After Atedo’s Interview, Tinubu should be preparing for Jail By Valentine Obienyem
POLITICS DIGEST – Mr. Peterside Atedo is one of the most responsible elder statesmen we have in this country. He always speaks in the mellow metaphysics of wisdom. In fact, yesterday, my lecturer, Prof. A.U. Nnonyelu, called me thinking I listened to Atedo’s interview on Arise TV and requested I send the complete clip to him. He said he joined at the concluding part of the interview and could see that the man spoke as a representative of the values lacking among elder statesmen.
Countries of the world try now and then to transmit to their children the heritage of the tribe or country. When we say heritage, we mean the complex of economic, political, mental and moral habits and institutions which it has developed in its efforts towards growth and prosperity. But not so with Nigeria. The likes of President Mohammadu Buhari, Sen. Ahmed Bola Tinubu, and Prof. Yakubu Mahmood, are bent on transmitting to future generations the heritage of criminality, election-rigging, among others. All they do today is planting the seeds of bedlam that are fast germinating into crisis that will ruin Nigeria in no distant time, except the judiciary does the right thing.
Many youths in Nigeria know the situation – the fact that the likes of the trio are the reasons Nigeria is not progressing and, in popular parlance, want to take back their country. At last, they were relieved to see in Mr. Peter Obi, a man of sense, ability and honour! Obi may by appearance not have any of the stigmata of genius, but Nigerians know him as a firm administrator with persistent will and practical intelligence. He did it exceptionally in Anambra State and they longed for a repeat in Nigeria.
During electioneering, he kept preaching to voters to consider him for hiring as their president not because of ethnicity or religion, but because of competence. While he was doing this, the followers of Sen. Ahmed Bola Tinubu were busy throwing ethnic and tribal tantrums here and there. What else do we expect from a man who surrounded himself with aides of even coarser strain? Birds of a feather, rather than tell him the truth, they were busy smoothening the man’s part to every indulgence.
Days after the results were announced, Nigeria is looking like a grave yard. Even his own people are scratching their heads in perplexity over what Buhari, Tinubu and Mohmood did.
In the interview we shall soon come to, Atedo said that a person who did not tactically support rigging, should be able to reject any result rigged on his behalf. It is only the good prodigal from Nnewi and his data boys that try to outshine one another in unrestrained barbarity. The stupid stuff they post with reckless fertility are themselves stupefying! With dead conscience, they sometimes amuse themselves by thinking they are performing noble acts. Let them know that we cannot see nobility in this street-corner contest in vituperation and lies! These lies will certainly torment them in future. Chroniclers and historians are taking note of their humiliating buffoonery!
I heard the prodigal has even declared that after Tinubu, the Presidency, according to his fancy, would go to the North. To appear to be talking sense, he muttered something about building bridges. Since he knows that Obi won, is it the bridges of rigging that he was talking about or what?
Besides the prodigal and his tribe, Tinubu is demonstrably capable of multiplying corruption in those already corrupt, we saw what he got the SANS, the Bayos and Fanis to do for him. They all became as reliable as any gossip.
Thank God Nigerians are resolved that this impunity will not stand. The “Okenye aluru ani” at Abuja, with maniac joy in inflicting pain would, after stoking fire, sneak into Daura, pretending neither to hear of, nor to notice the burning fire. Thank God that sensing such from him while the election was going on, the old fox, in all the positive attributes of the word, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, through a broadcast, told him what was happening so that he would not, as usual, come up in future to claim ignorance. Their response to Obasanjo’s alarm was to quickly declare the grand thief elected at 4:10am.
While other elders are busy receiving the piece of certificate of thievery Tinubu hops about brandishing; others, committed to their consciences, are speaking out.
Luckily, as I woke up this morning, many people had already sent the clip of the full interview to me. After playing it, my respect for Atedo became many times magnified. The interview was, of course, a “cause celebre” as he spoke with patriotic fervour.
Though the responsible statesman, Atedo, did not call names, after listening to him I said to myself that “If given the opportunity, I will personally put Sen. Ahmed Bola Tinubu in jail for the rest of his life for corrupting the values of society”.
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From what Tinubu did, he is evidently not fit to live in a sane society not to talk of being the President of a country. He has proved that all the tales of criminality, drug-dealing, corruption, and subverting the system written about him, are all true.
Atedo, who was among Nigerians of his standing that do not stand on the fence on matters of good governance is, from the interview, manifestly heart-broken by the turn out of events in Nigeria. People like him must have told themselves that the best legacy their generation would leave is enthroning justice and transmitting brotherhood to the preceding generations.
I was touched how he followed the event and took time to collate and compare many results. Though he has more information than he let out, but like an elder, he does not want anything that would disturb the peace, even if that of the graveyard, we witness in Nigeria today.
Let us dissect his interview, where he started by offering the reason for his silence so far: “By my nature, I find it difficult to speak about anything without doing my homework.”
What did he discover after his homework? “In my Ozumba Mbadiwe polling unit result, LP got 51, APC 26 and PDP 15. It was the same result that was uploaded, that if it were like that nationwide, there would have been nothing to talk about.”
But he is not satisfied with the entire result because of so many irregularities. After a thorough investigative job, he was able to show, based on empirical evidence, how, with alarming indecency, INEC announced results that did not tally with the original results through cancellation and mutilation of original result sheets.
In his polling unit in Rivers, his home state, he showed the result where LP got 223 and APC 8; but INEC uploaded a revised, mutilated result transferring Labour’s 223 to APC and APC’s 8 to labour. Rather than arresting those that did this for questioning, the same people are getting set to conduct Saturday’s election.
He also used Bauchi result, where what LP was announced to have got in the entire state was even far less than what it actually got in one polling unit!
He talked about other uploads, like the one from Imo State. Prof. Charles Esimone, the VC of UNIZIK, who was sent there, refused allowing them a field day in mutilation and changing of results and miscellany of cancellations. What they were uploading without requisite signature were what they tried to come up with after he had left. When the man stood his ground, we saw the State Commissioner of Police threatening to withdraw his security. The said Imo result was only signed by one Mbakwe of INEC. Who is that Mbakwe? It will be nice to know his complete name and see his picture. He is among the enemies of Nigeria.
I agree with Atedo that BIVAS was very helpful, but the trio of Tinubu, Buhari and Mahmood have sworn that the country should not know peace by their evil compromise. He is confounded, like all of us, why it is taking INEC so much time to upload results.
I love the question to Atedo by the anchor, on whether he supports street protest and his reply marked by judicious mixture of diplomacy and … Let me quote him in full: “my personal view is that it is premature. I would always advocate in a society, I am a very disciplined person, that we go through all the processes. I don’t play God. Take this evidence, which I said in some cases that the blind man can see, he can feel the “tippex” with his fingers. Let the judges look at them and tell us they do not matter, at that point if you want to go to the streets, I shall follow you and join you on the streets.
For now, let the judges do their work, It doesn’t matter how much you distrust them, let them look at those evidence which the whole world is seeing. We have become the laughing stock of the world. A football match was played, Liverpool scored 7 and Man United scored 0, but in one of the jokes in Lagos, somebody changed the result of 0 and put 10 and said INEC had done so. We are a laughing stock to the whole world.”
As I listened to his submission about the distrust for the judiciary, I remembered the story of Cambyses. Wearied by the judicial corruption in his days, Cambyses improved the integrity of the courts by causing an unjust judge to be flayed alive and using his skin to upholster the judicial bench – to which he appointed the dead judge’s son who was forced to be upright by daily seeing and remembering what happened to his father.
This time around, Nigerians are insisting that the judiciary must do the right thing. They live in the same society like you, Atedo and I, and cannot pretend not to have the full information of what happened, even before the case comes to court.
As for the actual winner of the election, Mr. Peter Obi, we are pleased so far by his principled stand on the matter. He is determined to recover his mandate, but he takes every opportunity to appeal for calm with captivating grace. While maintaining the calm he appealed for let us remember the words of JF Kennedy that “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Valentine Obienyem is a Media Aide to Peter Obi, the Presidential Candidate of Labour Party
