I am writing this out of a bust of an adrenaline rush after reading about a press release sent by the Baraje group to my inbox about the alleged missing $5 billion from the crude oil account. I am not a fan of PDP and I think that no decent person like me would want to join PDP, or any political party in Nigeria given their dirty politicing. PDP is a cult and not a political party to say the least. So, before anyone mistakes me for what I am not, there you have it. PDP had been the ruling party for well over a decade now and nothing had changed since then. From IBB’s clone OBJ to Yaradua, and now Jonathan. It’s very obvious that people are suffering from hunger and thirst in a Country that could compete with the west in term of resources: Nigeria, as I know it is not even an African trade mart.
Atiku and Baraje were all members of PDP until most recently that they decided to form a splinter PDP, calling their splinter the real or nPDP. One thing is sure; in Nigeria and Africa, no opposition has won and can’t win an election. This is one lesson that the Baraje led nPDP ought to know by now. Election in Nigeria and all of Africa is not based on who comes out to casts the votes, if this were the case Obasanjo would not have won an election as the President of Nigeria. It was alleged that he did not win his own ward. Suffice me to say that the real reason the nPDP is or was not in accord with the Jonathan and Turkur’s faction has nothing to do with the way Jonathan is governing.
Atiku was the Vice president during the Obasanjo’s administration and we all know what happened between Atiku and Jefferson, a US congress man representing Louisiana. According to the allegation, Jefferson was to bribe Atiku for a business transaction that Jefferson was bidding for in Nigeria. Atiku had agreed to the bribe according to the news reports. Atiku may claim that he was vindicated in that case, but where there is smoke there is a fire. By the way Atiku has a private University and how did he get the money to build that?
Obasanjo is also a mastermind behind the whole nPDP faction, and the reason? To stop Jonathan from pulling off the feat that he was not able to. Obasanjo was President for eight years and for that first half of his Presidency he did not appoint anyone for the post of the Petroleum ministry under the guise that there was no qualified person for that position. So, Obasanjo was President cum petroleum minister for four of the eight years of his Presidency. When he attempted to instigate a third term bid he was denied. This is why he is important in this piece; Obasanjo claimed that he was making $250,000.00 a month from his farm. Does anyone believe that? Well if anyone believes that then that person would probably believe anything. Before he became the President of Nigeria he was farming and I am sure that I have not seen any product from his farm living in Port Harcourt. My question is: how he made his money if not from oil from Ogoni and the Niger Delta as the oil minister cum President?
While Baraye and his nPDP were part of the same boat before they broke up, he had not called for Obasanjo’s or Atiku’s head to roll for their illicit dealing in that country. It’s very clear that Baraje and his nPDP had picked and chosen which battles to fight and which ones not to fight. If the nPDP is claiming that the reason they are in the trenches now is to liberate the poor and to deliver the ailing democracy out the holes, why has he not called on these men to be probed and asked about their wealth?
Marshall Harry died in cold blood and the fingerprints of PDP are all over at the crime scene according to Marshall Harry’s son and Baraje and his nPDP had not called for probe into who killed him and to be brought to justice for this innocent person. Under PDP a lot of people have lost their lives, almost what we witnessed in the heydays of the Abacha government. Marshall Harry was not the only person who had been murdered in such a scenario. Bola Ige was a victim of a power play in Nigeria and even OBJ inner circles had indicted him as the culprit in his death.
While Ken Saro Wiwa was killed during the reign of OBJ and or PDP, everyone knows that Ken Saro Wiwa was killed asking for a fair shake for his people. Under Baraye’s nPDP before he broke out, he witnessed the former Governor of Bayelsa States get a state pardon for crime that he committed and Ken Saro Wiwa is still retailed as a criminal. Where was he at this time? It’s only in Nigeria that someone who asks for water would be killed on trumped up charges.
We know that politics in Nigeria is all about one thing and one thing only, and that is oil. The reason the North wants to stage a comeback to power is to consolidate on their gains from the days of military rules. The North has the most oil wells in the country and any idea of relinquishing power gets them all shook up.
More than two years after the UNEP reports came out and vindicated the Ogoni People and Ken Saro Wiwa, the federal Government had never put into consideration the plight of the Ogoni people. The UNEP reports said that life in Ogoni is deplorable and gave a laundry list of what to do to remediate the environment but the Government of Jonathan sat on the recommendation and instead rolled out a sham in the name of HYBRED. Jonathan is a son of the Delta and one would have hoped that he would treat the reports with urgency that it deserves. People can’t drink water because of high level of benzene, more than required by the UN. Ogoni lands are hydrophobic and planting is practically impossible in some places.
In 1988, the Italian government dumped toxic waste in KOKO in Delta state and the outcry was loud and the Italian government was forced to remove the toxic from Koko. The Government, as a result formed the Federal Environment protection Agency (FEPA). The Nigerian Government did not stop there: the Government for the first time organized an international workshop on environment, and also established the Harmful Waste (Special Criminal Provision) Acts to specifically deal with any illegal dumping of any toxic waste in Nigeria. The question now is: what has stopped the same Nigerian Government from taking action against Shell? Is it political ineptitude or profit margin? I had been at Koko and the affected place is not even up to 2000 square foot, though the effect is visibly evidenced by the stunted growth of weeds but not as hydrophobic as the case in Ogoni. When some people are dying and the government can’t come to their aid then there is something fundamentally wrong with that, despite the UNEP reports that called for immediate attention to the environmental hazards caused by Shell’s oil exploration for well over decades. When business and profits trump over peoples’ wellbeing there is something fundamentally wrong and the Ogoni would not stop until the Ogoni bills of rights are attended to and compensated. Until then the injunction against Shell stands.
Toate Ganago is a Pastor from Ogoni, he can be contacted on Facebook, jos777@rocketmail and on Twitter: TGanago@Twitter