MUCH ADO ABOUT GANDUJE AND BASHIRU.

By

JESUTEGA ONOKPASA.

Reacting to the election of former Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, as All Progressives Congress, APC’s new National Chairman, loquacious, rambunctious and reliably ludicrous National Publicity Secretary of the opposition People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Debo Ologunagba said the APC “is a putrid party of embezzlers and charlatans” as well as a “cesspit of corruption and a haven for thieves, bribe takers and treasury looters.”

I was actually dumbfounded to learn that Ologunagba is a lawyer and was like “is this not the same Ologunagba who ordered PDP local government Chairmen in the Federal Capital Territory to disobey a court judgment instead of advising them to go on appeal?”

Nothing can more contrast the intellectual from the “agbero” than for circumstances to bring them together.

Watching Barrister Felix Morka, National Publicity Secretary of the APC, seated alongside Ologunagba at a television interview earlier today, a vision of a Wole Soyinka forced to discuss Shakespearean literature with a Lamidi Adedibu flashed through my mind.

Barrister Morka has studiously, and, rather stubbornly, refused to descend into the fray and deploy propaganda and mudslinging as tools of image making as the opposition has.

He has consistently been forthright with Nigerians, acknowledging their challenges and pains, while painstakingly adumbrating the efforts of government to turn around our national condition.

I doubt that he realizes it but in the process, Morka is constructing a new paradigm of image-making in Nigerian politics.

That is quality of human capital we recruited as the spokesman of the APC and I thank God that Debo Ologunagba, compulsive deployer of disinformation and misinformation, is not the spokesman of my party or I would have been thoroughly ashamed of my party.

On their part, in reference to the emergence of Ganduje, the Labour Party’s Yunusa Tanko said that “when you have somebody who has a lot of credibility issues hanging on his neck, what good will he bring?”

Mr Tanko used to be an acolyte of the late Gani Fawehinmi of blessed memory.

Unless, I’m mistaken, he once ran as presidential candidate of Fawehinmi’s party, the National Conscience Party, NCP.

Today, Tanko’s credibility is that of a supposed admirer of Fawehinmi grovelling before Olusegun Obasanjo and trying to rationalize how a third term seeker like Obasanjo is nevertheless the mentor of Obi, the same man against whom Obasanjo twice rigged elections in 2003 and 2007!

Another “Obidient”, Mrs Aisha Yesufu, tried to disparage Governor Ganduje in the following words: “A man that should be facing a incarceration is heading the helm of affairs of APC.”

Indeed, according to Yesufu, “in what more ways does APC show it is a party that encourages, nurtures and rewards criminality?”

Mrs Yesufu, the “Iyalode socia midia gbogbo Naija”, is a Niger Deltan like me and I don’t joke with my people, so let me attempt an enrichment of her intervention vide a rephrasal of the words of my adorable but clearly miserably misguided younger sister as follows:

“Peter Obi, a man who should be facing incarceration for investing Anambra State funds in his brewery which makes beer with the Biafran flag as its logo; for behaving like a complete barbarian and totally unhinged vandal by bulldozing houses in which kidnap victims were allegedly kept, in a country with a critical housing shortage, without first obtaining a court order to do so therefore commiting the crime of malicious damage to property (with personal liability for the cost of the property and other financial implications, pertaining thereto); for forging a personality cult out of a bunch of “Yahoo Boys”, a rabble of secessionists, and a cauldron of haters; for deploying religious war and rabid ethnicism as political strategy for intimidating his way into Aso Rock; and, for being a pathological liar pretending he is trying to reclaim a nonexistent mandate when he’s actually only trying to steal President Bola Tinubu’s mandate is Mrs Yesufu’s messiah and presidential candidate!”

I suppose Mrs Yesufu and Mr Tanko would consider themselves activists yet are shamelessly rooting for jungle justice upon a man who has not even been investigated, much less charged to court, tried, and, found guilty of any offence.

Let anyone say what they may about our new National Chairman but Ganduje was the first member of our party to take on the notorious cabal in our party that had sneaked into bed with the PDP and LP to undermine our then presidential candidate and now President, Bola Tinubu.

In the wake of his compelling outburst of undeniable truth, the rest of our party was stirred to anger against the traitors within and we mobilized to distance the Asiwaju from them and their infernal hypocrisy.

Ganduje was with President Tinubu during the “Emilokan” episode in Abeokuta, the precursor to Asiwaju winning our party’s primary, and was just as bold, loyal and patriotic as the likes of Yahaya Bello, Nasir El Rufai and Bello Matawale on the side of truth after the Asiwaju was once again inspired to say the bitter truth, as it is, in the same Abeokuta, over the twin sabotages of naira recolouration and fuel scarcity, the precursor to him cashlessly, fuelessly and flawlessly winning the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The PDP is the party of self-destruction which rewarded a political prostitute who stabbed its number one shining star, President Goodluck Jonathan, in the back, by granting him its presidential ticket in violation of its own zoning policy and the principle of rotational presidency between Northern and Southern Nigeria that has taken root in the democratic culture of our country.

The Labour Party, LP, is the doomed and utterly miserable platform of illegal candidates that sold its presidential ticket to the highest trader – sorry, bidder – and keeps fighting over sharing the loot of the donations it got from all over the world, thanks to the con of pretending Obi ever had a credible path to victory.

It is not for the PDP or the LP to take Panadol for our headache, when they are most irresponsibly avoiding chemotherapy for their advanced stage cancer.

Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje served with distinction as Governor of Kano and won a second term in office despite the propaganda of his detractors.

His successor, in a triumphalism typical of the ill-mannered, immediately embarked on an orgy of the most mindlessly vengeful vandalism, an idiotic course of action that has already made him pitiably unpopular even before he even had a chance to make himself passably popular!

Already, the citizens of Kano miss Ganduje and regret not voting for his preferred successor.

In short, Governor Ganduje made us proud and we are proud of him.

Our new National Secretary, Senator Surajudeen Ajibola Bashiru, represented Osun Central in the Senate, was Senate Spokesman, served as Attorney General of Osun State, is an author and has a doctorate in law.

Indeed like Ganduje, our National Chairman, Bashiru is a National Secretary we can all be proud of.

It is our party and we are confident that Governor Ganduje and Senator Bashiru possess what is required to lead the National Working Committee of our party.

Our elder brother and revered columnist, Dele Sobowale, had predicted doom, destruction and desolation for Abdullahi Ganduje; Ganduje is now National Chairman of the ruling party of the most populous black nation on Earth!

In the wake of his loss in Osun Central Senatorial District in the last election, a cacophony of triumphalist voices had assured of the political demise of Ajibola Bashiru; he is today National Secretary of Africa’s number one political party!

Indeed, we believe that, to the glory of God, Ganduje and Bashiru will galvanize Nigerians into investing President Tinubu with the requisite support to renew our country for the good of all our citizens and pride of the Black Race.

Onokpasa, a lawyer, was a member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council, and writes from Abuja.