Any day Ike Ekweremadu, the deputy senate president wakes up and didn’t
abuse or blamePresident Buhari for one reason or the other is certainly an
odd day. Heliterarily sleeps and wakes on the steroid of antagonizing
Buhari. He eats insultsand abuses on Buhari as a favorite staple.
Ekweremadu comes from the South Eastwhere abusing Buhari is gold and he
strives so hard not to miss that gold!Ekweremadu as deputy senate
president was a throw-up of Bukola Saraki’s coupthat saw him trade off his
party’s due right to get his own senate presidency.So Ekweremadu is a
usurper that feels he needs extra efforts to keep himselfelectorally
viable and what better effort than abusing Buhari which has becomea very
viable venture for displaced South East PDP politicians since 2015
whenBuhari got their god and personal savior out of power?
ButEkweremadu was deputy senate president for eight years before his
cahoots withSaraki got him another deputy senate presidency. You might say
he needs toabuse Buhari to stay beholden to his party whose investment in
procuring the deputysenate presidency from Saraki and his betraying
loyalists looks like a badinvestment considering Buhari’s scorched earth
approach to the public treasurywhere Ekweremadu’s almost twelve years’
reign as deputy senate president foundrewarding traction.
ToEkweremadu, Buhari is the beginning and end of all Nigerian problems
andrecently, he was so peeved that he baited military coup if only it will
stopBuhari. Ekweremadu lives on the life sport of abusing and accusing
Buhari andin this, he is home with a coterie of his fellow Igbo PDP
chieftains andmembers who see Buhari as the most potent evil that must be
done away with. Youcan’t blame them. At the twilight years of PDP in
power, Igbo became its firstsons. Added to this fanatical attachment is
the presidency of Jonathan, whichthe Igbo claimed with resounding glee as
their own. In the run up to the lastgeneral election, Igbo threatened,
vowed and swore that nothing and nobodyshould dare vote out PDP and
Jonathan. They courted and made viable enemy ofother Nigerians with their
rabid pro-Jonathan obduracy.
It was suchrude awakening that on the morning of March 29, 2015, Igbo woke
up to discoverthat both Jonathan and PDP had been swept away in a
revolution that they hardlyprepared for. Who led such revolution? Buhari.
So you can understand why manyof them, especially PDP beneficiaries have
vowed to live their entire liveswith hatred for Buhari running terminally
in their veins. It was a rude shockto Ekweremadu and his Igbo PDP
confederates. It was a terrible morning and theafter-effects of that
dreary morning is what is playing out today. Additionalto this sad reality
is Buhari’s tight-fisted approach to the treasury fromwhere the life blood
of these Igbo PDP mandarins flows. They are not finding itfunny at all.
Curiously, in the bloom of PDP’s unseemly corrupt dominance ofthe
country’s politics, Igbo were perpetual hewers of wood and fetchers
ofwater with nothing to show for their drudgery except the gargantuan
loots ofthe Ekweremadus and other top party leaders.
Yes, PDPleft nothing, absolutely nothing as achievement for its faithful
fanatical Igbosupport in the whole 16 years of its leadership. You are
bound to run into aditch and an unfathomable crisis if you ask those who
fanatically carry therump of PDP in Igboland today to tell you just one
thing PDP did for Igbo in 16years. Particularly vexatious is that the
Jonathan regime whose defeat isfiring an unhealable sore in Igboland today
does not even have a five kilometerfixed road in Igboland as its democracy
dividend to Ndigbo. It was so horriblethat the late Alex Ekwueme, former
Vice President and leading PDP light bemoanedbitterly in probably one of
his last interviews. Ekwueme told Vanguard aboutJonathan’s attitude to the
South East, “So, he had every reason to befair-minded and equitable in his
distribution of resources. But we could not gofrom Enugu to Onitsha on a
federal road, you couldn’t go from Enugu toPort-Harcourt on a federal
road, we couldn’t go from Aba to Okigwe on a federalroad; you couldn’t go
from Owerri on the federal road. None of the federalroads in the
south-east was motorable.”
Again,Ekweremadu has particularly come under the klieg light of the raging
Buharianti-corruption war. The regime’s anti-corruption agency had
recently swoopedon Ekweremadu to uncover a hidden tranche of
corruptly-acquired 23 propertieshidden across the world. This itself
followed a petition against Ekweremaduwritten by a former Enugu Chief
Judge, Prof. Umezuruike who wondered howEkweremadu who was a struggling
charge and bail lawyer in Enugu State prior to1999 suddenly came upon his
massive wealth. It was in the thick of this inquestthat Ekweremadu made
his infamous coup-baiting gamble.
SoEkweremadu has every reason, like any other corrupt politician, to hate
Buhariand make his demonization his primary business as he has been doing
in the pastthree years. But then, how does this maniacal attitude helped
Ekweremadu’sconstituents and the Igbo who are prime pawns of his
uncensored bile againstBuhari? How had his never-ending acerbic
vituperations against Buhari broughtthe democracy dividends to his people
who have watched in strange awe as hispersonal fortune skyrocket in the
past 15 years he has been deputy senatepresident while theirs nosedived in
the same period? What real fortune has hiscompulsive ill manners against
Buhari helped him to deliver to his peole forwhich he solicited their
votes and got elected into the senate? How has thedwindling Igbo fate been
helped by Ekweremadu’s petulant insouciance to Buharithese past three
years?
I am sureEkweremadu and his ilk are not interested in providing answers to
the above. Heand his cohorts know for sure that they don’t have any
reasonable answer fortheir bile-seeped tirades against Buhari. Good for
them, they know that mostIgbo do not need such answer from them. They know
the porousness of Igbo politicalthoughts can allow them walk away with
blue murder so long as they can unleasha generous dose of insults on
Buhari. They believe they will remain politicallyrelevant in the Igbo
enclave if the only thing they do is to insult and blameBuhari for
everything under the sun. it is such tragic but true! That is howlow Igbo
politics has sunk!
Listening toEkweremadu’s rants against Buhari, you will think that he and
his ilk that are sunkin this paranoid state brought heaven on earth to
Igboland when they wereholding sway, making merry and feeling good before
Buhari came to spoil theirorgy. Strangely, whatever good Ekweremadu and
his cohorts did was to do wellfor themselves in terms of illicit
self-aggrandizement. Their fat bankaccounts, borderless estates, choice
properties and thick cash are all the Igbogot for the 16 years they
wielded untamed power. The Igbo masses, on the otherhand, fared so badly
when Ekweremadu and co were at the zenith of their reign.While the
Ekweremadus and their compatriots that are stuck in this maniacalfrenzy
became stupendously rich for the period their PDP was holding the
longerend of the stick, the Igbo walked away empty handed.
Ekweremadu was getting richer when prominentroads in the South East
practically went extinct. He pretended he never knew,saw or noticed this
debris. By then, his present seemingly pro-Igbo mindset wason recess. The
Enugu-Onitsha Expressway, the Enugu- Port Harcourt Expressway,the
Owerri-Port Harcourt Road, all practically went extinct as Igbo,
whomEkweremadu wants to con with his cheeky vitriols and uncooked, acerbic
outburstsagainst Buhari, were practically locked down. That was what
Ekwueme bitterlycaptured in the interview excerpted above. The Second
Niger Bridge became aregular pawn to Ekweremadu and his PDP as the promise
to build that bridgebecame a ready aphrodisiac Ekweremadu and his PDP
waved to Ndigbo for the 16years they were in power. It is curious that the
same Buhari Ekweremadu targetsfor unending assault is today, and in just
three years, fixing theaforementioned roads as well as many other federal
roads in all nooks andcrannies of Igboland. What more, the Second Niger
Bridge has migrated frombeing an election-winning mantra to a reality as
the bridge is beingconstructed by the same Buhari Ekweremadu picks up
every morning for uncouthabuse.
When Ekweremadu was acquiring all manners ofwealth for himself as Deputy
Senate President, Biafran soldiers were dying intheir numbers and he never
saw any need to make a case for them. Today, Buhari whohas become the
ready butt of Ekweremadu’s diarrhead mouth paid off the pensionof former
Biafran soldiers. At the heightof Ekweremadu’s suzerainty when the
commonwealth was a free trough for allmanners of looters, Ekweremadu made
good for himself and over 27 statesincluding the five Igbo states went
bankrupt and couldn’t pay the salaries oftens of thousands of Igbo workers
for several months. This was at a time oilwas going as high as between $86
to $140 a barrel and Nigeria was exportingover 2.5 million barrels each
day. The Buhari he finds so happy abusing savedthese workers from
perdition as well as the millions of their dependents bybailing out these
states and stabilizing them even when oil went as low as $27per barrel and
Nigeria was exporting a meagre 800,000 barrels per day!
Perhaps theonly democracy dividend Ekweremadu and his PDP did in Igboland
was remaining adecrepit Enugu airport as ‘international’ airport even with
no upgrading of thedecayed facilities in the airport. Is it surprising
that Ekweremadu and hisIgbo senators who pick Buhari as fair game every
day, were there when theirsenate drastically made nonsense of Buhari’s
2018 budgetary provision toupgrade the dead facilities of the airport?
Caught pants down by the angryreactions that followed this action,
Ekweremadu and his fellow anti-Buhari Igbosenators feigned ignorance of
the fact that the budget for Enugu airport wasreduced o near nothing by
their senate. Ditto for the budget for theconstruction of the Second Niger
Bridge!
ButEkweremadu knows that he and his mischievous cohorts have a rich
harvest byploughing the rich Igbo anti-Buhari sentiment as a panacea for
their own failurefor the past twenty years. They know that the Igbo space
is filled to the brimwith people that ask no question from those that
claim to lead them, a peoplethat lionize the rouges that steal from their
barn and are mobilized easily towage sentimental wars that short-change
them in the long run. So to remainrelevant, Ekweremadu and his fellow
slave-drivers are hooked permanently onabusing and insulting Buhari. This
creepy fellow sees a perpetual politicalrelevance in waking daily and
making insouciant comments about Buhari. Theyknow who they are dealing
with and are assured of the perpetual value for suchperfidy. They are
hooked with a people that easily confers political relevanceon those of
their people that grew rich from the common purse; a race thatcares less
about life-changing projects but more about lionizing the mostegregious
thieves that grow fat from looting the common patrimony.
In the eightyears he was deputy senate president under PDP, Ekweremadu has
nothing to showtan his massive wealth. In the three years he had been
dressed in the stolenrobe of deputy senate president in an APC government,
Ekweremadu has hisunceasing abuse on Buhari and his sudden pro-Igbo rants
as enough democracydividend for him to continue being in the senate. He is
not missing thatopportunity so he must rant, he must pontificate as a
rabid Igbo irredentistand with these, he is assured of the votes of his
people. That is enoughdemocracy dividend for them. Buhari can take the
blame for every other thing.
Since 2015,ranting against Buhari has become quite a rewarding venture in
Igboland andthis is what the Ekweremadus who have absolutely nothing to
show for their longstay in the inner coves of power to their befuddled
fellow Igbo play with glee.No one is bound to ask him how he grew so rich
while his constituents andindeed Igbo have nothing to show for his stay in
power. No one demands anyaccount from him. He is above board so long as he
keeps abusing Buhari. No onequeries what he brought for Igbo as deputy
senate president for 15 years. Abusingand hauling invectives on Buhari is
enough democracy dividend for Ndigbo inpost-2015 Nigeria. It is sure
vote-catching gimmick and the rump of the waningPDP in Igboland are
lapping so hugely on this. He believes that he is assuredof perpetual
electoral value amongst Igbo so long as he hangs unto theanti-Buhari
ranting aphrodisiac. It is a durable life wire as he and his ilknavigate
Igbo through their blindest political alley since creation.
Peter ClaverOparah.
Ikeja,Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com