Re: Pastor Tunde Bakare’s Roadmap To A Successful Change

Finally, the bullet that finally knocked off the pastor’s request/demand  was the recommendation that additional states be created when any suggestion, worthy of any consideration at all, should have canvassed confederation, and a return to the old regions, or something similar, which would then act as the federating units

“INEC was not truthful on this point. INEC knew that a supplementary election was unnecessary in the circumstances. The electoral body was, and is still, in possession of records which show that in the affected 91 polling units, there were only 38,000 permanent voters cards (PVCs) issued. Of that figure, only 25,000 collected the cards. And at the November 21, 2015 election, only 19,000 persons were accredited in the affected units. The margin of win by Audu/Faleke ticket would, undoubtedly, have accommodated any of these figures with Audu/Faleke still leading by majority of votes. It can, therefore, be rightly concluded that the phony supplementary election was falsely devised to hoodwink the people of Kogi State and play the script of some powerful political interests at the expense of the will of the people of Kogi” – Olarinde Yesufu, a legal analyst, writing on the topic: Kogi – Inaugurating Bello as governor will be unconstitutional in The Nation of 21st Jan, 2015.

It goes without saying that the above epigram does not speak to today’s topic but it  galls to high heavens reading the very pedestrian argument of  Dr Oluwayomi David Atte, a University of Ibadan- trained development scholar you’d expect  to be much  more liberated, trying to justify INEC’s premeditated, but thoroughly  illogical declaration of the  Kogi governorship election as  inconclusive, on the laughable  excuse that  Faleke is not known in Kogi. Even if this outlandish claim were true, and not merely playing to the ‘come and chop’ tradition of most Kogi State politicians always talking from both sides of their mouths, where was he when Faleke emerged the deputy gubernatorial candidate to Prince Audu? Does he know better than the late Audu who, with considerable justification, can be described as the godfather of Kogi politics far ahead of  the likes of  Idris or the simple hearted Wada? Was Atte away on Mars or where can we locate his objection to that selection if he wants to be taken serious? Of course, he must have been too patronising of Prince Audu to have the liver to complain. It’s a shame that the likes of  Atte, Clarence Obafemi and  Dino Melaye, have, with their volte face, further  demonstrated how effete the average Kogi politician, many of who were implicated in Obasanjo’s shoot down of  a decent Chief Sunday Awoniyi  who, it was, who first described PDP as an aggregation of very venal people, is. It is  obvious to the unbiased  that INEC was arms twisted  to do what it did as the same thing happened in the last Bayelsa election without any such unreasonable decision. One can only hope that APC will not, by its own hands, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It is germane to mention that in the case between Wada, Faleke and INEC, the trial judge specifically said that its decision had nothing to do with INEC’s failure to declare the election result or on the substitution of candidates.

With all due respect to their eminences, Bishop Matthew Kukah of the Sokoto Catholic Diocese and Pastor Bakare of The Latter Rain Assembly, it can  be safely concluded that the way they venerate, and  purvey, elements of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s recondite policies and actions in office, can only be a consequence of our Lord’s teachings about the Christian love.  “And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well asked him: which is the first commandment of all?” To which Jesus answered: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with thy entire mind and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this: thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself”. “There is none other commandment greater than these” – Mark 12: 28-31. While Bishop Kukah has severally  exonerated the former president on all he did in office, Pastor Bakare, like most  members of his core  group in the Jonathan National Conference of 2014, has continued to present the recommendations of that talkshop as a silver bullet to all of Nigeria’s problems  regardless of  its dramatic, but shadowy origins, its skewed membership and the fact that neither the president nor his political party, the PDP, considered it important enough to be made a campaign issue.

The pastor has again come out calling on his friend, President Mohammadu Buhari, to adopt the conference decisions as the way forward for Nigeria, conveniently forgetting that despite the president’s party giving the confab a wide berth, Nigerians in their millions, still voted him as their president while sending Goodluck Jonathan out of office.  If only for this, I expect Pastor Bakare to understand that Nigerians know exactly what they want.

The pastor hoisted his latest call on the following grounds:

(1)    That promise of true federalism is contained in Article 14 of the Nigerian Charter for National Reconciliation and Integration, which was unanimously adopted and signed by the delegates to the 2014 National Conference;

(2) That although the report may have been produced under a PDP government but it is not a PDP document. It is a Nigerian people’s document;

(3) That it will be comparable to Buhari’s adoption of some of Jonathan’s policies, e.g the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System, IPPIS and the Treasury Single Account, TSA, and,

(4) That the need for diversification also brings to the fore the question of viability of states in relation to the need for economies of scale.

 

 

Check the Daily Independent newspaper for the full story.