IBB, OBJ and the PDP Primaries

The ruling party should realise that there is difference between defending the party and defending the nation. The chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, had accused Babangida of being the patron of fraudsters in the country. The Babangida's Nigeria is not the one we want to return to. Babangida has been variously fingered as a corrupt leader. He is still being  accused of ingratiating corruption into public life of the nation, while his regime was accused of encouraging fraudsters in the country’s private life.  

What IBB had done was a violation of Section 15(5) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,  which provides thus: "The State shall abolish all corrupt practices and abuse of power." Therefore a presidential aspirant like IBB should be screened out. Let it be clearly understood that with corruption, the people are denied employment, good education, water, electricity, housing, good health and sound infrastructure. Nigerians should rise up and demystify  IBB.

Here at home in Nigeria, even though the U.S. shuns us as a model of democracy and prefers Ghana, the EFCC and its bold, some say suicidal actions reminds us on a daily basis that we have corruption deeply entrenched in high places in our body policy and a bitter struggle is on to contain this cancer. Normally one would say an emerging market becomes developed when it joins the super league of knowledge economies where services provide the bulk of the GDP and where globalization, competitiveness, deregulation and other indices of the free-market economy hold sway continuously. The Western  world kicks against IBB because Babangida's attitude towards corruption will rubbish the games of OBJ’s  reforms.

Emerging economies need to tackle the issues of transparency, corruption and integrity in the way they are governed and led both politically and corporately. Corruption has been identified as the major drain on the resources of the third world and this is the monster that must be confronted as identified in Brazil by Lula, by Rawlings in Ghana and by the EFCC in Nigeria.  IBB cannot fight curruption. He knows Corruption saps the energies of nations as basic infrastructure become exorbitant in terms of costs or even become impossible to put on ground because of inflated contract fees. Industry capacity utilization diminish at great costs to productivity because, of inflated contracts to accommodate bribes to government and corporate officials. This is the major shackle to emerging markets preventing them from migrating from their present status to that of being a developed economy. It is known thathe who comes to equity must come with clean hands.

The PDP Primaries is the first level where a patriotic party must scuttle the Babangida's ambition. PDP needs to know that Babangida is not a man who can be trusted by Nigerians. We will resist him and he will never be allowed to become president again. He destroyed the nations’s economy during his eight-year military rule. Babangida made it impossible for Nigerians to enjoy the benefits of free and fair elections where he annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election presumably won by the late Basorun M.K.O. Abiola. Babangida is not qualified to run having been indicted by the Pius Okigbo Panel of inquiry into the Gulf War oil windfall estimated at $12 billion. Go here and look at this website to see the money IBB has taken from Nigeria, not as a salary. http://nigeriapolitricks.blogspot.com/

IBB is an ill wind.  He is an ill-wind that would blow no one any good. Anybody who wants to rule this country, come 2007, should be somebody who is not deficient in credibility, has respect for the rule of law and not an agent of arbitrariness, which IBB represents. We are in a serious repair this country under a democratic environment. This is the oppotunity to hold former leaders with discrepancies accountable to their deeds in power. IBB institutionalised the graft culture in Nigeria (with the euphemism - settlement).

With his declaration of interest in the Presidency of Nigeria, Babangida  has thrown a challenge to all Nigerians: to our sense of justice and decency. He is determined to exercise his rights as a free citizen. We cannot legitimately deny him that. But PDP as a patriotic and ruling party can set regulatory checks and balances put in place to guide who gets its ticket. They owe this more as a  duty to the nation than to a party. There should be no conflict of interest. So that at the PDP primaries, the delegates need some clear criteria to perform this historic duty.  They must choose as PDP flagbearer, a man that Nigerians can identify with, and that man needs not be IBB. And should IBB win the PDP ticket, the Nigerian people must feel challenged to use the power of their vote. We do not hate IBB but we should love Nigeria ten times more. A man who had demonstrated such disdain for democracy should not be rewarded with another shot at the Presidency. His emergence as a candidate can only have the effect of deepening growing uncertainty about Nigeria's corporate future.  

To block off undesirable elements,  a criteria for  PDP Candidates stating  Desirable Qualities and Code of Conduct needs to be set up  to guide the nomination of candidates on the party’s platform. The general qualities should include being a serving governor-patriotism; integrity; ethno-neutral; rule-driven; tolerance; transparency-driven; knowledge-driven; community/constituency service; and, leadership.

IBB is ambitious because there is no shortage of sycophants around him who must be telling him that he is popular and that he is "the man" that Nigeria needs.These sycophants do not care about Nigeria but their pockets. They say they  want  him because he ( IBB) will share the spoils of office with them.This is deja vu.

The nations  fight against corruption is being won gradually.  We must build a critical mass of people who are buying into the anti-corruption campaign. The next challenge lay in sustaining the successes attained in the anti-corruption drive by not giving the ticket to a former currupt leader. PDP needs to know that the constituttion of the federal Republic if Nigeria, section 136 1(i) of 1999  bars those indicted by probe panels and administrative inquiry from seeking elective public offices adding that Babangida was yet to clear his name over alleged complicity in the murder of late journalist, Mr Dele Giwa.

This man mismanaged our resources for eight years and introduced several programmes like MAMSER and Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) where public Funds were siphoned to foreign accounts. Babangida 's  Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP)  pauperised many Nigerians stressing that its negative effect are still being felt by the citizenry.  Babangida is not a democrat and should therefore not be voted since he cancelled the 1993 presidential polls adjudged by local and foreign monitors as the nation’s freest and fairest. He probably is not looking for a free and fair election either.

We, the citizenry, had thought that the colonial and military enslavement had stopped. But from what is going on, we can perceive another form of it. It is so unfortunate that the series of crises are on the rise such as harassment of citizens by security operatives, betrayals, 'use and dump' system by PDP, the rush of unqualified presidential candidates for the ticket. The turmoil and crises caused by IBB are enough. I am
surprised that a leader could be causing a lot of crises after having  stayed in power when he is supposed only to be  putting in his best as an elder statesman among  the citizens, like Nelson Mandela of South Africa.

Our nascent democracy and economic recovery should be encouraged and be allowed to grow for the betterment of every citizen's life in the local, national and international spheres rather than bringing  back the old spoilers of the nation like IBB.  We cannot glibly cite the cases of Mathieu Kerekou, who was reelected in Benin Republic and that of Daniel Ortega, former Marxist revolutionary, who has recently won the presidential election in Nicaragua, to compare Nigeria to these lands.  In our case, we need to examine a leader's  past record carefully  and situate his legacy it in the light of where we want to get to as a  nation and how far we have come in that fight.

The PDP Chairman, Ahmadu Ali assignment is to ensure a free and fair process, not to pre-empt the process by praising one candidate unfairly as he did of IBB on the day he picked his nomination forms. Other aspirants had gone to the Wadata Plaza, the PDP Secretariat, to collect nomination forms, nobody paid any attention to them.

President Obasanjo actions may  truncate not only our nascent democracy but the on-going shedding of the old image which he has so capably initiated . My question is this: Will decency and the birth of a new nation require IBB to be the president of Nigeria in May 2007? The answer is no. I can sense it is working towards that direction. I believe Nigerians will not allow that to happen. You cannot put a new wine in an old wineskin.