PDP members say that only its rank has been targeted in the present war on
corruption. This may be correct to the extent that only ODP members
partook in the egregious crime of stealing tens of trillions of the
nation’s resources in the past sixteen years. It may be true to the extent
that the PDP has been solely in charge of the annual federal budgets and
the much more un-budgeted resources of the country for the past sixteen
years and the pilfering of this huge amount. PDP members are huffing and
puffing to stress that they are being selectively prosecuted for the
crimes they exclusively committed and you wonder what is wrong in that.
You need to see the torture on their faces as they try to express this
reality. They are wondering, often aloud, why members of APC are not being
arrested as their members in the present umbrage against the deadly virus
of corruption, especially in the present shameful arms purchase scandal
popularly known as Dasukigate. You cannot believe PDP as they marshal
their points. What one cannot readily decipher is whether they are serious
in their charges or whether they want whoever hears or reads them to take
them serious.
Sho? Do you generalize corruption so as to strike even? Do you purposely
balance up a war of such nature, just because you want to be seen as
objective and because you want to appease all parties? Do you distribute a
war on graft for its own sake? Do you look fir those that ate yam far from
the yam eaters themselves? I am confused understanding the tortured logic
of PDP members. They are not convincing, in the least, when they make
their arguments about the lopsided ness of the present war on corruption.
Are they saying we should look for lost corn grains elsewhere than where
hens domicile?
Come to think of it, for 16 whole years the country witnessed an
unprecedented oil boom with rich receipts from oil, the sole mainstay of
the country’s fragile economy. For those 16 years, the heavens
providentially rained manna from heaven from the unprecedented rise in oil
prices and the nation, nay PDP chieftains, members and supporters, reaped
bountifully from this natural endowments. For these 16 years, PDP was
fortunate to control this providential endowment and the nation was
unfortunate for this control. For 16 years, oil cash flowed and for 16
years, corruption, that killer virus that has held the country down,
thrived and grew in geometrical proportion. For those 16 paradoxical
years, the nation bled and decayed because the PDP and its governments
deified and worshiped corruption and elevated it to the pantheon of a
sacred god. They protected its unassailable suzerainty such that the last
PDP president, Goidluck Jonathan, whose Byzantine reign marked the apogee
of the reign of corruption in this country, strived so hard to defend its
immunity. He told an awe-struck but helpless nation that stealing is not
corruption in a manner that confers sacredness to corruption.
For the 16 years of PDP’s reign, there was no challenger to its
sovereignty and also its control of Nigeria’s resources. It saw the oil
windfall as manna from heaven with which God has blessed its members,
supporters, courtiers and fawners. It dispensed patronage and favor to
whoever flattered its corrupt whims. To survive, Nigerians learnt to fly
the bandana of PDP as that became the easiest way to access illicit
patronage. While this was going on, attention was paid to critical state
sectors and infrastructures only in breach. The geese that lay the golden
egg were allowed to die from hunger. A long dry season where we needed to
save fir the certain rainy season, was wasted away in unprecedented
hedonism and corrupt consumerism, like the unrepentant Biblical sluggard.
It was so noxious that virtually all critical sectors of ether economy
broke down irreparably. With easy money, the PDP governments, especially
the last one, gave to the suffering populace, flowery fictitious report of
unprecedented economic growth while ur presided over a horrendous looting
if the stare treasury.
That was the situation till change happened in March 2015 and the old,
rusty corrupt order tumbled and crashed and a new order unfurled. A
Pharaoh that knows no Joseph came on board and those that stole were
called to account. To the PDP chieftains, members, enablers, beneficiaries
and rally space fillers, it was sudden because they have invested so
heavily on their power to manipulate the system to repeatedly renew PDP’s
artificial strength and commission. They never ever fathomed that March
28, 2015 would happen and that they would be shoved off the way they were
shoved off on that historic day. What better way to show the PDP’s
reliance on its false invincibility than the lousy boast of one of its
beneficiaries cum supporters, Frederick Fasheun before the March 28
election to the fact that they forced a shift in the election date from
February 14 to March 28 when they realized that if the election were held
on February 14, as earlier scheduled, Jonathan and PDP would have lost? He
made this boast, assured that having successfully procured a shift in
date, the PDP was sure to have its way in the March polls by all means
possible but he was proved wrong.
But to the long suffering Nigerians, bent over under the yokes of
corruption and bad governance, the ouster of PDP was neither sudden nor a
surprising development. It was deliberate and it was executed seamlessly
by a distraught, angry, abused but determined citizenry neighing for
redemption from a corrupt and heartless leadership. Nigerians, in voting
out PDP knew and trusted the man they chose to restore the country from
the corruption-wracked PDP era. They intentionally vested him with a
deliberate mandate to kill the seemingly invincible cancer of corruption
and restore the lost hope of a nation ripped asunder by the virus. So when
the new Sheriff came on board on May 29, 2015, he had his mission well
cut out by the expectant Nigerian citizenry and that is exactly what he is
doing today by going after the same people that controlled Nigeria’s
enormous resources for the past 16 years especially in the past six years
that preceded his coming when Nigeria recorded its highest ever revenue
and witnessed a grand decay that writes the prologue fir what Nigeria is
undergoing today.
So I wonder how honestly PDP members and beneficiaries are desperately
looking for company in its period of paying back for its sins when they
stole alone, looted alone and enjoyed the vile fruits of corruption all by
itself. They stoke the yam alone and ate them alone so why are they
heckling fir company at payback time? In the extant Dasukigate scandal,
one would have expected the accused PDP chieftains who are shamefully
reciting sordid and atrocious details of how they callously looted and
shared among themselves money meant to fight insurgency, to name their
collaborators in APC who partook in the macabre debauchery with them. One
would have expected them to name members of APC, including decampees from
PDP to APC who shared the loot with them and let’s see whether the present
anti corruption fight will spare them. The same is applicable to impending
more elaborate probes that will certainly be unleashed on such extensive
sectors as oil, customs, shipping, CBN, etc which formed the illicit cash
pots that flowered the bizarre corruption we witnessed in this country for
the past 16 years.
I think PDP and what remains of its supporters should work hard to name
APC members who partook in their senseless plundering and challenge
President Buhari’s anti corruption war on them instead of engaging on
silly, disoriented, confused, hare brained tactics of asking why any of
PDP’s nemesis are not being arrested for God-knows-what. I think PDP
members will score more resounding points nailing any of the APC
chieftains or any of President Buhari’s men by raising an unputdiownable,
leak-proof evidence that such persons partook in the plunder under review,
which was an exclusive PDP larceny instead of raising baleful and often
senseless blackmail that holds no hook to logic. PDP can score a great
point and most certainly provoke action not by engaging in repetitive
abusive hoaxes and listless name calling but by using the enormous
capacity it had acquired for 16 years to advance credible evidences of
corruption against any member of the APC and we shall see why such a
person will not be taken in. So far, the best PDP has done has been
cacophonic noises about selective application and of course infantile mud
splattering that will never help its bad case.
Fact remains that it is silly to talk of liberalizing indictment foe
corruption just for its own sake or merely to score even. There is no such
thing. You cannot begin to search for missing chickens amongst a herd of
sheep when a den of hyenas is located nearby. Corruption is not a random
act but a deliberate act committed by identifiable people on identifiable
resources. Here, we are talking of a group of people that controlled the
enormous wealth of a nation for 16 years now wanting the demand fir them
to pay for their sins liberalized to even the victims of their
licentiousness. It does not happen that way as it would be foolish to
expect that any probe of the period between May 2015 and May 2019 be
focused on PDP members instead of APC members. It cannot happen when we
cone to that bend.
Peter Claver Oparah
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com