From left: PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN ; Otunba Gbenga Daniel former governor of Ogun State and VICE PRESIDENT NAMADI SAMBO DURING PDP PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIN RALLY IN ABIOKUTA

By Is’haq Modibbo Kawu

THESE are not the best of times for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Nigeria’s ruling behemoth was so dominantly assured of its hegemonic hold on power, that many of its leaders arrogantly told Nigerians, that they would rule for sixty years. It was ground enough for a party that was everything but a genuine political party, to arrogantly grab hold of power, and do as they wished.

And they did, for sixteen years! They have managed to run Nigeria aground and thoroughly alienated Nigerians to the point that people became completely fed up with the in-your-face arrogance of its denizens, whose power was constructed on a platform of monumental heist and incompetence. They just had to go!

Like the Third Reich, which was expected to last a thousand years, until the Soviet Red Army smashed its way into Berlin and the Nazi chancery, our PDP’s deluded fascination with sixty-year power, crumble in sixteen years, under the firepower of the Nigerian people.

Those who pretended that they led formidable political divisions into battle, ended up bloodied and have resembled more and more, demoralised stragglers in desperate search for straws to cling on to. The PDP is fighting a battle for survival!

In the past week, they have engaged in washing dirty linens in public. It was President Goodluck Jonathan who first reminded the rats jumping off the sinking Titanic, that they would soon return from their flirtatious sorties into the APC, not only humiliated but with “empty stomachs”!

Empty stomachs

Apparently so little was left in the kitty for the in-coming APC administration, that in a ‘stomach infrastructure’ manner of speaking, there was not likely to be much to ‘eat’, even by the victors. So the decamping PDP chaps are not likely to get a look-in.

Their comeuppance, as they return with tails between legs, to the PDP, would be on “empty stomach”! And it got more serious when the PDP NWC issued a “strong warning” to  “ambitious” presidential associates and aides, trying to use their closeness to President Jonathan “to cause crisis in the party and pave way for more defection to other parties” to steer clear.

This followed a call by Ahmed Gulak, a former presidential aide, that National Chairman, Adamu Muazu should take responsibility for the party’s defeat and resign. Gulak said: “…the party chairman was the number one culprit for the dismal outing of the PDP”.

A similar position was articulated by the controversial Ekiti Governor, Ayo Fayose and that isshared by groups in the South-east and South-south, which seemed to have become the new base of the PDP, as a result of the last election. The NWC will not be stampeded out of position. It issued a statement this week, accusing the Presidential Campaign Organisation (PCO) of responsibility for the party’s misfortune. Olisah Metuh, the National Publicity Secretary, blamed the hate campaign against General Buhari, adopted and executed by the PCO, as being responsible for “the abysmal performance of the party” in the North.

Madam Jonathan, Femi Fani-Kayode and Governor Ayo Fayose, were also named as having made negative contributions that led to the PDP’s loss of power. And to underline how serious the NWC felt, PDP’s National Chairman, Adamu Muazzu, made it clear that he was not ready to be used and dumped by the PDP! The last has not been heard of what is shaping up to be a major feud between contending factions for the battered soul of whatever remains of the PDP.

In truth, the PDP leaders are still shell shocked! They have not come to terms with the bursting of their delusions about their place in the Nigerian power firmament. They have been voted out, but have stayed too long in the comfort zone which access to lucre offered them, that they cannot yet come to terms with the new dawn that has broken over Nigeria. They are suffering early symptoms of withdrawal,and as all junkies know, that is a most painful process indeed! But learn they must. And it took the old soldier in David Mark, the outgoing Senate President, to remind the PDP: “to put the failures of the last elections behind them and build a strong and united party ready to play a credible opposition”. Nothing on ground at the moment, though, indicates that the feuding groups are willing to listen to Mark’s advice. There is still a fight in all those concerned. The habitués of cinema houses in Northern Nigeria, especially in the 1970s, would remember “Dambe Za End”, “Ija the End” at Palace Cinema in Ilorin. We seem poised for something close to that. Someone, some people, must find the heart to knock the PDP stragglers back into some decent political shape before they can hope to begin to resemble anything able to give the ascendant APC a meaningful challenge. The PDP will have to spend some good time in the wilderness, very far away from the sixty-year domination of power that they had been deluded about.

Ilorin to Lagos by road

I AM typing these lines  somewhere in Ikeja, Lagos. I arrived on Sunday to attend the funeral ceremony of Funke’s mother.
Funke is Yombo Aderinto’s wife; and Yombo is my friend, from our days at Radio Nigeria, Ilorin, in the late 1970s. I stay in their house at Buena Park in California, everytime I am in the United States. So attending the funeral ceremony for Funke’s mother was an imperative for me, but it was also an opportunity to come to Lagos by road.

And that is something I have not really done since 2002, when I worked as GM of KWTV, Ilorin. It was an opportunity to see places that I used to be so familiar with, in all those years of traversing this beautiful country of ours.

Beautiful country

The Ilorin-Ibadan Expressway was started during the Obasanjo administration and the Ilorin-Ogbomosho and Ibadan-Oyo ends are ready, more or less, but the Ogbomosho-Oyo end is still to be done.

It means that many communities along the way remain as rustic as they always have been: Fiditi, Jobele and the smaller communities along the way seem lost in the problems of the past century.

And while there are visible agricultural potentials, especially the old and established production of fruits, there is not much that the aging population of these poor rural homesteads can do to become part of the processes of globalised Twenty-First Century capitalism.

I saw far more older people than young and there was no doubt in in my mind that most of the young have drifted into the urban areas, as students, apprentices in trades, working people and urban lumpen!

As we stopped over to eat Amala, Ewedu and goat meat at the edge of the Expressway in Oyo, the old tradition of stopping along these routes in years past came rushing back to memory.

There is a continuum of tradition that was comforting, except that these communities have become more crowded thus expressing the attraction they are for the rural hinterland around these urban areas.

There were the persistent beggars, mainly from Katsina, Zamfara and Borno, who I spent considerable time chatting with, much to the surprise of passengers in vehicles getting ready to resume their journey after experiencing the delightful food that we savoured too. We finally arrived in Lagos late evening, and the chaotic traffic situation as well as the effervescent energy of people only went to underline the fact that we were entering the entrails of Nigeria’s most vibrant economic/commercial Uber-city. Lagos has never stopped fascinating me; but its nightlife even more so!

Yombo’s cousin, Lawumi runs the nightclub, CRESCENDO, in the Ikeja GRA district of the city. We spent a major part of the night there, listening to and watching a live band play some of the best of old and new Nigerian music as well as savouring the grilled fish that was a specialty of the club.

The Lagos crowd just enjoys partying hard and loosening up after the hassle which characterises their week. Even the Sunday night show was no less crowded than say, the Saturday night.

Water logged city

By Monday afternoon, we were out again in search of food and you can bet that Lagos would always have a lot to enjoy. If there is a downside to this city that I have never been able to enjoy, it is the rainy season and its effect: water-logged roads (as this is a low-lying city), where people never remember to keep their drainages clean; the utterly chaotic traffic situation which make movement such a nightmare, and the incredulity of social existence in the midst of that chaos. The human spirit is truly strong and Lagos brings that close home. We eventually arrived on Tuesday Evening at a Living Faith Church premise at Iyana Ipaja, where the funeral prayer was held, after the horror of traffic at the close of the day’s work. The return journey to Ikeja was better and the tension was dissipated by the hot plates of fish and oxtail pepper soup that we tucked into, as we also watched the Champions League game between Juventus and Real Madrid. We will go to Ago Iwoye, Ogun State on Thursday, for the wake keeping and the internment on Friday morning, before I literally ‘re-mount’ my ‘Rocinante’ like Don Quixote, on the way back to Ilorin and Abuja. This is a lovely country to eternally re-discover and Lagos is such an important part of that journey, anytime!

Nigerian ruling class ‘justice’: Steal N25bn, pay N3m fine

MICHAEL is the younger brother of former Edo state governor, Lucky Igbinedion. He was standing trial for N25billion money laundering offences.

For eight years, Lucky Igbinedion presided over a regime of massive heist against Edo state, leaving the state prostrate and underdeveloped. It was from his years in power, between 1999 and 2007, that Lucky Igbinedion’s younger brother, Michael, committed a crime of money laundering. Last week, Justice A.M. Liman of the Federal High Court, Benin, sentenced Michael to six years imprisonment with an option of paying a fine of N3million.

This is the true face of ruling class  justice  in Nigeria. It offers opportunities to individuals from the ruling elite to carry out economic and other crimes against our country, but it sharply administers ‘justice’ against the poor. The N25billion that was stolen from Edo could have provided education, health care, entrepreneurial training as well as stem the tide of prostitution in Italy.

But a member of the ruling family stole money, deprived millions of citizens of governance outcomes and was given just a rap on the knuckle! We cannot sustain the charade of ‘justice’ for the rich in Nigeria!