PDP members say that only its rank has been targeted in the present war on<\/p>\n
corruption. This may be correct to the extent that only ODP members
\npartook in the egregious crime of stealing tens of trillions of the
\nnation’s resources in the past sixteen years. It may be true to the extent
\nthat the PDP has been solely in charge of the annual federal budgets and
\nthe much more un-budgeted resources of the country for the past sixteen
\nyears and the pilfering of this huge amount. PDP members are huffing and
\npuffing to stress that they are being selectively prosecuted for the
\ncrimes they exclusively committed and you wonder what is wrong in that.
\nYou need to see the torture on their faces as they try to express this
\nreality. They are wondering, often aloud, why members of APC are not being
\narrested as their members in the present umbrage against the deadly virus
\nof corruption, especially in the present shameful arms purchase scandal
\npopularly known as Dasukigate. You cannot believe PDP as they marshal
\ntheir points. What one cannot readily decipher is whether they are serious
\nin their charges or whether they want whoever hears or reads them to take
\nthem serious.<\/p>\n
Sho? Do you generalize corruption so as to strike even? Do you purposely
\nbalance up a war of such nature, just because you want to be seen as
\nobjective and because you want to appease all parties? Do you distribute a
\nwar on graft for its own sake? Do you look fir those that ate yam far from
\nthe yam eaters themselves? I am confused understanding the tortured logic
\nof PDP members. They are not convincing, in the least, when they make
\ntheir arguments about the lopsided ness of the present war on corruption.
\nAre they saying we should look for lost corn grains elsewhere than where
\nhens domicile?
\nCome to think of it, for 16 whole years the country witnessed an
\nunprecedented oil boom with rich receipts from oil, the sole mainstay of
\nthe country’s fragile economy. For those 16 years, the heavens
\nprovidentially rained manna from heaven from the unprecedented rise in oil
\nprices and the nation, nay PDP chieftains, members and supporters, reaped
\nbountifully from this natural endowments. For these 16 years, PDP was
\nfortunate to control this providential endowment and the nation was
\nunfortunate for this control. For 16 years, oil cash flowed and for 16
\nyears, corruption, that killer virus that has held the country down,
\nthrived and grew in geometrical proportion. For those 16 paradoxical
\nyears, the nation bled and decayed because the PDP and its governments
\ndeified and worshiped corruption and elevated it to the pantheon of a
\nsacred god. They protected its unassailable suzerainty such that the last
\nPDP president, Goidluck Jonathan, whose Byzantine reign marked the apogee
\nof the reign of corruption in this country, strived so hard to defend its
\nimmunity. He told an awe-struck but helpless nation that stealing is not
\ncorruption in a manner that confers sacredness to corruption.<\/p>\n
For the 16 years of PDP’s reign, there was no challenger to its
\nsovereignty and also its control of Nigeria’s resources. It saw the oil
\nwindfall as manna from heaven with which God has blessed its members,
\nsupporters, courtiers and fawners. It dispensed patronage and favor to
\nwhoever flattered its corrupt whims. To survive, Nigerians learnt to fly
\nthe bandana of PDP as that became the easiest way to access illicit
\npatronage. While this was going on, attention was paid to critical state
\nsectors and infrastructures only in breach. The geese that lay the golden
\negg were allowed to die from hunger. A long dry season where we needed to
\nsave fir the certain rainy season, was wasted away in unprecedented
\nhedonism and corrupt consumerism, like the unrepentant Biblical sluggard.
\nIt was so noxious that virtually all critical sectors of ether economy
\nbroke down irreparably. With easy money, the PDP governments, especially
\nthe last one, gave to the suffering populace, flowery fictitious report of
\nunprecedented economic growth while ur presided over a horrendous looting
\nif the stare treasury.<\/p>\n
That was the situation till change happened in March 2015 and the old,
\nrusty corrupt order tumbled and crashed and a new order unfurled. A
\nPharaoh that knows no Joseph came on board and those that stole were
\ncalled to account. To the PDP chieftains, members, enablers, beneficiaries
\nand rally space fillers, it was sudden because they have invested so
\nheavily on their power to manipulate the system to repeatedly renew PDP’s
\nartificial strength and commission. They never ever fathomed that March
\n28, 2015 would happen and that they would be shoved off the way they were
\nshoved off on that historic day. What better way to show the PDP’s
\nreliance on its false invincibility than the lousy boast of one of its
\nbeneficiaries cum supporters, Frederick Fasheun before the March 28
\nelection to the fact that they forced a shift in the election date from
\nFebruary 14 to March 28 when they realized that if the election were held
\non February 14, as earlier scheduled, Jonathan and PDP would have lost? He
\nmade this boast, assured that having successfully procured a shift in
\ndate, the PDP was sure to have its way in the March polls by all means
\npossible but he was proved wrong.<\/p>\n
But to the long suffering Nigerians, bent over under the yokes of
\ncorruption and bad governance, the ouster of PDP was neither sudden nor a
\nsurprising development. It was deliberate and it was executed seamlessly
\nby a distraught, angry, abused but determined citizenry neighing for
\nredemption from a corrupt and heartless leadership. Nigerians, in voting
\nout PDP knew and trusted the man they chose to restore the country from
\nthe corruption-wracked PDP era. They intentionally vested him with a
\ndeliberate mandate to kill the seemingly invincible cancer of corruption
\nand restore the lost hope of a nation ripped asunder by the virus. So when
\nthe new Sheriff came on board on May 29, 2015, he had his mission well
\ncut out by the expectant Nigerian citizenry and that is exactly what he is
\ndoing today by going after the same people that controlled Nigeria’s
\nenormous resources for the past 16 years especially in the past six years
\nthat preceded his coming when Nigeria recorded its highest ever revenue
\nand witnessed a grand decay that writes the prologue fir what Nigeria is
\nundergoing today.<\/p>\n
So I wonder how honestly PDP members and beneficiaries are desperately
\nlooking for company in its period of paying back for its sins when they
\nstole alone, looted alone and enjoyed the vile fruits of corruption all by
\nitself. They stoke the yam alone and ate them alone so why are they
\nheckling fir company at payback time? In the extant Dasukigate scandal,
\none would have expected the accused PDP chieftains who are shamefully
\nreciting sordid and atrocious details of how they callously looted and
\nshared among themselves money meant to fight insurgency, to name their
\ncollaborators in APC who partook in the macabre debauchery with them. One
\nwould have expected them to name members of APC, including decampees from
\nPDP to APC who shared the loot with them and let’s see whether the present
\nanti corruption fight will spare them. The same is applicable to impending
\nmore elaborate probes that will certainly be unleashed on such extensive
\nsectors as oil, customs, shipping, CBN, etc which formed the illicit cash
\npots that flowered the bizarre corruption we witnessed in this country for
\nthe past 16 years.<\/p>\n
I think PDP and what remains of its supporters should work hard to name
\nAPC members who partook in their senseless plundering and challenge
\nPresident Buhari’s anti corruption war on them instead of engaging on
\nsilly, disoriented, confused, hare brained tactics of asking why any of
\nPDP’s nemesis are not being arrested for God-knows-what. I think PDP
\nmembers will score more resounding points nailing any of the APC
\nchieftains or any of President Buhari’s men by raising an unputdiownable,
\nleak-proof evidence that such persons partook in the plunder under review,
\nwhich was an exclusive PDP larceny instead of raising baleful and often
\nsenseless blackmail that holds no hook to logic. PDP can score a great
\npoint and most certainly provoke action not by engaging in repetitive
\nabusive hoaxes and listless name calling but by using the enormous
\ncapacity it had acquired for 16 years to advance credible evidences of
\ncorruption against any member of the APC and we shall see why such a
\nperson will not be taken in. So far, the best PDP has done has been
\ncacophonic noises about selective application and of course infantile mud
\nsplattering that will never help its bad case.<\/p>\n
Fact remains that it is silly to talk of liberalizing indictment foe
\ncorruption just for its own sake or merely to score even. There is no such
\nthing. You cannot begin to search for missing chickens amongst a herd of
\nsheep when a den of hyenas is located nearby. Corruption is not a random
\nact but a deliberate act committed by identifiable people on identifiable
\nresources. Here, we are talking of a group of people that controlled the
\nenormous wealth of a nation for 16 years now wanting the demand fir them
\nto pay for their sins liberalized to even the victims of their
\nlicentiousness. It does not happen that way as it would be foolish to
\nexpect that any probe of the period between May 2015 and May 2019 be
\nfocused on PDP members instead of APC members. It cannot happen when we
\ncone to that bend.<\/p>\n
Peter Claver Oparah<\/p>\n
Ikeja, Lagos.
\nE-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-opinions"],"yoast_head":"\n