers of Nigeria, including our dear VANGUARD, made hay out of the BIG LIE that Buhari arrested Tunde Thompson during his tenure. All efforts to educate the “Know-Nothings” and purveyors of falsehood failed.

May be now that Tunde himself had spoken they will stop. But, the Africans lags behind other races in the world because even its brightest and best people prefer falsehood to fact. I know.

One fellow,0909-448-0466, sent me text message last week wanting to know about $2.8bn stolen under Buhari. Yet on these pages it had been asserted that the entire NNPC and national budget in 1977-78 was not up to $2.8bn. One might as well be writing for the blind or go pouring water into a basket. “Washing a donkey’s head is a waste of water.” (VBQ p 42).