Touch Not the Atrocities of My Incumbent! Warning: This will be a long read. Bear with me. Come with me. Nothing wey man eye no go see with unteachable career Jonathanians. Before I got busy with a string of lectures which started in the United States last week and will take me through stops in Minna, Lagos, London, Toronto, and Edmonton, all the way to mid-December 2014, I deemed it necessary to intervene in the unfolding scenarios of competition for the Presidency on the platform of APC. I had very nice things to say about General Buharis explanation of how he came about his fee for the nomination form. I wanted it to be on record that I was satisfied with that explanation and endorsed the humility behind it. I fell just short of endorsing the Generals candidacy for reasons I will make known presently. I wanted my view out there because I will have a considerably reduced time for these kinds of engagements with the public as I write my lectures. Apparently, I stirred up a hornets nest. Career Jonathanians went into a pottymouthing overdrive. Luckily for us, many of them posted convoluted drivel that did not merit a reaction. Those who raised valid points, albeit within the premise of the gangrened morality of their own platform, gave public educationists and civic workers like Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, Petra Iyabo Akinti Onyegbule, Agbaosi Sevezun Gloria, Ijeoma Ogbulie Eugene, Soni Akoji, Yommi Oni, Obinna Okoro, Gimba Kakanda, Tope Fasua, Oyenuga Lanre Paul, Dapo Rotifa, Ajagzy Okunrin Ogun, and so many other wonderful minds extra work to do - struggling to reduce ignorance and teach minds married blissfully to unteachability. But for the fact that I have always preached love and understanding as the framework for the work of psychological rewiring that we need to do, I would have urged these brothers and sisters to desist from teaching and look and laugh like I was doing as I read the sophisticated ignorance that greeted my post from the caterwauling ranks of unteachable career Jonathanians. Giving our friends the free platform of my Wall to showcase the enormity of the work we have to do to reduce Stockholm Syndrome and civic illiteracy appeared to have backfired. Folks who have very severe problems with reading comprehension began to mistake my silence for a legitimation of what they are selling. As recently as yesterday, one with very obvious challenges in reading comprehension was still on my Wall accusing me of subtlety in supporting Buhari. Even my most passionate and consistent detractors as an intellectual of the public sphere would agree that I do not fear to call it as I see it. It is the worst of insults to be accused or using style to say something because of what a Jonathanian thinks! I do not use style to take political positions. I do so pointedly and clearly and I do not aspire to please everybody. And then you have another category of unteachable career Jonathanians who come to you demanding neutrality. What exactly is it that you have read from me all these years that would make you think that I believe that career ruiners of Nigeria like Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP are deserving of neutrality? Neutrality about what? Can one be neutral on a train headed for perdition? Sometimes these Jonathanians take themselves too seriously. I dont think that our Jonathanian friends get it. Here is my intellectual premise once again: (1) no evil, no tragedy, no rape of hope and promise, no violence, no negation of project nationhood, can even remotely approach the monumental scale of these aforementioned negativities as has been visited on Nigeria by the PDP and the Presidents she has installed by rigging and electoral criminality since 1999. You may want to play the ostrich by excising Jonathan from this gory legacy - of which he has been a most prolific continuator - I do not have that luxury and do not lie to myself the way you do to yourself. I see a straight, unbroken line of corruption and tragedy from Obasanjo in 1999 to Jonathan today. My rejection of PDP is a holistic praxis. (2) I come to these conversations from the premise of any alternative but PDP. APC happens to be the most viable for now. And spare me the stupidity of ranting endlessly that I must be a card carrying member of APC to hold this viewpoint. I am not. But what if I am? Would there be something intrinsically wrong with that? And what exactly do I care what you think of my membership or non-membership of APC? I see APC as the most formidable enemy of my enemies - PDP and the incumbent. Yes, the coconut-headed leadership of APC has pretty much spent the entire lifespan of the party multiplying one misstep after another, embracing every opportunistic vermin who crosses over from PDP, failing to define a clearly different ideological identity, failing to rein in the anti-democractic Babacracy of Tinubu and his Ali Baba stranglehold on the treasuries of the southwest, and sooooo many other sins. But listen and listen good: no matter how good you are in mathematics, youd never be able to add up the sins of APC and arrive at the report card of PDP since 1999. Logic and common sense will always be your undoing in such a mathematical venture. APC will always remain that less bad alternative to PDP. Anything that is even 1% less bad than PDP is a credible alternative worth fighting for. None of the unfolding sins of APC is irredeemable; PDP is irreedeemable, her legacy is morally and ethically indefensible. Besides, stop trying to catalogue the sins of APC for me. APC has no harsher critic than me. In op-ed after op-ed, in numerous statements circulated widely, I have condemned the things you say are wrong with APC. And unlike you, I do have access. I do pick up the phone to do direct condemnation all the time. But I know where and when to draw the line. That one is acknowledging what is wrong in/with APC and condemning it does not mean that one considers PDP and anybody she has to offer worthy of any consideration. The PDP losy the right to be considered anything but an irredeemable tragic rapist of nationhood a long time ago. No, the thieves and criminals who crossed over from PDP and were stupidly accepted by the leadership of APC do not automatically become saints and progressives. Stop singing what I already know to me. I am more bothered by it than you. But it is the responsibility of a conscious and conscientized youth vanguard - as they grow and gain a voice and solid footing in the party - to make sure that the gerontocrats making these stupid errors of leprous association understand that their jumpological brothers and associates cannot come to do business as usual in APC. The Petra Onyegbules and the Soni Akojis of this world are card-carrying APC members. That is their struggle on another front. Such errors do not - I repeat, do not - make APC the evil that is PDP. The soul of APC is still up for grabs and definition. It still has the highest number of credible people in the political field. My brother, Ogaga Ifowodo, (the only candidacy I have fully endorsed thus far; I will be endorsing my friend Patrick Obahiagbon for Senate too presently) is in APC. It is their responsibility to join the face of engaged youth represented by the Petras of this world to fight for the soul of that party. My brother, Kennedy Emetulu, once argued that the same struggle can be carried out in PDP. I disagree with him. PDP is a lost cause. You have a second reason to fight for the soul of APC while it is still possible. Look at where one horrible political party and the irredeemable thieves in her rank have gotten you since 1999. If one party has done this much damage, just imagine what could happen if APC fully becomes PDP - and she has the potential to be. That would be two political parties putting the knife to your throat instead of one. You will have to kiss the gains of Lagos, Edo, Osun, etc, goodbye and embrace a uniformity of darkness without pockets of light. Those who continue to advance the illogical and intellectually lazy argument that the presence of Tinubu in APC and the repeated gaffes of that political party are enough to argue in favour of the sainthood of Goodluck Jonathan, Patience Jonathan, Reno Omokri, etc, are lucky because I cannot engage them without a brother getting in the path of my koboko. Because they have misread satire, parody, and double entendre, and appropriated the nuanced arguments of my brother, there is now no safe way to disentangle their ignorance and opportunism from his own position. They can continue on that path knowing they enjoy somebodys shield. Of all the arguments in favour of sending Goodluck Jonathan back to Otuoke in 2015, the greatest is his moral and ethical decrepitude because it accounts for the violence he has done to every fabric of project nationhood. When a man declares on national television - in full possession of his critical faculties - that ordinary cases of stealing, mere stealing, is not corruption, are you surprised that the EFCC under his watch now arrests peasant fishermen for fishing illegally in some rivers? That is the mockery that the anti-corruption war becomes when the personal morality of the president justifies stealing. The fact that the unteachable career Jonathanian sees nothing wrong in this gargantuan moral collapse should tell you that his fanaticism is not really about Goodluck Jonathan. The psychological damage done to the Nigerian by decades of deliberately-induced civic illiteracy has produced a congenital mentality which instinctively claims ownership of the atrocities of incumbency. If you look at the fellow screaming loudly in support of Goodluck Jonathan today, refusing to accept that the president is fallible, he probably was out there defending, justifying, and rationalizing the worst excesses and corruption of Obasanjo when the man was in office; he probably was out there defending, justifying, and rationalizing the worst excesses and corruption of YarAdua. If he is old enough, this fellow probably screamed, ride on, Mr President, while Abdulsalami Abubakar, Sani Abacha, and Ibrahim Babangida were incumbents, looting and despoiling Nigeria. He probably supported their worst excesses. Never mind the noise he is making in opposition to Buhari today. If he was old enough when Buhari was in office, he probably supported the execution of those Nigerians using retroactive laws; he probably screamed halleluiah in praise of every excess of the Buhari regime at the time. When exploited financially by his jet-flying pastor, the Nigerian pentecostal screams, touch not my anointed! Exploited by any moral and ethical pauper of an incumbent, the psychologically-damaged Nigerian screams, touch not the atrocities of my incumbent!. He is not in love with Goodluck Jonathan. He is in love with the atrocities of Goodluck Jonathan for his psychology is a product of decades of purposed diseducation. If, for any reason, General Buhari wins and, contrary to the argument of his supporters, begins to loot Nigeria blind as from 2015, the current crop of unteachable career Jonathanians will displace Buharis genuine supporters and embrace the Generals atrocities for they have an obsessive-compulsive attraction to the atrocities of the incumbent, of any incumbent. General Buharis candidacy is welcome. I am satisfied with his explanation of how he got the money for his form. But I am still waiting for Sam Nda Isaiah to declare, tell us what he has for us, and explain the source of his nomination fee. I am waiting for - if he is going to do it - Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to do likewise. I am waiting to see what Tambuwal is doing. (Sorry, my broda, Ayo Turton, Ill pass on Atiku). I am even daring to hope that some kind of national youth movement could still arise within APC and scream: give us an Oby Ezekwesili/Babatunde Raji Fashola ticket or nothing. If such a movement is loud enough within the ranks of registered youth demographic in APC, Chief Oyegun, Tinubu, Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai and co. may come to realize that their political party must either listen to the youth movement or perish. How is Jonathan ever going to beat an Ezekwesili/Fashola ticket? So, I am still waiting for all kinds of possibilities and I am daring to be optimistic. That is why I endorsed Buharis humility in relation to the nomination fee but stopped short of fully endorsing his candidacy but Jonathanians with reading comprehension challenges ran riot. When I have seen what all these other potential candidates are proposing, I will compare and begin to root for the candidate with the best vision in my opinion. In the end, I will robustly support whoever the APC fields to run against Goodluck Jonathan. That is an absolute given. But this is a debate on permutations and possibilities within the imperfect alternative offered by APC. That is the only thing worthy of my attention. When I write about these things, do not come to my Wall to insist on neutrality if what you are selling are Goodluck Jonathan and PDP. The worst option of APC will still be less bad than the very best that PDP has to offer. That is my opinion. I owe you no apologies for holding it. Go away with your Goodluck Jonathan. ~ Pius Adesanmi.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 09:14:04 +0000