At a time like this one can’t however be nostalgic about Alhaji Lai Mohammed. As spokesperson for the competition birthday party, Mohammed had all of the facts to filibuster successive governments’ justifications for introducing guidelines that will pressure or impose traces, irrespective of the lengthy-time period advantages of such rules.
He did that masterfully with the Goodluck Jonathan administration and made Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala doubt her credentials of a PhD from Harvard university and managing directorship of the sector bank earlier than joining Nigeria’s federal govt council.
A former Canadian high Minister, John Diefenbaker, once said that one of the greatest assets of a democracy is the presence of an competition birthday celebration that keeps governments on their ft via criticisms in their programmes, regulations, tempo and perspectives. Wherein such criticisms are lacking or in short supply, society may regress into authoritarianism, he posits.
Regrettably, this is the state of Nigeria’s democracy in the meanwhile. PDP, which need to fill the void, has lost its voice. The follies and foibles of its leadership have forced them into acquiescence.
Voices of dissent, even from within, have dimmed or patently absent. The few mere brickbats and useless rhetoric of the scattered troops of the opposition military, led by using Olisa Metuh and Femi Fani-Kayode, who to start with challenged PMB and his group, which gave a semblance of retaining a vigil on authorities, an challenge brilliantly carried out with the aid of its primary rival, the APC, while it turned into in opposition, has been changed with deafening silence and intra-birthday celebration nihilism.
I am convinced that if the opposition Peoples Democratic celebration had hearkened to Lai Mohammed’s voice and despatched its spokespersons for training under the now minister of information and culture, whilst the shoes changed legs after closing yr’s presidential election, PMB could have had it difficult managing the deluge of discontent in town.
Though, it could now not be a complete catastrophe, there is enough room to whip the President to line on his electoral promises and the dwindling welfare of the citizenry. Exceptional, he is tackling corruption and the Boko Haram risk has been driven too a ways, not like inside the beyond. That can not be stated of the increases inside the costs of PMS and power price lists. The fading megawatts from a depressing less than five,000 megawatts to much less than 1,500 megawatts in much less than 12 months cannot be excused, now not even by the renewed hostilities of the Niger Delta Avengers and other insurrection businesses. It’s miles the obligation of presidency to locate an stop to the debacle and offer protection for public infrastructure and the people.
Give it to Lai Mohammed, he’s the excellent competition spokesman, in my estimation. I’m certain Sam Ikoku and MCK Ajuluchukwu might wonder if they didn’t beneath-perform their roles and Goebbels, too would shrug in his grave for the sort of propaganda that Lai churned in opposition to Goodluck Jonathan, Umaru Yar’Adua and Olusegun Obasanjo in fast succession.
Anybody concurs that a colourful opposition need to waltzed through troubles, dissect them with empirical evidences and provide you with alternatives in an effort to patriotically puncture legitimate propaganda on one hand and make sure that the authorities in power does now not quick-exchange the human beings.
What we have visible inside the PDP case is at variance with the dictates of democracy. The allures of power seem to leave majority of their contributors with no opportunity than to jump deliver or continue to be silent.
What greater do human beings need to convince them that PDP leaders are clueless, if they cannot articulate opportunity regulations and canvass better approaches of doing things. The party has certainly spent sixteen years in strength without getting to know anything.
PDD has lost more participants than those fifty three portfolio parties because of greed. It is clear the ones atypical bedfellows genuinely co-habitated to thieve strength and our commonwealth.
Why has PDP robust guys lost their voices? Is the birthday celebration peopled by politicians who are bereft of ideas and simplest interested in looting to aspire to authorities workplaces? Are they so afraid of Buhari’s anti-corruption fight and none can get up to him due to the fact they had been all compromised and ate the forbidden fruit? Why is PDP now leadersless, rudderless and so clueless that it can’t in all honesty be called a political birthday party?
The birthday celebration’s factionalisation is the worst inside the state’s records. A go to to the boardroom has no longer helped as the Board of Trustees doesn’t agree with the period in-between countrywide govt Committee. The governors don’t understand their former colleagues as celebration stalwarts and the involved stakeholders have little or no electoral price to be taken seriously.
The exit of Obasanjo, although ridiculed through the birthday party genuinely affected the followership of the party inside the south west. The recent dumping of the party by former Senate president, Ken Nnamani additionally signifies the exit of robust political figures from the birthday celebration. Jonathan is greater of a countrywide parent than a political illustration leaving the party with few humans capable of influencing the political energy of the celebration. The celebration needs to both win again some of its misplaced political warriors, groom successors or surrender permanently the political area to the APC. All of us can not suffer collective amnesia while there is supposed to be established opposition in PDP. If PDP continues by means of its propensity to show Nigeria right into a one-party kingdom, the united states of america’s democracy need to be regarded failed.