Opinion

Nigeria Is Once Again At A Dangerous Precipice, This Time Because Of Capture Of The Country By A Man Who Claims To Be ‘Bola Ahmed Tinubu’

Opinion October 27, 2023

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By Chinedu Jideofo-Ogbuagu

Nigeria derailed in 1966, leading to four years of genocide and decades of failed attempts to put the country back on track.

The most recent run of attempts to fix Nigeria started in 1998, with Abdulsalam Abubakar’s programme of transition from military regime to civilian administration.

Reading General Abubakar’s body language correctly, that is that he would hand over to civilians following transition elections, Nigerians – including ourselves – embraced his positive vibes. We returned to Nigeria in 1998 with a political party of which I was National Chairman, National Development Party of Nigeria (NDPN).

Instead of going into the 1998/1999 elections with the 25 political parties registered to field candidates, including NDPN, Abubakar committed a blunder that brought about much of the confusion and derailment that has plagued Nigerian politics since 1998.

The mortal blunder is his whimsical and cavalier reduction of the number of duly registered parties, including our own (NDPN), from 25 to 2: PDP and APP. AD was added to the 2 due to pressure from the usually vociferous elements of the South-West. I was National Chairman of NDPN, a party we had founded in the United Kingdom in 1990, so I knew what went down then and since then.

Our having anything to do with PDP (where I was National Director of Campaigns in 1998 and a senatorial seat – Enugu West – aspirant in 1999), AD (where I was Enugu West senatorial candidate in 2001), APP/ANPP (where I was presidential aspirant in 2003), and APC now, is because of changing the established system upon which we returned to the country on 12th October 1998, after our party had been duly registered.

Otherwise, we would have been quite happy contesting for various elections on NDPN platform and developing it further.

Fast-forward to the period starting 29th May 2015, following 16 unbroken years of unremarkable PDP federal leadership of Nigeria. We did not see hope in Mohammadu Buhari civilian administration and settled for preparing to succeed him in 2019 or 2023.

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South-East APC Integrity Group was established in June 2015 primarily to sanitize and grow APC in the South-East prelude to South-East APC Presidency Project 2023, which South-East APC Integrity Group birthed in January 2020.

By January 2020, we had helped to grow APC in the South-East where APC had been a fringe party and almost a joke. With massive growth of South-East APC over 2015-2020, we now believed that South-East APC could reach out to APC in the other 5 geopolitical zones to ask for their support of a credible South-East APC person for the party’s presidential ticket in 2023.

Our search for a credible South-Easterner to project for the 2023 presidential ticket of APC met virtual brick wall. Some South-East APC individuals wanted to succeed Buhari, but all of them sheepishly believed that the ticket could only go to an uninterested or reluctant person that Buhari himself anointed. That was naive and ridiculous political thinking, and we repeatedly tried to persuade them otherwise.

Nothing we said could persuade presidential materials among South-East APC to commit to running. That was all we expected from them. We had watered everywhere in Nigeria and just needed a lucky person with average resources to harvest the waiting votes. We needed a credible person among them to assure us that he/she was irrevocably committed to vying for President on APC platform in 2023. If any of them had said that, that person would undoubtedly be President today.

For months and years, we waited as cowardly and gutless South-East APC individuals played hide-and-seek and vomitted rubbish as their idea of political wisdom. They who could not support South-East APC Presidency Project 2023 with N1 would spend N100 million each to buy expression of interest and nomination forms in the last minute before primary. We know that Ken Nnamani, Ogbonnaya Onu, Emeka Nwajiuba and David Umahi did.

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N100 million of the person’s money would not only have got him the APC ticket but also won him the presidency. We dismissed them immediately after the primary as men with money but no sense nor self-esteem nor real campaign strategy nor fighting spirit.

In February 2022 when no one from the South-East would declare to contest for the presidency on APC platform and when it was getting very late, I, Chinedu Jideofo-Ogbuagu, a previous presidential aspirant who had wanted to project someone else 20 years later because I lacked minimum capital needed this time, picked up the gauntlet. However, death of my elder brother on 10th April 2022 was the only thing that stopped my aspiration that was in full flight by that time.

Among the many things we said in the course of 8 years of advocating for a credible South-Easterner to succeed Buhari in 2023, we had said that a credible South-Easterner would become President whether on APC platform or any other serious platform, if the APC disappointed the geopolitical zone. With strong and effective national Project structures we had created, we had persuaded at least 80% of the Nigerian electorate to support a credible South-Easterner, we had got millions of new voters to register if only to vote for whoever we projected, and we were sure that our candidate would win with over 50 million votes.

With South-East APC effectively out of 2023 presidential election, an imposter bamboozled APC and took the APC presidential ticket. In the same manner of taking the APC presidential ticket, he also took the presidency by force. But for fake, fraudulent and criminal aspects of the man, we would have supported him for his audacity and courage. He possessed the fighting spirit that no one from the South-East had – except me.

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Millions of the votes that Peter Obi received in the general election were from our advocacy. Our votes were divided; some to Obi, some to the imposter, and some to Atiku Abubakar.

We remain an integrity group, but party (APC) loyalty made some of our people to vote APC, some voted PDP while over half of our voters voted Obi of the Labour Party, and a credible South-Easterner.

We are not regionalists, but all considered, we knew that a credible South-Easterner as president stood the best chance of fixing Nigeria and leading her to First-World status. That was our driving patriotic motive and remains so.

Everyone knows that Obi won the 2023 presidential election. We don’t need corrupt INEC officials and corrupt judges to tell us what we know. Nigeria is today once again standing at the precipice because INEC and judges, compromised by the imposter, have subverted the will of the people.

Nigerians must not accept subversion of their electoral will. Unless the people’s mandate is recovered from the imposter and his accomplices, and the thieves are punished for endangering Nigeria, it should be clear to even the dumb, the blind and the dimwit that Nigeria must cease to exist as a country.

2023 presidential election must be the last act of impunity by rascals masquerading as politicians – in their rogue minds, even as leaders and statesmen.