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By Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe

The Book of Esther Chapter 7 verses 9 and 10 in the Holy Bible recounts: 9 Now Harbonah, one of the eunuchs, said to the king, “Look! The gallows, fifty cubits high, which Haman made for Mordecai, who spoke good on the king’s behalf, is standing at the house of Haman.”Then the king said, “Hang him on it!” 10 So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the king’s wrath subsided.

During his recent humiliating image laundering in Washington DC, United States of America, the Minister of Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed addressed some American journalists from the Washington Post, Voice of America, Associated Press and Foreign Policy Magazine on April 4, 2023, accusing Peter Obi and Datti Ahmed of treasonable felony in the following words:

“Obi and his Vice, Datti-Ahmed cannot be threatening Nigerians that if the President-elect, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is sworn in on May 29, it will be the end of democracy in Nigeria. This is treason. You cannot be inviting insurrection, and this is what they are doing. Obi’s statement is that of a desperate person, he is not a democrat that he claimed to be. A democrat should not believe in democracy only when he wins election.”

In the theory of disinformation and propaganda, those who are employed to engage in the serious business of vicious disinformation as Lai Mohammed employs himself today are generally people considered to be of exceptional intelligence, acute sense of judgment and, historical calculus. All these are ignominiously absent in Lai Mohammed as a man. Most Nigerians will agree with me that of all the Ministers of Information of the Federal Republic of Nigeria before him, Lai Mohammed remains the most colourless, obtuse in intelligence and incompetent in the carriage of his office, beginning from Chief Kola Balogun in 1957. 

Just take a look at the intellectual finesse of such past Ministers of Information as Koa Balogun, T. O. S. Benson, Samson Umeruah, Anthony Ukpo, Tony Momoh, Alex Akinyele, Walter Ofonagoro, Jerry Gana, Chukwuemeka Chikelu, Frank Nweke jr., Dora Akunyili, and Labaran Maku and ask, in what aspect, except in the craft of telling lies can Lai Mohammed measure up with any of them?

If Lai Mohammed is not unintelligent, incompetent and bereft of history, he should have checked his personal historical records before venturing into Washington DC to display his morbid carriage of political insanity in a sane society. 

In November 2014, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi then Governor of Rivers State who had just decamped from the ruling PDP to the opposition APC made the following threats bordering on felony and parallel government against the background of any attempt by the ruling PDP to rig the 2015 General elections during the APC “Salvation Rally” in Abuja: 

“What is the essence of going to court when the Federal Government doesn’t obey the law? That is why APC says we won’t go to court any longer. If you rig us out we will rig ourselves in. This means if you think you can rig us out in 2015, we will form our own government. We have met. We have agreed on that. We will install our own government and there will be two governments. The only way to avoid parallel government is to have a free and fair election. You can’t continue to use the Police as if it is a private agency or company of the government.”

Following the barrage of criticisms that greeted Amaechi’s act of treasonable felony, the APC through its National Publicity Secretary Alhaji Lai Mohammed issued a press statement on Friday November 21, 2014, which not only supported Rotimi Amaechi but went further to reveal that the statement was in fact the collective position of the party. In the words of Lai Mohammed:

“Those who are fretting about this statement are those who are planning to rig the elections and they should be warned that Nigerians will no longer accept the outcome of any fraudulent polls. Those who incite the people are those who steal their mandate. What we made is a conditional statement. If A happens, then B will follow. That means if elections are not rigged, there will be no problem. It is therefore laughable that anyone will call that statement treasonable,” it said, adding that there is no higher treason than the subversion of the people’s will. Let us remind the presidency, in case it has forgotten, that election fraud triggered a civil war in Algeria in the early 1990s, led to the killing of over 1,000 people in post-election riots in Kenya in 2007/2008 and fired a near revolution in Iran in 2009/2010. Electoral frauds also corrupt democracy and breed dictatorship, and risks making the people to lose confidence in democracy. Why then would any government react violently if warned against election rigging? PDP and the governments it sired, especially at the centre, are lawless and anarchic…. Because it is said that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, we will constantly warn the PDP and the Federal Government not to tamper with the 2015 elections. We will constantly chide them for trying to institutionalize impunity. We cannot and will not be intimidated by an uptight presidency. The PDP and the Jonathan Administration are the masters of impunity, and they will not hesitate to exploit any sign of docility in the face of their evil intentions on the part of the opposition. The lessons are there …. For us, the gloves are off. We will no longer engage in any nicety as long as some people are bent on thwarting the will of the people through electoral fraud. All we are demanding is a free, fair and credible election. All we are saying is that no one should incite the people by stealing their mandate. How these demands can be construed to mean treason is as baffling as the do-or-die disposition of the ruling PDP to elections.”

This position supporting a parallel government in the event of APC being rigged out of the 2015 General elections was reiterated by the National Chairman of the Party Chief John Odigie-Oyegun in his January 4, 2015 New Year message as reported by Channels Television eight P M news.  His words:

“As a party, we assure you that we will congratulate President Jonathan and the People’s Democratic Party if our Presidential candidate and party are defeated in free and fair election will not go to court. However, as a party, we wish to reiterate that we will not hesitate to consider forming a parallel government if the 2015 elections are rigged either by use of security agencies (Police and Military) to harass , intimidate and cajole voters through the use of a compromised Independent National Electoral Commission.”

 In aligning with his fellow APC chieftains, the current Vice President then Vice Presidential candidate of opposition APC Prof Yemi Osibajo, during the Channels Television “Politics Today” on the same January 4, 2015, reaffirmed the APC position on the constitution of parallel government in event of what they consider as rigged elections, in the following words:

 “Let’s look at political history. Look at cases where the government decided that they were going to ignore the wishes of the electorates and simply override the wishes of the electorates. What the opposition has usually done in those cases is to reject the result of the election, and to say that they would constitute their own government. That is simply a way of taking a stand against the government, and putting the government under pressure.”

It should be recalled that the National Chairman of APC Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, had earlier in his speech during the November 2014 Salvation rally in Abuja threatened in the following words: “If we do not see any discernible change of attitude on the part of the government, then we will move to the next stage on the list of actions that our party intends to take to stop the rot being perpetuated by the PDP-led Federal Government.”

Is it not therefore proper to say that the APC stands to be politically hanged in 2023 with the same gallows they constructed for PDP in 2015? Today Nigerians are witnessing the same atrocities in more severe forms and ways they accused PDP in 2014.

Nigerians equally witnessed more heinous electoral crimes than what APC suspected of PDP in 2015 General elections and on which their threat to form a parallel government was predicated. The question is shall Nigerians not apply the same Mordecai-Haman style of justice against APC?

Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe, PhD, DD, Odogwu of Ibusa Clan & Combatant Political Historian, Fellow@Exile, Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka can be reached via: Email: nwaezeigwe.genocideafrica@gmail.com

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