Why do we fail to profit from history lessons?
It is quite evident that the author of that satanic piece is not conversant with the progressive antecedent nay credentials of Alhaji Aliyu Akwe Doma, a man who put his life on the line to ensure that Nasarawa State was created, even when those parading the corridors of power in the state today were busy […]
It is quite evident that the author of that satanic piece is not conversant with the progressive antecedent nay credentials of Alhaji Aliyu Akwe Doma, a man who put his life on the line to ensure that Nasarawa State was created, even when those parading the corridors of power in the state today were busy chasing ephemeral things of life.
Ubayo was either being sarcastic or merely elected to stand honesty on its head when he wrote that “apart from his being former this and former that, he (Doma) was a nobody in the politics of Nasarawa State. Perhaps out of pity, the people of Nasarawa State empathised with the old man who had tried two times to be governor but failed woefully. They pulled him out of the dirty sewage, cleaned him up and made him to rise to grace in 2007 as their governor.” It might interest the writer to know that Abraham Lincoln ran for the presidency of America several times before he finally emerged triumphant. Contrary to Ubayo’s insinuations, Aliyu Akwe Doma was a well-accomplished man even before he thought of vying for the position of governor of Nasarawa State having retired as a permanent secretary and served as deputy governor in the old Plateau State.
In fact, Doma’s conceptualization of leadership is one that espouses the lofty ideals of leadership being synonymous with moral authority as that is the only way to beat followership into line. Going through the venomous write-up, it was so easy to discern that Ubayo is one of those obsessed with the emotion of personal vendetta against the former governor. He displayed a high-level of moral turpitude and subjectivism and most painfully, failed to address any fundamental issue but rather, displayed what obviously amounted to follow-the-pack mentality.
It appears that in his desperate bid to ingratiate himself with the powers that be in Nasarawa State ostensibly for pecuniary gains, Ubayo tragically turned himself into a fiction designer who specializes in lie embroidery. In his characteristic manner, he peddled unpardonable falsehood when he wrote that “since he went crashing down, Doma has done everything including hiring mercenary writers to pull down the state.” How can any sane man who laboured greatly to build a house pull down that same structure? Doma need not hire anybody, let alone writers to trumpet his achievements.
Ubayo irredeemably missed the point when he wrote that to remove the malignant evil of Doma’s PDP from the state, common sense dictated that the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) needed a tsunami to reclaim the people’s mandate. Nothing can be further from the truth! The writer and his sponsors know that Nasarawa State is still predominantly PDP as the 24-member State House of Assembly has 20 PDP members.
As for the laughable claim that women and youths have been trooping to the streets of Lafia, the state capital in wild jubilation over Doma’s invitation by EFCC over the matter, Ubayo elected to sidetrack the truth; otherwise, he would have known that those he saw were rented by a desperate government that is looking for every available straw to hang on to.
CPC in Nasarawa State can continue to be shifty, trading unnecessary blames, but they cannot escape the approaching volcanic end to their reign of deceit. They have read the writing on the wall that the ground under their seat is caving in because there are no longer new lies to tell against Doma to the people of the state to justify their inexplicable inefficiency of epic proportions.
All things being equal, to borrow the jargon of economists, even if falsehood as propagated by agents like Ubayo jets in a supersonic Concordia, truth would eventually catch up with it. Let us hope that this Doma-phobia would not be stretched to the ridiculous extent that when officials of the state government are unable to fulfil their marital vows to their spouses, they will not end up fingering the innocent man with a sizeable proportion of God’s grace, Aliyu Akwe Doma as the ultimate culprit.
Ubayo and his paymasters should profit from the lessons of history. Political gladiators and worse propagandists have passed through this land in the past and had left the people traumatized. When they spoke or acted, it was to trample on or to offend the sensibilities of Nigerians. Some even boasted that no power could render them irrelevant. But when denouement came like a whirlwind, they were swept into the dustbin of history. So history is like gallows, it hangs those who ignore its lesson.
Chukwuemeka, commentator on national issues, wrote in from Jimeta, Adamawa State