But for The Governors’ Forum

I am of course aware of the tremendous pressure which was mounted on Goodluck by those who saw an easy opportunity in him taking over given the health condition of the president vis a vis the dirty political tricks of irresponsibly ambitious politicians under the leadership of General Obasanjo, one Nigerian who has had the […]

I am of course aware of the tremendous pressure which was mounted on Goodluck by those who saw an easy opportunity in him taking over given the health condition of the president vis a vis the dirty political tricks of irresponsibly ambitious politicians under the leadership of General Obasanjo, one Nigerian who has had the best of the country and wasted all the goodwill.

Early in the week, possibly with the prompting of either Goodluck Jonathan or his political schemers, Dora Akunyili, a Professor of Pharmacy shook the nation when she came hard on the president and those she referred to as the cabal around him holding the nation to ransom. Whatever that means, Dora, as a substantive minster of the federal republic got so lousy and by merely seeing her countenance as she spoke on television, many issues readily came into mind.

A sensational desperado who was either caught in a political web or simply an unintelligent person ready for use to destabilize Nigeria and its fragile peace. Let me again make it clear that going to school to acquire a degree or chains of degrees and being called a professor or a doctor may simply be as useless as we have seen in a handful of our so-called egg heads and the latest of such was displayed by Dora Akunyilli.

It was Louis Farrakhan who while describing the pathetic state of the leadership of the Black race in the United States that once said that the tragedy of quite a lot of those who claim to posses these chains of degrees is that they are merely doctors and professors of ignorance. I have no doubt in my mind just as several other Nigerians do today that the woman is a professor of ignorance if for no reason, the volatile statements she made against the president and the Nigerian Army. It appears the woman did not understand the implications of her claims against the presidential aides on one hand and the military on the other.

I am not surprised that Akunyilli did that. Her antecedence is a clear testimony of her incapacity and desperation especially for publicity. While in NAFDAC, she paid so much for her personal profiling. She saw her job more on the pages of newspapers than in reality. She even stage-managed a murder attempt and came crying on television.

We all saw how desperate she was in Yar’adua/Jonathan campaign group and the dry thirst for a ministerial appointment. At least the Late Lamidi Adedibu told the whole nation of how desperate she was to become a minister early in this administration and when she couldn’t become one, she insulted everybody including Chief Adedibu himself.

It was that singular act of abusing a man older than her father that convinced me even before now that Mrs Akunyilli indeed is a mental or psychotic case. She did not disappoint me when  she came up with that memo which I tagged grandstanding and mere sensation. Of course she is desperate because she has taken a wrong step and she is apparently realizing that she will better go all the way especially when both herself and her bosses, the acting president and General Obasanjo who have since thought Umaru Yar’adua was either dead or completely and permanently incapacitated.

Now that Yar’adua returned to the country devoid of ceremony or what they will call notice perhaps for strategic security reasons, Dora and the rest of the crowd have been caught flat footed and the song has since changed. They want to kill Abdulrahaman Dambazzau, the only Muslim Northerner among many others at the top of the nation’s security command structure.

They have stripped Yar’adua of his presidential toga because acting has been created through legislative fiat, an unconstitutional act definitely. They are querying why the Brigade of Guards should guard the substantively elected president without clearing with the acting president created by the doctrine of the necessity of the national parliament.

This is a tragedy. They never expected Yar’adua back. He is back and they are jittery. Trying to force him out of office before his death or incapacitation and I can clearly see the hands of the acting president and his gang in this failed coup which was aborted by the military and more sensible political class, the governors of the 36 states.

Again, I can see reason in Timaus Mathias’ caption of his Wednesday piece in the Trust where he summed up the development as Nigeria having a president without kidney and an acting president without a liver. Matthias has aptly captured the reality and that truly is what it is.

The Governors have risen to the national occasion by advising Goodluck Jonathan to take it easy. What is left to be done is the immediate redeployment of Dora from information ministry to the acting president’s office under whatever portfolio so she can continue to do as they like.

Those in positions of authority must get to know who they are and the people that they sit in for. It is unfortunate for any public officer to fail to consider the pulse of the pubic for the sake of sensation. My article a few weeks ago captioned ‘Sensational Dora’ was therefore right. Some people are just not fit for public offices.

There is the need to exercise caution in a complex society like Nigeria. What I know is that Goodluck Jonathan is acting. It is not a new government and from the way they are behaving, they never expected that President Yar’adua would ever set his foot back in Nigeria. So, they were caught unawares and the result is this high tension desperation we are witnessing.

Yar”adua should recover soonest and get back to work so that the cabal that wants to oust him through contrived constitutional procedure will realize the futility of that failed political scheme. It is unfortunate that we have since lost our humanity as a people. We have thrown our morals to dogs and we live more like animals. That is why we are offensively selfish. This will certainly not take us anywhere.

We thank God for the Governors Forum. It has saved the nation the horrors of unlimited instability that would have erupted as a result of poor politics of the amateurs.