Anenih’s growing megalomania

It was reported that at the meeting Chief Anenih told those in attendance and specifically, the state governor, Ibrahim Shema, to bury his ambition of wanting to become vice president and instead, work towards becoming a senator at the expiration of his second tenure.I am not aware that Ibrahim Shema is nursing the ambition of […]

It was reported that at the meeting Chief Anenih told those in attendance and specifically, the state governor, Ibrahim Shema, to bury his ambition of wanting to become vice president and instead, work towards becoming a senator at the expiration of his second tenure.
I am not aware that Ibrahim Shema is nursing the ambition of becoming the vice president but what is now public knowledge is that Chief Anenih is certainly arrogating to himself power that he neither has nor is conferred on him by virtue of the position he occupies in his party.
What is worrisome is that I do not know since when someone would travel all the way from Edo State after having been badly dislodged at the very doorstep of his political empire, to come up to as far as Katsina to begin to determine what the choices and preferences of the people are.
When the PDP chose to declare that its only presidential candidate for the 2015 election is President Goodluck Jonathan despite the baggage of liabilities that he is carrying, several of us came out to criticise that undemocratic stance and argued further that the organs of the party couldn’t be more important than the followership who in most cases are the voters that could make the party sing the song of victory.
I find it insulting for this PDP leadership when they begin to talk to us with impunity, which in any case defines the very genesis of the failures that the government in Abuja is facing.
I don’t know under what circumstances the meeting was held but what remains clear is even if the Anenihs would argue that it was the internal affairs of their party, the psyche and sensibilities of some of us are scratched when people simply make statements without appropriately considering the overall impact on the polity.
The first interpretation I got from the Anenih intervention is the feeling that we have reached a time when someone who has lost his political relevance in his primary constituency would determine my fate. This is impossible and we will resist it.
As said earlier, I am not aware that Governor Shema wants to be vice president, but in case he desires to be, why not? I thought politics is a matter of conviction that people should be allowed to hold their convictions if only the constitutional provision of the right to aspire under the principles of franchise is to be respected.
One thought the PDP was sensible to search through the region called Northern Nigeria for the people up here to determine what suits them.
Yes, PDP may not be the solution but it is an issue that nobody can wish away after having held power for all the period that we have been under this dispensation.
As we determine to off-set the present arrangement, a Tony Anenih is not required to tell us what is best for us. If as a people and those that are in the PDP, feel and believe that an Ibrahim Shema is what they need, who is Tony Anenih to face them and talk to them with this disrespect? I frown at it and I am sure many people who think like me will frown at it too.
I think what Mr. Anenih needs to do is to go back to Edo and beyond implied positive action, do all he could if he can win back the state for his dying party, the PDP. This meddlesomeness is not only unacceptable but it is a clear display of the arrogance that those federal politicians in the PDP are made of. We must work towards entrenching a culture of respect as an integral component of liberal democracy.
This piece is not about supporting either Namadi Sambo or Ibrahim Shema, but strictly an opinion of an average Nigerian of northern extraction whose political reality cannot be dictated by those who find themselves in political authority by the sheer benevolence of Nigerian federalism and any move to subsist this scenario in disregard of the reality of the situation under whatever pretext, be it transformation or anything else, would surely be resisted.
I am offended by that Anenih outburst and I think those who are in the PDP in the north deserve an apology from this Chief who deserves our respect even if only for the sake of his age. You cannot come to us and talk to us anyhow. It is criminal and I think democracy must be properly placed within the context that it ought to be practised. If the PDP and some of its leaders like Chief Anenih are of the view that all the time it will be business as usual, they are wasting their time. They will be shocked by the resolve of the people to get things working and the old order, as Balarabe Musa did say, shall be crumbling while a new system of life and activity will have to emerge.
This is the option that Nigerian democracy has. Either to allow freewill, as is the central feature of Western liberalism or strangulate the system and the rest will be history.
If the choice of the people is to replace Goodluck Jonathan, so be it. If the choice of PDP members is to replace Namadi Sambo, so be it, not this arbitrary interjection from men who have outlived their time and are still determining the content and context of politics in our society. That is why we are backward. That is why things are not presently moving as they ought to and the way out is to ensure that the old order as represented by Chief Anenih, is removed and a new system of life and activity is introduced so that Nigeria makes the progress it desires.
I am disappointed that Tony Anenih could lead such distinguished delegation to Katsina, including Abdulakadir Kuri, a distinguished technocrat and administrator and the outcome of what we are told was an honest reconciliatory meeting, come up with such a bombshell. Who says the chairman of PDP board of trustees has the mandate of the PDP in this part of Nigeria to determine which way they go?
There is daydreaming going on here. Somebody reasonable in the party should help talk so that the little that is left of it is reassured before it is too late. The conclusion here is that Chief Tony Anenih lacks the political credentials and authority to talk to us with such disrespect. Whoever Goodluck Jonathan is selecting as his running mate, that is their problem but let’s get this fact straight. It is not people like Anenih that will determine what happens to northern Nigeria, the largest portion in the alliance which people like him, Jonathan and the southeast bloc, are desperately trying to decimate by whatever means.