Recently, Prince Tony Momoh cane out boldly to state that he has offered
\nhimself for stoning should President Muhammadu Buhari not perform at the
\nend of his present four-years tenure. That may seem a dangerous gamble:
\nstaking with one’s own life over an issue that presently draws
\ncontestation between the supporters of the President and those who are yet
\nto live down the fact that President Buhari comprehensively defeated their
\npolitical tendency last year. It may seem that Prince\u00a0 Momoh threw an
\naudacious challenge, wagering with his life on such issue as presidential
\nperformance in a country that is bristling to the seams with an array of
\nformer presidents and governments that disappointed and fluffed the
\npeople’s expectations since independence.<\/p>\n
But looked from another angle, Prince\u00a0 Momoh is only demonstrating the
\nfactuality of the position of those that promoted the ascension of this
\npresident and had thus believed in his capacity to overwhelm where others
\nhave failed. Prince\u00a0 Momoh was being candid. Tony Momoh is not one
\nunknown, anonymous quantity or a moral cretin hiding behind very nebulous
\ninterests to pursue base political interests as most of the hideous
\nfellows now wailing heedlessly over everything are. He is a former
\nMinister, an erudite lawyer and veteran journalist. He showed he is a man
\nwith worth who believes in what he says. He is not a chance-taker like the
\nhordes of inconsolable Wailers that had been naive to write the final
\nreport card of a candidate on a four year-course just at the beginning or
\nat the middle of his first year.<\/p>\n
One would have expected those that have been straining themselves and
\ncrying themselves hoarse since Buhari came to cleanse the sordid Augean
\nstable last May, to take Prince Momoh’s bet and wager with their own lives
\nand offer themselves to be stoned should Buhari perform at the end of his
\nfour years mandate. That is an even way of walking their vow that the
\npresident will fail than\u00a0 the silly prank of mounting a coarse and
\ndisoriented wailing business and ranting on just everything under planet
\nearth since Buhari came to power. One would have expected them to be men
\nenough to stake their lives on what they have been noisily heckling us to
\nbuy. I had expected the wailing Wailers and their hideous patrons to come
\nout from their closets and take up Prince Momoh’s bet and put their lives
\non the line if they really believe that Buhari has failed even before he
\nstarted cleaning a sixteen years’ gargantuan rot they deliberately did on
\nthis country.<\/p>\n
If they so believe their cacophonic and often unreasonable clattering on
\njust anything under the sun since Buhari came, let them stake with their
\nlives on the issue of Buhari’s performance and at the end of the four
\nyears, let Nigerians decide whom to stone based on their opinions of
\nBuhari’s performance. If they are so sure of their disjointed position
\nthat a man that met a treasury they raided to the bones, an economy that
\nwas in tatters, a state of rabid corruption, a chaotic governance that
\nrather exacerbated the\u00a0 crisis of statehood, an acute unemployment
\nsituation, a country almost divided into two by uncurbed sectarian siege,
\na horrible state of insecurity, an infrastructural base that was decrepit
\nand who has started by plugging every rat hole and gathering what was left
\nof their sordid feast, redirecting the moral tempo of governance and is
\nabout to unleash a maximum rehabilitation of the nation’s run-down
\ninfrastructure despite the very harsh economic conditions he met, will
\nfail after four years, they should not be afraid to offer themselves for
\nstoning if their mischievous doomsday prophesies fail, as Prince\u00a0 Tony
\nMomoh has done on the other side of the aisle.<\/p>\n
So can the wailing Wailers still their chaotic and silly cry and be man
\nenough to bet with their lives on what they believe and have trenchantly
\nlaboured to let other Nigerians buy; to wit, that President Buhari will
\nnot perform as Nigeria’s president? Can those that have become permanently
\nheart-broken that the regime of filth and pervasive stealing was ended
\nwith Buhari’s present scorched-earth umbrage against roaches and
\nplunderers, quit their unreasonable wailings and wager with their lives,
\nas Tony Momoh has done and countless others who supported and still
\nsupport the present Buhari regime are ready to do? Can those that are
\nengaged in the naive pastime of twisting everything, fabricating silly
\nlies, forging infantile propaganda, cooking and inventing innuendoes,
\nmisinformation and fables to promote their nauseous political interests
\nquit such idioces and take up the bet from Prince Momoh if they are so
\nsure of what they are venally trumping at every street corner today? Can
\nthe scare-mongers who are indulged in building a fearful scenario of mass
\nextermination in the present effort to cage corruption, offer themselves
\nfor stoning if their dreadful apocalyptic fore-warnings fail to happen and
\nBuhari succeeds in pulling a crestfallen nation up on its legs after his
\nfour years at the helms? What can prevent those who are today swearing and
\nprattling that Buhari will fail from staking their lives for such
\n‘accurate’ reading of our president?<\/p>\n
We are not deceived. We elected President Buhari to end the venal reign of
\nvampires that ensured that a rich country like ours was hobbled in 16
\nbetter-forgotten years of unbridled freeloading where nothing but raw
\nstealing and outright prebendalism reigned. He is doing that and issuing
\nforth very high hopes for the rebirth of a country where corruption has so
\nmutilated the ways of lives of overwhelmed citizens. He is plugging all
\nthe ancient fonts of looting, securing the yam barns and calling the
\nrodents, the shameless yam eaters and lascivious devourers that ate away
\nour yesterday and today to account. Because corruption has so perverted
\nthe psyche of the people and its sordid value chain grown so deeply
\nengraved in the people’s lives and their twisted ways of doing things,
\nthose that deliberately cultivated this negative value chain are now
\nmounting a\u00a0 high-octane scare-mongering that the anti corruption antidotes
\nare killing the people and that Buhari will fail in the task of rescuing
\nan abused nation from their atrocious acts. Those that ran the country
\ndown and who, by the way, swore that Buhari will never be president, are
\nnow changing tactics, sponsoring all manners of desperate lies and
\npropaganda to distract and stop Buhari’s efforts to secure the country and
\nher treasuries for all Nigerians. They are the same characters now staging
\na naked dance on how Buhari will fail, or has already failed, in their
\nqueer yardstick of governance which is all about plundering and purloining
\nfor their ilk while Nigerians die from preventable want. That is exactly
\nwhat is going on today and the idea is to at worst, detract and distract
\nthe present government from tackling the single most important affliction
\nthat has hobbled Nigeria and has grown their filthy ilk. That silly
\nwailing clap trap was what Prince Momoh was responding to when he wagered
\nwith his life. It is naturally expected that the Wailers would have walked
\ntheir own talk by equally wagering with their own lives but so far, they
\nhave not done so.<\/p>\n
Among the vendors of this filthy scare-mongering are dubious fugitives
\nrunning, with their loots, from the reach of the present anti-corruption
\nklieglight. Those that have rushed to hide their stolen loot in septic
\ntanks, pit latrines and manholes have relocated to the market square,
\nrecruiting the impressionable poor victims of their maniacal corrupt acts
\nto stage a mock show of being killed by hunger because they fear being
\ncalled to return what they stole.\u00a0 They are mounting a high-pitched battle
\non the props of bread and butter. They just initiate the battle cry and
\ntheir beneficiaries and enablers who constitute the full pro-corruption
\nchoir takes over and today, we are having a deliberate and nebulous
\ncacophony of voices trained against the present effort of the Buhari
\nregime against the vermin of corruption. Yea, having failed to sway the
\nregime with their jaded efforts to blackmail the fight against corruption,
\nthey have resorted, like satan, to a bread and butter war in their
\ndesperate battle to recruit the victims of their carnivorous acts as
\nmisguided fronts men in their war to stop the anti-corruption inquest.
\nThese are the stomach infrastructure politicians who believe that the
\ncommonwealth is there for stealing and having stolen enough, they merely
\nwaylay hapless citizens on their way to voting centers with cups of rice,
\npieces of cheap Ankara and few Naira notes and have their ways to more
\nlooting through added tenures. What they are yet to fathom is how they
\nstill failed woefully during the last election when they upped the price
\nfor their victims to raw dollars and yet failed the way they did in the
\n2015 general election. This topic is for another day.<\/p>\n
They say we are all dying of hunger because Buhari felt we must stop
\ncorruption. They say that because they are called to return what they
\nstole, Nigerians are about to be wiped out by hunger and want. Because
\nthe anti-corruption beams are fast closing in on them, they paint a
\npicture of Armageddon that befalls all Nigerians should Buhari insist on
\nbringing roaches like them to account. They failed to tell their victims
\nthat they wrote our death sentence when they emptied the country’s
\ntreasury and ensured that our coffers were left bare when we were having
\nan oil boom just the other day. They failed to tell Nigerians that they
\ndeliberately scripted all the tales of woes they are trading with today
\nwhen they wickedly stole the food for the common man at a time they were
\nsupposed to save for the rainy day. They failed to tell those they are
\nenticing today through a senseless bread and butter campaign that they
\ncallously wasted their future when they were robbing the Nigerian nation
\nsilly as their years of debauchery\u00a0 lasted.<\/p>\n
Yes, to get the soul of their famished victims, and those of their
\nbeneficiaries who have resorted to relentless wailing since the present
\nregime happened, and those whose minds have been deliberately defaced by
\nthe type of corruption that reigned here before Buhari cane, it must be
\nturned to a bread war; after all a hungry man only hears the language of
\nbread. That was why the devil employed bread to tempt Jesus Christ after
\nfasting for forty days.\u00a0 Like the devil, they are tempting Nigerians with
\nbread. Like the rebellious Israelites did to Moses, they are trying to
\nturn Nigerians to rebel against Buhari for fighting corruption by asking
\nhim to rain manna from heaven. They believe Nigerians are the rabble, the
\nIsraeli rabble on its way out of Egypt who can easily be swayed back to
\ndehumanizing slavery in Egypt with the politics of bread. They feel
\nNigerians are the soulless\u00a0 Roman mob who don’t ask questions but who can
\neasily be swayed by the dubious antics of their persecutors at the mention
\nand whiff of bread!<\/p>\n
Now,\u00a0 they feel they have done enough to turn the Nigerian masses who
\nfreely and without let, asked for the change we have today to rebel
\nagainst Buhari and his government, just for doing what the people wanted
\nand setting the tone for the recovery of a country long devoured by
\ntermites. But then, one imagines, having done so well to turn the people
\nagainst Buhari and the change he is effecting on Nigeria’s serially abused
\nspace, as they feel they have done, why won’t these Wailers and their
\npatrons come out of their thick closets and offer themselves to be stoned
\nshould Buhari perform at the end of his tenure? If they believe, deep in
\ntheir hearts, that Buhari will fail (or has already failed) as they
\nclatter about, let them offer themselves to be stoned as Prince Momoh did
\non the other side of the argument. If they truly believe that what Buhari
\nis doing today is not going to pull the country out of the woods where
\nthey crashed it into, let them boldly come out and wager with their lives.
\nIf they believe that the country will do better with encouraging the kind
\nof plundering they wrought here for 16 years, let them bet with their
\nlives as Prince Momoh has done. Are they holding back just because they
\nknow they are dubious and are merely trading on a political quicksand when
\nthey shout in mindless cacophony that Buhari will fail? Are they not
\nbetting with their lives because they know they are merely distraught
\nlosers who are not so sure of the cheeky gamble they are doing at present?
\nAre they not betting with their lives because they have not mobilized
\nenough faith even in themselves to take their position notches further?
\nFor a group that betrays no shame judging nine months of Buhari against
\ntheir own 16 years of unrestrained waste laying, is there some home truth
\nthey are desperately shielding themselves from when they refuse to bet
\nwith their lives on a contention they noisily bandy about?<\/p>\n
But I know that the wailing Wailers now frantically recruiting Nigerians
\nto get to their sides are operating on a deliberate fault line. They know
\nquite well that theirs is a dubious effort to preserve a lost paradise
\neven for a moment of Pyrrhic victory. They know very well that they are
\ncheeky, that they are mischievous and that they are dubious. They fear
\nNigerians know the reasons behind their present aberrant behavior and are
\ntherefore cognizant that wagering with their lives on Buhari’s performance
\nis a highly risky venture. They know theirs don’t go deeper than the
\ndubious hysteria they are raising at present and that it is so powerless
\nto deter Buhari and his government from their set goals of ending the era
\nof unbridled corruption and employing whatever Nigeria has towards
\nbetterring the lives of famished Nigerians. They know theirs don’t run
\ndeep and that Buhari will succeed in taking Nigeria out of the woods the
\nWailers ran it into so they won’t risk betting with their lives. They know
\ndeep within them, even as they will admit it only as a last act, that
\nBuhari has set up a very redoubtable foundation for success in his first
\nten months and will certainly succeed in his very arduous task. They know
\nthat the combination of prudence, aversion to corruption, careful
\nplanning, discipline, passion and commitment which Buhari has shown in his
\nfirst ten months in power are sure roads to resounding success. They know
\nthat having not succeeded thus far in distracting his commitment, they are
\nin for a bloody nose in the months ahead as President Buhari’s government
\ngears to start the implementation of its first budget, with salutary
\nprovisions dedicated, for the first time in our nation’s history, to the
\nneglected interests of the common man.<\/p>\n
So let the Wailers come forward to bet with their lives if they believe
\nPresident Buhari will not perform. Prince Tony Momoh has betted to be
\nstoned should President Buhari not perform. I am joining him to also offer
\nmyself to be stoned should our President not perform in line with the
\ndemands of the millions that voted for him to replace a regime that reaped
\nbounteously from a providential oil boom but which presided over the
\nbankrupting of the country through uncensored looting and shameless
\nstealing. If the Wailers are as serious as their wailing portray them, let
\nthem offer themselves to be stoned if President Buhari performs. Let them
\nnot fear to put their lives where their selfish interests direct their
\nmouths. Let them come boldly and offer to be stoned if their nemesis
\nperforms. As for how performance would be judged by 2019, we shall leave
\nthat to Nigerians to decide in the 2019 elections.\u00a0 I am throwing a
\nfurther bet that by March 2019 when another presidential election will
\nhold, Nigerians, including some of those mischievously wailing over their
\noverturned soup pot of corruption and stealing at present will persuade
\nPresident Buhari to continue for another term. This will not be because he
\nhas attended to their notorious instincts of purloining but because
\nNigerians will know the huge advantages of taming corruption and using
\nwhatever resources we have to attend to the good of the general populace
\nand not the selfish thieving interests of just a few selfish free loaders.<\/p>\n
Peter Claver Oparah<\/p>\n
Ikeja, Lagos.<\/p>\n