By Steve Osuji
FEBRUARY 6TH, 2013: We won’t need a survey to determine that majority of Nigerians are today cursing the day the All Progressives Congress (APC) was birthed in Nigeria. Well, for your information, it happened exactly today, 12 years ago today.
Power harlots, strange bedfellows and an assortment of career criminals converge for one purpose: to grab power – by hook or crook.
The chief mover was Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State and incumbent president. The arch-kleptocrat wanted presidential power by all means. He corralled a former military dictator, Muhammadu Buhari, a tribalist and pretender to moral rectitude. The grand plan was to ride on the back of Buhari’s popularity in the north and take a turn at the presidency after him.
The plan worked perfectly for Tinubu who grabbed the high office after two terms of Buhari.
While APC makes pretences to being a political party, it’s a mere power-munching apparatus which has held Nigeria under its evil spell in the last dozen years.
10 EVILS OF THE APC: This agglomeration of power hounds has afflicted Nigeria every day in its 12 years of existence. Here are just a few:
ONE: APC UNLEASHED TERROR: In order to oust the ruling party, PDP, and gain power, APC in 2014, orchestrated terror in Nigeria. Yes, the Boko Haram group was already on since 2009, but it was given more fillip by the elements in APC who craved power.
Terror acts were revved up; bombs were suddenly going off all over the Northeast and even Abuja and the country was made nigh ungovernable. To the point that the incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan noted at the time, that some terrorists were embedded in his cabinet.
Hear it from Wikipedia:
“Boko Haram attacks intensified in 2014. In February, the group killed more than 100 Christians in the villages of Dogon Baga and inzghe. That same month, 59 boys were killed in the Federal Government College attack.
“ In March, the group attacked the Giwa military barracks (Abuja) freeing captured militants. The Chibok abduction happened on the same day as the bombing attack in Abuja in which at least 88 people died.”
TWO : THE CHIBOK GIRLS GAMBIT: The pattern of terror highlighted above can only be a planned culmination of the biggest heist the world has witnessed in this age. It was the precursor to the abduction of above 270 final year students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State.
The world erupted in indignation and disdain for the Jonathan administration. And that was the exact intent of the APC propaganda: to portray the incumbent as utterly incompetent and unfit to lead.
THREE: COMPLICIT US AND THE WEST: Before the recent expose by investigative journalist, David Hundeyin concerning the dubious roles of USAID and some rogue US intelligence officials, it was apparent that governments of the US and some European countries like Britain, Germany and France, among others, were complicit in the
APC plot to change government by blood and fire, mindlessly throwing in poor Nigerians as cannon fodder.
People have argued that there is no where in the world 270 girls could be abducted and kept undetected. Considering that the US has been tracking and vanquishing suspected terrorists even in their bedrooms with utmost accuracy.
It is therefore preposterous that the US and her allies could not pick the Chibok girls in their satellite. There was obvious collusion.
FOUR: THE BANDITS OF THE NORTH WEST: It is now common knowledge that as Boko Haram raged in the Northeast, APC goons imported and armed hundreds of Fulani migrants and camped them in the hills of the Northwest. The plot was to deployed the ‘troop’ to destabilise Nigeria should President Goodluck Jonathan refuse to step down.
But Jonathan had an inkling of this plot but chose to step down in spite of obvious manipulations by INEC in the 2015 presidential elections. His ambition to remain in power wasn’t worth the shedding of the blood of Nigerian citizens, Jonathan was quoted to have said as he stepped down.
FIVE: TINUBU, EL RUFAI AND SHETTIMA: This is the triumvirate that masterminded the bloodstained APC power grab of 2015.
Kashim Shettima, the incumbent vice president, was the governor of Borno State during the Chibok girls abduction. He has a lot yet to tell Nigerians and the world about what transpired then and where the rest of the girls are.
Bola Tinubu, a confirmed US CIA asset was in charge of the soft operations and intel assistance from the US and UK.
El Rufai was the general commander of the APC Northwest command. After APC government was sworn in, the armed bandits of the Northwest became a major albatross of the Buhari administration. Rufai in a moment exasperation blurted out that he had paid off the bandits yet they kept making more demands. They were therefore to be taken disposed off as criminals.
The APC government loathed to term the bandits a terror group despite the death and damnation they unleashed on Sokoto, Katsina, kaduna and Kebbi States among others.
SIX: PRESIDENT BUHARI, SICK AND INCOMPETENT: After all this evil machinations for power, Buhari eventually got sworn in as president on May 29, 2015.
Remember he had contested three previous times before 2O15. On the top job, it soon dawned on the whole world, perhaps, including himself, that he was a fake. Everything he presented to be, he was not.
First, he was vacuous and empty-headed. Which may explain why he had no educational certificates to show. He was a sphinx in army uniform all his life.
Worse, APC media dogs packaged him as mai gaskiya. Literally, a good man of integrity. But the only redeeming thing about Buhari’s second coming as head of Nigeria is that he was defrocked. He was demystified. Out of army uniform, he was actually a naked, miserable god. He turned out, after eight years, to be a man full of guiles with nary a modicum of integrity.
Finally perched on the number one seat in Aso Rock, Buhari blanked out, not knowing even the first thing to do. For many months, he couldn’t appoint his cabinet. Inertia stalked the land. In one year, Nigeria’s economy crashed, lapsing into recession. How can an oil producing nation seem to fail? It’s like a man earning huge monthly salary suffering insolvency.
SEVEN: BUHARI RUN RAGGED AND UPENDED AFTER EIGHT YEARS: For a man who contested for presidency for 16 years. His two terms in office was the most abysmal (well, until Tinubu). He dragged Nigeria back about 30 years, an entire generation (he wasn’t even aware what transpired most of 8 years); the definition of crippling incompetence. He was almost half the time, in the UK managing his health at Nigeria’s expense, incapable of planting the kind of health facility he enjoyed out there.
In his last days in office, he was too tired and weary to understand how his succession went. All he wanted was to return to his native Daura. His wife Aisha became a diasporan midway in the tenure. Ensconced in Dubai and living in luxury away from the fire, fury and stench of Nigeria. She would show briefly to refill and restock and freeload, then vanish again.
8: ENTERS TINUBU, THE APC CARPETBAGGER: He’s the alter-ego of APC’s darkness. When it appeared for a moment that the mantle was going to fall away from him, he went public to cry that it was his turn to carry the diadem. Emilokan! It’s my turn! Half wailing, half asserting.
He eventually wangled his way and snatched it. Since then, it’s long-live king kong. Like Buhari, all he wanted was the tag, President. .. and of course, lucre unlimited! Governance. Statesmanship. Best practice. Legacy. Fatherland. All these are mere words… Where’s the money damn it!?
NINE: CORRUPTION CAPITAL… Rapine APC has in just 10 years, gang-raped Nigeria and left her prostrate. Nigeria is today a synonym for corruption.
Late last year, the Organised Crime and Corruption Project (OCCRP) name Nigeria’s president among the three leaders in the world. Bashar Assad of Syria and William Ruto of Kenya are fellow infamous laureates with Tinubu.
No government official has as much as sneezed at this. Let’s take it that they didn’t see the OCCRP report. Under Tinubu, Nigeria is being swallowed by what has been described as perverse corruption. A situation in which the leader converts the entirety of the commonwealth to his private estate.
In such a state, everything stops working. In fact nothing is walking: except the leader and his family and close associates. In such a situation of state seizure, you have the worst inflation, worst currency, worst interest rates, destructive taxes and tariffs regime, stagnation, misery and death for the people.
TEN: GOING FORWARD? No Nigerian is actually sure about tomorrow. They claim they are reforming the economy; but what do you get when people who ought to be in reformation home are play-acting as specialists. They have only succeeded in rendering Nigeria’s tomorrow doomed and unpredictable. Apart from the fact that nobody can plan, not many can smile too broadly at that.
Nigh everyone wants to escape… and everywhere seems better than home; the APC curse is omnipresent, ominous and pregnant with dark auguries.
▪︎Osuji, a veteran journalist, was editor at The Guardian, THISDAY and NEWAGE, among others.
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