There is no gainsaying the fact that if we care about making progress, our beloved country, Nigeria is long overdue for ethical politics and peaceful path to true democracy. Nigeria is the only country I know where politicians will boldly and shamelessly asserted that there is no moral in politics or politics is a dirty game.
This writer submits that politics is not a dirty game, but it is only people of dirty minds that make it dirty. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary, values are the beliefs about what is right and wrong and what is important in life: moral values.
A person’s values are what he stands for and believes in. A person who embraces ethical values cannot revel in the business of subverting the democratic right of members of any party where he founds himself and the general electoral process. It is public knowledge that Tinubu has become so powerful and heedless, blinded by selfish interest, swept aimlessly on the creed of greed, hurriedly toeing a path that leads to only one place: INFAMY. Not a few will agree with this writer that no empire last forever.
Tinubu is the strutting god of the hour who is disdainful of democratic fair play, deride equity and mock justice! It is a comic assault on invincible truth and a desperate attempt to stand it (the truth) on its head and gratuitous insult to the collective psyche of party members and the electorate when he (Tinubu) wrote to accused the National Chairman of the APC of committing all the vices he has notoriety for committing and went ahead to call for his resignation so that he can have the opportunity of planting a stooge that will be pandering to his whim and caprices. It is high time all democrats, lovers of justice, equity and fair play join hands together to call Tinubu’s bluff and clip his political wing so that he did not have the opportunity to take his peculiar abhorrent and dictatorial brand of politics which have brought untold hardship on the longsuffering hapless citizens of my beloved state, Osun to Ondo state nay the centre.
Now is the time for the public, the average Nigerian citizen, to stand up and protest the rampant political corruption of imposition that is destroying everything that made our country great. We as Nigerians are responsible for the character of our leaders. If our leaders are ignorant, unethical, reckless and corrupt, it is because we tolerate these negative attributes, but if they are intelligent, ethical, brave and pure, it is because we demand these high qualities from them.
As the saying goes, “The people get the kind of leadership they deserve”. We are all living witnesses to the way the great people of Edo sent the godfather of Edo politics into political oblivion. The evils perpetrated by godfathers are too numerous to mention. There is no gainsaying that Tinubu and his protégé seek power for self-aggrandizement at the expense of the people.
The case of my beloved state, Osun is a good reference point. The reckless insensitivity of Governor Rauf Aregbesola to the cruel conditions of the ordinary people of Osun state in the last 6 years of his maladministration is due to the fact that he owed his allegiance to his gofather, Tinubu rather than the people of the state. Not a few will agree this writer that the architect of our present socio-political and economic woes is a god father, Obasanjo who single-handedly imposed a terminally-ill man, Yar’Adua and a political neophyte rogue politician, Jonathan on his party, PDP and went ahead to subvert the general electoral process to rigged them into office. We are all paying dearly pay for that political indiscretion today.
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In view of the foregoing, is in not in our own collective interest to ensure no godfather have his way at any level of government in this country again? Are we not collectively doom as a nation if either by commission or omission we allow it to happen?
There is no gain saying the fact that the search is on for new leaders who will retrieve Nigeria from the precipice many of those in power condemned it to since the inception of this democratic dispensation in 1999. Clashes within the political class, especially the recent desperate attempt of Tinubu to impose a pliable candidate on people of Ondo state keep exposing the secrets about the despoliation of Nigeria in the last 17years. We thank God that the will of APC members prevailed.
Like any desperate godfather who will not give up easily, Tinubu and his godson, Rauf have resorted to what they know how to do best, their stock-In-trade, anti-party activities, by directing one of their surrogate to defect to their former party, AD, which made them who they are today, but which they help in no small measure to brought about its untimely demise. The chickens of greed and crass egoism bereft of self-discipline are coming home to roost in the new ruling party at the centre, APC.
It is patently clear that Tinubu and his acolytes in APC are hell-bent in destroying it the way they did to thier former party, AD that brought them into political limelight. It is left to the National leadership of the APC to take disciplinary steps against them to avert the foregoing or allow them to have their way! In the face of all the tales of woe that our people have to deal with in the last 17 years, if their antecedent is anything to go by, I do candidly believe that the highly discerning and politically sophisticated people of Ondo state will not allow any godfather to have his way.
Come November 26, they will pitch their political tent with a new leader in the mould of Oluwarotmi Abayomi Akeredolu, Senior advocate of Nigeria and former president of the highly respected Nigeria Bar Association who will be able to put their state firmly on the path of Irreversible prosperity, security law and order. The scandalous performance of successive government with the rare exception of late chief Adekunle Ajasin and Adebayo Adefarati should be a major issue to be judged as the good people of Ondo vote for their future, a future that exceptional incompetence has suspended in the last 17 years.
Like Winston Churchill, Akeredolu, popularly called Aketi might be vilified for his principle positions, but no one can fault the altruistic and patriotic motivations for his actions. He has proved to be a man with indomitable courage who was never afraid to articulate his views and who was always calling attention to the follies and foibles of the Yar’Adua led PDP government at the centre when he was the president of the Nigeria Bar Association. As a thorough bred administrator and extra-ordinary organizer of men, Aketi was an achiever par excellence and a shining example of honesty, simplicity and humility.
In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Not gold, but only men can make a nation great and strong men, who for the truth and honour’s sake, stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who dare while others shy, diligent men who toil while others sleep. They build a nation’s pillitus deep and lift them to the sky. May his tribe begin to take the centre-stage in the affairs of our beleaguered nation, Nigeria, so that it can realize her full potential.
“Leadership is not about titles, positions or flow charts. It is about one life influence another” says John C. Maxwell.
Aminu is the National Coordinator of Oodua Youth for Good Governance
E-mail: [email protected],
