Greed is thy name, Nigerian educated political elite. Obafemi Awolowo, a Nigerian patriot who lived ahead of his time arrived at this conclusion long before independence in 1960. He has been proven right as only a few members of our educated political elite have demonstrated they are driven by noble objectives including celebrating the values of our interconnectedness, asking for what they can do to make Nigeria better for Nigerians or “becoming the change they want to see in others” as Mahatma Ghandi put it.
Sadly a great number of members of our political elite have turned out to be unprincipled megalomaniacs, driven only by self- interest. For them, it has always been “what is on it for us”? His thesis has since been validated by various events in our chequered history.
First, Chief S.L Akintola, his trusted ally was removed from office as premier for maladministration and anti-party activities by executive organ of Action Group on May 19, 1962. But driven by greed for power, rather than vacate office despite London Privy Council’s ruling that sanctioned his removal as premier, he refused to resign. (Akintola taku). He chose to invite leaders of the ruling coalition partners, Ahmadu Bello and Nnamdi Azikiwe who with false testimonies of Chief E A Okunowo, Chief Ayo Rosiji, Chief Abiodun Akerele, also driven by greed for contract, succeeded in sending Awolowo to prison.
Akintola’s enablers who unconstitutionally interfered in the affairs of Western Region in 1962 couldn’t have been motivated by any noble objective beyond a desire to run Nigeria according to their worldview and without an opposition leader. From hindsight, we now also know the civil war was driven by greed for power by northern and eastern political elite. The short-lived troubled marriage of NPP and NPN in the second republic, the annulment of 1993 MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigerian mandate, the imposition of Obasanjo, rejected by his people as president, his dancing on the tomb of MKO Abiola for eight years just as Ernest Shonekan did before him for three months and foisting of ailing Yar’Adua and later ill-prepared Goodluck Jonathan as presidents by Obasanjo could never have been driven by noble objectives. It was all about Obasanjo, the celebrated “father of PDP.
As it was yesterday, so it is today. The ongoing dance of death between PDP’s five governors ,(the Integrity Group) and the leadership of their party, patterned after similar 2014 Atiku-led five PDP governors’ revolt that wrecked PDP in 2015, has very little to do with protection of institutional democracy or the travails of Nigerians. It is driven in the main by self-interest of the warlords.
Whether it is about Nyesom Wike’s lamentation over breach of PDP constitution which produced Atiku Ababakar as PDP 2023 presidential candidate while short-changing southern political office seekers, or the alleged pocketing of N1billion party convention proceeds by Iyorchia Ayu the PDP chairman or Wike’s last week last challenge to his fellow South-south governors to account for proceeds of 13% derivation funds they took from Buhari, it is all about them and their greed.
Of course PDP itself was a product of greed. Described by John Campbell, former US ambassador to Nigeria, during his March 19, 2010 lecture titled: Nigeria In Turmoil as “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria with no ideological or programmatic basis, but simply as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils”, what defined PDP’s 16 years reign was greed.
Driven by greed, PDP’s first major policy thrust was the 2001 PPPRA Act which allowed them to increase the number of fuel importers from 10 in 2007 to 140 by 2011. But it was greed over sharing that led to PDP’s deadly family quarrel with Bukola Saraki emerging an unexpected whistle-blower in a fuel subsidy scam that was to consume everyone. A National Assembly probe was to later confirm that while PPPRA put the figure of imports at 59 million litres of fuel per day, only 35 million litres were consumed in the country. The probe also revealed that PDP stalwarts and their siblings defrauded Nigeria to the tune of N1.7trillion by forging documents without importing a pint of fuel.
Their next major policy thrust was the privatization programme. In 2010, a National Assembly probe revealed that what Obasanjo and Atiku did in the name of privatization between 1999 and 2003 was to literarily share Nigeria among their PDP members who had access to state money. Nigerian total investment of over $100b between 1960 and 1999 was sold for a paltry $1.5b.
The party’s monetization policy was not different. It was equally driven by greed. The self-serving policy allowed PDP members and their fronts to confiscate physical assets dating back to the colonial era. It is on record that David Mark as Senate President, Dimeji Bankole as Speaker of the Lower House as well as Chukwuma Soludo as CBN Governor bought their official residences after government renovation at fractions of their real costs.
For PDP, implosion has always come from within. Those PDP leaders, including Ayu who referred to Nyesom Wike, a witness to his party’s baleful legacies, as a small boy, now know they are doing so at their own peril. Wike, a self-confessed committed PDP member with PDP DNA has been an ardent student of PDP leaders including Obasanjo, Saraki and Atiku who have in the pursuits of their different selfish interests at different times in the past brought PDP to grief. Beyond words, theatrics and dancing, Wike has proved that he has come of age in the game of mischief and party intrigue. Today “the child is the father of Man.”(William Wordsworth, 1802).
Greed is a perfected weapon of PDP and its leaders. Just as Hitler used democracy to bring down democrats of his time, Wike is relying on greed to bring down PDP. Greed has therefore become the springboard for their fight of death with their party. He and his Integrity Group insisted Abubakar Atiku breached PDP constitution because of greed for power. They then went after Ayu, the party chairman accusing him of greed for allegedly cornering N1b accruing to the party from their party convention. And for his South-south governors, Wike went for their underbelly. Having demonstrated to Nigerians what he is doing with 13% derivation funds paid by President Buhari, he wants his colleagues from a geopolitical zone notorious for serving as Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) to successive presidential candidates from Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Buhari to account for their own Buhari windfalls.
Wike seems to have been well prepared for this battle. For two years he has been showcasing the results of his huge investments in infrastructural development in Rivers including inter-state and intra state roads, Cancer centre and the N17 b Nigerian Law School and even stomach infrastructure in form of employment of 20,000 special assistants as election observers.
Finally, I think another casualty of Wike’s challenge is our hypocritical electronic and press media, a big chunk of which is owned by indigenes of that geo-political zone. For Wike, Nigerians would never have known about the payments PDP government never made even in the days of abundance. While they dance to the banks with millions made from news commercialization, promoting unverifiable projects purportedly executed by governors who “cannot meet up with pensions or boast of schools in top shape” while piling up loans despite “raking in over N300 billion from the Buhari government”, Wike is treated as a clown because of his throaty songs, diction, and dancing steps. Now the joke is on them