He looks like Mandela to you?
Okupe waited until everyone had heard the supposed statement before he made a half-hearted move to deny it. This spokesman now sent his own spokesman, a certain Bamidele Salam, to issue a statement saying that Okupe did not say what he was reported to have said. Why should a spokesman speak through a spokesman? Don’t […]
Okupe waited until everyone had heard the supposed statement before he made a half-hearted move to deny it. This spokesman now sent his own spokesman, a certain Bamidele Salam, to issue a statement saying that Okupe did not say what he was reported to have said. Why should a spokesman speak through a spokesman? Don’t you have mouth yourself? Why did the president waste his time and pick you to be speaking on his behalf when you cannot even speak for yourself?
That is why I think there is some truth to the story that Okupe compared Mr Goodluck Jonathan to Nelson Mandela. Maybe he was hoping that Nigerians will keep quiet after hearing it so that he would interpret that to mean acceptance of his outrageous comparison. However, when internet users rose in revolt, he was forced to deny it, tepidly.
Otherwise, all the things that people all over the world are praising Mandela for having done in his life, which one did Goodluck Jonathan do? Mandela went to prison for his beliefs but Jonathan went to school without shoes and as soon as he could afford them, he turned his back on other people without shoes. Mandela made peace with his enemies but Jonathan cannot even make peace with his friends and neighbours. He cannot make peace with his Rivers State neighbour; he cannot make peace with the Nigeria Governors Forum; he cannot even make peace with PDP governors. Jonathan cannot even make peace with Olusegun Obasanjo, the man who catapulted him to the Bayelsa governorship, the vice presidency and presidency so which Mandela are you talking about?
Stay in one place, you two
Newspaper readers in Nigeria were surprised to learn on Monday that Governors Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso of Kano and Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko of Sokoto attended a meeting the previous evening with President Goodluck Jonathan and PDP state governors. Only last week, those two men alongside three other governors—Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers, Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara and Murtala Nyako of Adamawa—announced their defection from the ruling PDP to the opposition APC.
Many people praised them for consistency in beliefs just as two of their G-7 colleagues who chose to remain behind in PDP—Sule Lamido of Jigawa and Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu of Niger—received knocks from the media and other politicians for flip-flopping. After reports that they attended Jonathan’s meeting with PDP governors, commentators began to think that Kwankwaso and Wamakko are even bigger flip-floppers than Lamido and Aliyu.
Anyway, the explanation offered by Wamakko, which was reported in Tuesday’s newspapers because it was made at 3am on Monday morning, doused the criticism somewhat. He stated that the two of them attended the meeting with Jonathan in response to his invitation but that they told him that they have crossed over to APC and there is no going back.
It is good that they are crossing over to another party only once. If they cross over to one party, which is hard enough in politics, and then a week later crossed back whence they came from, what will their supporters and other people say? Do you keep crossing into and out of political parties as if you are entering and then re-emerging from your own bedroom?
I still have one word to say to Kwankwaso and Wamakko. The 24 hours during which most Nigerians thought that the two of you had crossed back to PDP after leaving it only a week ago put a stain on your political reputation. If you went to Jonathan’s meeting only to tell him that you are not going back to his party, why didn’t you send a letter instead? Attending another party’s meeting just to tell it that you are not part of it needs a name in Nigerian politics. It is not flip-flopping; perhaps it is flop-flipping!