Editor’s note: Almost a year has passed since last year’s election, when Muhammadu Buhari made history by becoming the first Nigerian to defeat a sitting president through the ballot box.
Toni Okoroji shares his views on why ex-president Goodluck Jonathan and his associates will never return to the power.
Colonel Sambo Dasuki and former president Goodluck Jonathan
How in the world would the smiling GEJ lose?
Very soon, we will celebrate the one year anniversary of the historic
2015 elections in Nigeria that swept away the presidency of His
Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and turned the fearsome PDP behemoth
that practically owned Nigeria into a very weak and maybe confused
opposition party.
Forgive me but there are many who still believe that the announcement
by Attahiru Jega on April 1, 2015 that Muhammadu Buhari had been
elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was just one of
those April fool pranks. They still expect someone to come to them and
shout, ‘April fool!’ and assure them that Jonathan still holds sway at
Aso Rock and that ‘Mama Pepe’ is still doing her thing. Even though the
cup has been presented, the celebration has taken place and the referee
has left town, to them, the game is not over. They are in shock.
In their calculation at the time, there was no way Jonathan was going
to lose. How in the world would the smiling GEJ lose with the billions
and billions of dollars ‘dasukied’ into the electoral system? Afenifere
was dollarized. MASSOB was dollarized. Gani’s OPC was dollarized.
Nearly all the top pastors in Nigeria were dollarized and they spoke
in tongues. The media was so dollarized that my otherwise very
professional friends at AIT became more Jonathan than Goodluck. Even
Nollywood was very well dollarized.
Problem is that the bucket we gave Buhari has big holes all over it
‘By the way, why is Buhari spending so much time fighting
corruption?’ ‘After all, corruption is not our problem’. ‘In any case,
every Nigerian is corrupt’. Every day, you read a lot of bull. I have
said elsewhere that Buhari is not a magician. When we elected him, we
more or less gave him a bucket to go and fetch water for all of us in
the Nigerian nation to drink. Problem is that the bucket we gave him has
big holes all over it. Once you put any water into the bucket, the
water leaks in different directions and there is very little left for
the people to drink. Is it not wise to block the holes first so that the
bucket can retain our water?
As long as the bucket continues to leak so badly, there will be no
good schools for our children to go to, no proper healthcare facilities
for our families, no good roads across our nation, no equipment for our
security men to keep us safe and no jobs for the teeming masses of our
citizens who are unemployed. I don’t care what part of Nigeria you come
from or how you pray, I am sorry you are a victim of the massive robbery
against our nation. If you pray for the failure of Muhammadu Buhari,
you are grinding pepper and stuffing it into your eyes. I know of no
special market in Nigeria where Muslims, Christians, Hausas, Igbos,
Yorubas or whoever get discounts because of their ethnic origins or
their religion.
If we do not let Buhari do his thing, what happened in Ghana will happen in Nigeria
It is true that oil price has fallen very sharply and the Naira is
struggling. It would not have been so bad if Nigeria had not been so
badly raped and zillions brazenly shipped out of our commonwealth by
those who rendered no meaningful service to our fatherland. I was at the
Federal High Court in Abuja recently when one of our ex governors was
being tried. I could not believe what I was hearing: the schemes this
guy put together to take what does not belong to him.
Let me repeat that if we do not let Buhari do his thing, what
happened in Ghana will happen in Nigeria. There will be no EFCC; there
will no courts, no prosecution, no trials and no witnesses. There will
be a Nigerian Jerry Rawlings and there will be firing squads. Your guess
is as good as mine who will be hit by the bullets.
It is time we all chilled, got rid of all this hatred and for the
sake of our children, got together and built a nation that provides a
future for everyone.
Let’s get real and move on. His Excellency, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan
has had his time on the national stage. No matter how much we curse
Buhari, Jonathan is not coming back as President of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria; Sambo Dasuki is unlikely to ever be National Security
Adviser in Nigeria again; Diezani Alison Madueke is unlikely to be
Minister of Petroleum again.
Chief Tony Okoroji is Chairman of the COSON Board. Tony Okoroji’s
first recorded works are contained in his 1976 album, Super Sure
released while he was eighteen years old. Okoroji however came to
national limelight in the early eighties with his release of several
cross over songs such as Juliana, Oriaku, Mama & Papa, Wishing You
Well, Locomotion, Otanishi, etc all of which became national favorites.
.He was simultaneously engaged as a music producer by the international
recording company, EMI.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Naij.com.
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