The Eagle Gate

Tag: Mr. Integrity

  • Dr. Umar GANDUJE and the Concept of Anti-corruption Propaganda

    Dr. Umar GANDUJE and the Concept of Anti-corruption Propaganda

    In 2015 – 2016, I was privileged to be a political consultant to a gubernatorial aspirant in my home state, a fairly unknown individual then. We took the task to digitally market him for over a year before the primaries. We created contents, advertorials, edited speeches, managed invented scandals and propaganda against him, wrote his feasible manifesto…Our constant social media marketing made him a darling of the people but all these was not without some sacrifice from me. I was before then not into partisan politics, I just wrote freely on critical issues: social reforms, justice, philosophy, morals, religion, relationships, truth, trust and other thematic issues that came to me as my own human effort. Some people who followed my writing keenly on the social media inboxed me and told me they were disappointed that I could be consulting for PDP. In as much as I explained to them the reasons, an article was wrought out of me, ‘Persons over Parties.’

    In all ramifications, I choose to disagree that parties are basically bad. No, it’s humans that are bad, that are corrupt, that are incompetent, that are soulless, that are clannish, that are without ideas, that without political focus…not necessarily parties. Parties are mere vehicles to gain political positions, just as sleep could be vehicle of death. Should we now say sleep is bad?

    The propaganda that no longer sells on our political space today is that PDP was corrupt for 16 years so they should not present a candidate to be voted in even when APC present the a candidate without the minimum certificate to qualify one for such contest. I don’t think that is only illogical, it is a compressed fallacy, I look at as a Post Traumatic Disappointment Disorder, PTDD (my own personal coinage). PTDD to me is a kind of disorder people experience when they are disappointed in those they believe after revealing events.

    Now, if we still hold on to the stowaway thought that PDP was corrupt as a party because some members were in the time past, how do we define APC today which has become a temple for fleeing corrupt people and houses, in comfort, abjectly corrupt members like GANDUJE of Kano State? Should we now use the members to define the entire party to be politically correct? This is a governor in APC that has been viewed in three videos by millions of Nigerians taking bribe from contractors, yet without a midget of evidence, they want ‘stupid’ you to believe Alhaji Atiku is the most corrupt Nigerian. How folly can a people be, how controlling.

    The fact without doubt remains that the anti-corruption campaign by Buhari was a mere populist propaganda, it has never and it will never work. APC will tell you they are studying the Ganduje video while chasing corrupt shadows. Nothing will ever happen to Ganduje even as we speak he has been summoned by the state assembly over the bribery allegations. He is one of the strongest supporters of Buhari, he cannot afford to allow his man go down over mere dollars he dipped into his babaringa (agbada). Ask me what happened to Babachir Lawal, the professional multi-million Naira grasscutter? Ask yourself what happened to Maina, the pension thief and fugitive. Ask yourself what happened to Baru of NNPC or Abba Kyari of the MTN bribery. Ask yourself where they got the billions to buy votes with police force in Ekiti and Osun States. Ask what would happen to Oshiomole who is asking the courts not to go on trial for corruption. If you ask them these thematic issues, they would tell you Sai Baba till 2023! That vexatious clamour for Simpleton from Simpletons.

    During the Obasanjo Era, he haunted corrupt members of PDP and those who were even in his cabinet with EFCC and other unconventional means. He disposed some using their state assemblies to impeach them. Some went on trial and were sentenced according to the law. Even his police chief, Tafa Balogun, was not spared.

    Today, even corrupt members of the public are blackmailed to join the incorruptible party with some hallelujah triumphant welcome in the Absence of Shame. The just conducted APC primaries were fraught with corruption and high level fraud. Members of INEC were bribed to conduct primaries in hotel lobbies and personal living rooms and the other rooms shortchanging less connected aspirants. Ask Pat Utomi. These and others are echoes and echoes of Shame and Dishonour.

    Elempe Dele

  • MOUNTING PRESSURE ON BUHARI’S INTEGRITY

    MOUNTING PRESSURE ON BUHARI’S INTEGRITY

    “Buhari has tarnished whatever is left of his battered reputation and Integrity and that of his office by condescending this low to purchasing WAEC attestation certificate for an examination he obviously never sat for.”

    Prior to the 2015 presidential election, the selling point of Mr. President was Integrity. It was used to veil his tyrannical disposition which him and Idiagbon exhibited when they took over power forcefully from a duly elected government making themselves criminals and subverters of the will of the people. But the sale of integrity was widely accepted by some simpletons, which constituted a larger population of the electorates. Many didn’t have the opportunity to interrogate his personality because he was a recluse and was incommunicado. He lived behind the closed walls of his mind, coming out once in four years to contest elections and to fail.

    When he took over power in 2015, so much of his personae started coming to the fore, and somehow, people started doubting his claim to integrity. His first failure was his lopsided appointment which was supposed to be guided by the Federal Character as enshrined in our Constitution. Over 80 % of his appointment came from his tribe, state or and his family. This earned him the notorious Nepotistic Tribalist. Other regions were marginalized which resulted to the aggressive campaign by the Ingenious People of Biafra, IPOB for secession. Even the Yorubas who gave him block votes through Tinubu were disengaged through the trapdoor and thrown out from the scheme of things while strangers took over the government, that irresponsible cabal.

    His second test to integrity was his fight against corruption having said in his inauguration he was for nobody and was for everybody…Him and his handlers were married to the anti-corruption slogan. However, his one-sided fight against corruption questioned his integrity. While his corrupt associates walked freely, he is harassing members of the opposition and members of his party who are critical of his policies. His party became a refuge for fleeing corrupt elements. The grass cutter, Babachir, NHIS boss Prof Yusuf, Abba Kyari, the MTN scandal and presidential COS, Baru of NNPC, Buratai, the Army chief, Maina, the pension thief and fugitive…were among those who have been fingered in corruption but are being shielded by Mr Integrity himself.

    Who could have guessed or predicted that Mr Integrity would be involved in a certificate scandal without summoning courageous integrity to say the truth? Who had the prescient perception to predict this national embarrassment where elderly people are dancing to the store bought attestation?

    The certificate narrative has been changing like a chameleon. When the issue first came out some years ago, a lawyer went to court on it, it took Mr. President over 12 SANs and a threat to the life of the lawyer for the matter to die down then. Like a cat with nine lives, undying, the matter has risen again this time with such a great vermin that it is ready to consume anything on its ways.

    The president initially said in a published statement that his credentials were with the military. And that left us with a throwback question: who lives his original documents with a board after sighting them? At most after sighting the original, you leave photocopies and go home with the original, that’s the standard practice all over the world.

    Well, we asked that INEC should compel him to bring his original not sworn affidavit he has been using to contest elections, this cannot be business as usual. Suddenly the narrative changed, the credentials which were safely with the military had disappeared. A little time lasted for presidential retrospection and sober reflection. Precisely on the 2nd of November, 2018 a badly plotted play ensured. The president was given an attestation by WAEC in an over publicized Noble Prize-like show. Yet the probing masses have mounted unrelenting pressure on Mr integrity to do the needful: show us your original certificate, show us the WAEC master list from which the attestation was written from or decline from contesting to face perjury probe.

    If however, he scales through this trial he has set before himself, his greatest test to integrity would be his acceptance of defeat which is imminent and 60% loading. This is not about PDP or APC. If he fails to accept defeat, he will be bundled out of Aso Rock.

    Elempe Dele