Rumble In Aso Rock

Like most of my countrymen, I have watched with increasing alarm the downright spiteful attitude our Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar has taken towards our beloved, internationally respected, highly decorated war hero and President, the man we fondly call Baba, Olusegun Obasanjo. Atiku has shown utter disrespect to the man who brought him into government. When the issue of constitutional amendment came up, Atiku not only went against his principal, he resorted to threats against those who sought to exercise their right to freedom of speech and to vote according to their conscience. When he tried to hold a potentially violent demonstration and the Police duly broke it up, he repaired to the premises of one of his co-conspirators against the people where he told blatant lies about Baba. He said Baba did not want to leave, and in fact, had hatched his plans several months in advance. All that meant was that Baba is a visionary, for he saw that his people would demand that he carry on. At the Public Hearings on Constitutional Amendment, we, the people, duly and resoundingly asked for Baba to carry on as our leader for as long as he saw fit. One stupid man waving a piece of paper he called an injunction could not stand in our way. We wanted Baba, and made our wishes clear. When Atiku saw that his bid to stop Baba at that point had failed, he resorted to all manner of lies and untruths. He claimed he had been harassed by agents of Baba. He pointed to changes in his personal staff as an example of the said harassment. Please, Mr. Vice President, Baba only acted out of concern for your safety. Then Atiku somehow managed to convince the AIT (a previously respectable news network) to assist him in his plans to subvert the will of the people. It was so bad that AIT refused many appeals from the National Assembly to take their cameras out of the chambers to allow the Honourable members conduct their business in peace.

Now, with Baba having exposed Atiku for the greedy, morally bankrupt and corrupt individual that he truly is, one would have expected a man with a shred of honor left in his black heart to simply admit his guilt and resign his high office…

I can’t go any further. My ribs are aching badly. I think I need an x-ray.

The mud wrestling match between Baba and Turaki so far has been of truly epic proportions, so much so that I've been waiting to see Vince McMahon pop his head round a curtain and say, 'That's a wrap, good job guys.' Woody Allen couldn’t have scripted a better comedy than this, and Charlie Chaplin (rest his dear soul) couldn’t have performed in a better one. I can hardly wait to see the Dailies each morning. Baba has opened up a barrel of toxic worms, and he forgot to wear his bio-hazard suit. Because, if this is his best shot, then it is a colossal embarrassment from a so-called tough guy. A two-day old baby could hit harder than this. Now, before anyone out there calls me an Atiku man or some similar bull, let me make myself perfectly clear: I am nothing of the sort. I simply call it like I see it and, personally, I believe Atiku is most definitely NOT clean. But, if this is how Baba planned on taking him down, he's got another think coming.

When I heard of an EFCC report of the Veep, I expected to see all the sordid details of his deals at the BPE revealed. I expected to read how he managed to sell Nigeria's crown jewels to himself and a few greedy friends. I expected the full details of the scam that was the 8th All Africa Games. I expected to read about crude oil lifting, fuel importing, millions of dollars gone missing, etc. Instead, what do I and millions of other Nigerians get? A limp, soggy, and quite frankly, pathetic noodle of an EFCC report that was probably dictated by Baba to Nuhu Ribadu in council.

A six year old reciting by rote couldn’t convict Atiku of anything based on this particular EFCC report. If Baba and Nuhu Ribadu are saying that all they have to hang their case on is a single disbursement of 125 million dollars from the PTDF, and they expect Atiku to be barred from contesting the 2007 polls on that ground, and have in fact tried to see to it that he is through what I can only call a Cockroach Panel made up of Baba’s loyal supporters, then they should please make public the name and phone number(s) of their igbo supplier.

Atiku must have laughed his head off when he read their report, and he has since swatted away the allegations with contemptuous ease. He has gone further to turn up the heat on Baba and his friends by raising, once again, the issue of the EFCC report on the 53 Billion Naira fraud at the NPA under Bode George.

It is public knowledge that Baba sat firmly on the report (not once but twice) to protect his good friend and party colleague. For the same man to come out and say the investigation of Atiku stems from his “zero tolerance” policy for corruption simply beggars belief. Sounds like the very picture of Zero Tolerance.