By Iyobosa Uwugiaren
As a journalist and a writer for over 20 years, I am very familiar with a trendy behaviour of a segment of the media audience or readers: they want you to, at all times, reflect or share their views. They don’t see anything wrong with this fashion. The day you coincidentally do that, it is all good; they will praise you to high heavens. But the day you do otherwise, they will label you as a hack writer or somebody doing the bidding of his/her paymaster. And trust me: I have developed a hard skin for this behaviour; I don’t care any longer.
To be sure, by the time some perpetual cynics finish reading this piece, they would reason, unwisely, that somebody somewhere has paid me to do this piece or that I am defending President Goodluck Jonathan foolishly. A few of them might even reason that I am looking for a job from the Presidency. But, like I said earlier, I am used to this foolish and senseless talk. As a columnist with strong interest in current or burning issues, I know it is absolutely impossible not to be part of the ongoing debate about “the season of impeachment”, especially with the recent stand of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari.
Confirm it: In the last few days, members of the opposition party have roundly blamed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and, by extension, President Jonathan for the impeachment of the civil war-mongering former governor of Adamawa State Murtala Nyako and the fear gripping other governors in the All Progressives Congress (APC) who, rightly or wrongly, believe they might be the next targets of Jonathan’s ongoing war against the opposition. To many members of the APC, Jonathan’s action in Adamawa State is treason and a dangerous road to anarchy. In fact, one of the owners of the party, Gen. Buhari, was more direct in his attack on Jonathan. He described his action as declaration of war on Nigerians: “Our country has gone through several rough patches, but never before have I seen a Nigerian president declare war on his own country as we are seeing now. Never before have I seen a Nigerian president deploy federal institutions in the service of partisanship as we are witnessing now. Never before have I seen has a Nigerian president utilize the common wealth to subvert the system and punish the opposition, all in the name of politics. Our nation has suffered serious consequences in the past for egregious acts that are not even close to what we are seeing now.’’
Hash and rash the criticisms against the president may have sounded, I can swear that Jonathan’s men are currently enjoying the musical sound – at least, it has proved that their boss cannot only bark but can also bite. But, for me, the immoral behaviour of the leaders of the APC is very pronounced in the matter. They are not telling members of the public that the impeachment process against Nyako was actually kick-started by one of their leaders, former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, because he wants to have a strong base to launch his quivering and wobbling presidential ambition; and that the process was only hijacked by the PDP when there was suffocating pressure on Atiku to settle with Nyako. APC is very well known for propaganda in its political game and the party is living up to its expectation; their leaders have continued to present Jonathan as the devil in the current game. But, if this is what Buhari has called a declaration of war on Nigeria, I like the war; let it continue.[eap_ad_2] The opposition may be thoughtless not to think that even when they have huge tags of “clueless”, “weak” and others around the president’s neck, those who know the dirty game very well – including some of his personal staff members — would not tell him to change the dance because the music has changed. In line with the body language of the president who has been widely described as very “humble”, his political strategists may have thought in the party’s days that the only way to relate with the opposition — in their propaganda — was to unleash the truth about what their boss was doing relentlessly but positively to transform the country economically, politically and security-wise. They may have thought this method could help bring back the many people that have been seduced by the opposition in believing that Jonathan is Mr President-Do-Nothing.
