Addy: I suggest you and others who have such primodial view about Ojukwu's person and his politics read Ojukwu's interview with the Daily Trust newspaper posted above by Dave. Infact, after reading Ojukwu's ever artilculating views from that interview, it seems as though most of us here were speaking Ojukwu's mind. Its obvious that the greatest problem most Nigerians have with themselves is that they are either ignorant or are somewhat arrogant to go beyond what they are told by their equally ill-informed teachers, be they relatives or unrelated persons:
Luckily, most of the lies and inuendoes you and others told on this and other thread against Ojukwu's person are corrected in Ojukwu's interview. Samples:
On Ojukwu's grass-root popularity in the South East which I addressed in one of my mails, Ojukwu talks confidently of himself: Quote: "Come with me to Onitsha, Enugu or anywhere in the South-East and you’ll find — in fact, because I’m a proud man, I’ll say you’ll find a better display! There are people who talk about structures getting to ward levels and so on. I can boast that mine entered into the families. Every person. I say this with absolute conviction."
On the brazen rigging that passed as "elections," it's amazing to learn that it was not only ordinary Nigerians that were rigged out. Ojukwu himself was also a victim!: Quote "But no matter your structure; no matter what you have on the ground, the problems were — as I have indicated — situations so really flawed that it would be a miracle if any person other than Obasanjo won. What do I mean? I went for the election not knowing even whether I was a voter, or if I was capable of being voted in. I went into that election not having been given the various opportunities to vet the electorate which is my constitutional right...The only way I could vote in Nnewi was that I bought the candles, I bought matches, and then voted."
To confirm that when Ojukwu coughs Nigeria catches cold, Ojukwu tells his opponents that intimidation will not silence him: Quote: "I went on a private visit to Daura, to reciprocate a previous visit by my friend, Muhammadu Buhari and Nigeria almost caught pneumonia! That again is as a result of the struggle to actualise. Some will go to court. I encourage them to go to court and some will go to the tribunal. I encourage them so to do. I have chosen my area of action, and that is on the broadest scheme. I want to show you that every way you look at this, it’s flawed and I am confident, very confident that at the end of the day, sheer banditry will not rule Nigeria."
If Obasanjo is so "popular,"and "won" the election why is he and his fellow "victors" either in hidding or simply groaning in their "victory", Ojukwu explains: Quote: "I would, if you permit me, ask you a little question. Have you seen any place in Nigeria, where any group — no matter which, including PDP — has truly celebrated the victory? ...There is, for example, somebody posturing as the would-be governor of Anambra State. Oh yes! He is now in a hotel in Awka."
On why most Nigerians are so suspicious of those who claim to be their "leaders" in times of need as we have it in Nigeria today, here is vintage Ojukwu: Quote: "The problem of Nigerians is that in times of emergency, their leaders let them down. They speak too much English and forget action and direction, and so on. But once our people are properly guided, they are as good as any in the world."
For those who misread the relative quite that greated the fraudulent elections as to mean that "Nigerians voted their wish," that view can only be made by someone who is not familiar with the raw threat of force awaiting anyone who dare challenge Obasanjo's Gestapo. On why Nigerians are not protesting on the streets, Ojukwu explains: Quote: I say this because Nigerians would want to protest but the barrage of intimidations from the uniformed forces and indeed from the head of state himself makes them a bit worried—how far can we go? It is on record that when he (Obasanjo) said that there would be no protests, I was the very first person that said, "Ah, there you’ve gone too far." Protests? I will protest. But how many people can say that in Nigeria? It’s not because of what you imagine. It’s because they are being intimidated.
For the Addys that want to turn history upside down, Ojukwu explains why he had to defend himself and his people's right to be in 1967, Quote: "What would you have preferred? When you push him out, for him to lie down and die? Gracefully, of course. What sort of nonsense! What is the point, that over these years and you’re all in Nigeria — everybody says, "Ojukwu was right, Ojukwu was right. Oh yes, he said that so many years ago, I didn’t realise." Well, if that is true, then obviously he was not the secessionist. ...I got my rank in the battlefield. You might like to know, even my people are not so satisfied with the ranking, this is why I am Dim. Another way of translating Dim is a Marshall because that’s what they’re looking for—the super general."
As a necessarily "irritant," when asked what Obasanjo should do to save Nigeria from itself, Ojukwu raps up: Quote: "What we want is to give value to our votes. That is what we understand as democratic practice. Any other thing is all humbug. That’s the way I see it."
After reading this marvelous interview, despite every failed attempts by his enemies to demonize him, one came out with the true picture of who the REAL Ojukwu is: a Diplomat, Civil Rights Activist and and Statesman extra-ordinaire combined! Then compare his answers to questions in that interview with those given by Obasanjo to local and foreign media and you be the judge who is more qualified to govern Nigeria were Nigeria to be normal society. Ojukwu may just turn out to be another BEST PRESIDENT NIGERIA NEVER HAD OR MAY NEVER HAVE. Pity!!
Posts: 997 | From: Germany | Registered: Mar 2001
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obasanjo is truly dumb. But for the Yoruba to have allowed this moron son of theirs to confirm that the essential character of their nation is timidity, incompetence and parochialism shows real backwardness.
OBASANJO'S INFANTILE THREATS (SOME NOTES ON THE IMMINENT END OF STATE IN NIGERIA)
"Mass Action: Obasanjo Threatens Buhari, Ojukwu, Others…" Thisday 5/24/03 ----------------------------------------------------------------- One distinguishing feature of the Nigerian political crisis is its capacity to generate a clown at every phase. In this epoch, one would have given the despicable prize to Jerry Gana, the garrulous clown who represents everything that is contemptible and vulgar about the Nigerian state. Enter obasanjo Matthew Okikiola Aremu, the chief comedian of them all, the big masquerade himself.
Someone once said that every political career ultimately ends in a disaster. Obasanjo's political career is headed for a spectacularly tragic end, much of it brought on by obasanjo himself. The amazingly unrestrained utterances of Mr obasanjo in the ongoing Nigerian electoral crisis suggests that the man is fatefully following a pre-designed script, a mad logic that will end in chaos and probably spell the end of the state of Nigeria. Couldn't someone ask this vile, uncouth man to shush?
Among all the things so far said about the just concluded electoral charade in Nigeria, nothing rings so risibly hollow than obasnjo and his kinsman Tafa Balogun threatening the use of state violence against aggrieved Igbo and Hausa-Fulani protesting against the violation of their civil rights in Nigeria! How credible is this threat? There is no empirical or theoretical basis to believe that the threat is credible - na shakara, oodua style.
Mr obasnjo and his friend Balogun in their fanatical bid to sustain a deformed mandate have conveniently forgotten that in 1966, their kinsman Brigadier Ogundipe, the erstwhile most senior army officer in Nigeria, had resigned his commission in dishonour, scampered into a merchant ship and escaped to Britain when Northern Nigerian recruits or NCOs refused to take orders from him. What has changed, what makes obasanjo think that his "security forces" would shoot at their own people in 2003 on his orders, by his mere say so? Where will the forces being used to threaten aggrieved Igbo and Hausa-Fulani be drawn from? Of course, learning from experience is a matter of basic intelligence, which unfortunately is not a strong selling point of The Leader, the Fuhre himself.
So far, obasanjo's rhetoric has been irresponsible and uncontrolled by any legal or moral codes. This posture will achieve nothing except drive his opponents mad, even madder than they currently are and strengthen their collective resolve. The man 's political doctrine amounts to nothing but demanding servile obedience to anyone in power no matter how acquired or how such power is used. It is at this point that obasanjo's intransigence collides with the Igbo and Hausa-Fulani interests in Nigeria.
Obasanjo is the only person talking about force. Others are using the lexicon of democracy, civil rights, mass action etc. He looks and sounds increasingly shabby and stupid in his threat of use of force and the alleged deployment of soldiers to Owerri completes the farce. This rejection of reason in favour of the myth of "mandate" and force will be the downfall of obasanjo. He may well drag the Nigerian state down with him. Ironically, it is the same obasanjo who is preaching force on rooftops who will hide in ambulances, fire engines and hospital maternity wards when the chips are down over the use of force in Nigeria.
Now, in considering obasanjo's fanatical threat, three issues, which will ultimately define his relegation to the dustbin of history become apparent. We summarise them here:
1. Obasanjo's solution has been hinged on the threat of use of force. This assumes quite incorrectly, the dismal absence of will power among of his opponents. The other snag is that obasanjo has no moral authority to deploy state force on his opponents. Experience from other lands - Romania under Ceasesceu, Serbia under Milosevic, the USSR suggest that there is a strict limit to the reliance on the coercive apparatus of state in propping up a discredited dictatorship. The Nigerian army and police may well refuse any order by a deeply compromised dictator to shoot at Nigerian citizens upholding their civil rights.
2. Obasanjo is blissfully ignorant. Mr obasanjo may not have had much formal education, but he must be lucid enough to note the empirically validated historical connection between the use of the army to quell civil opposition and military coup in Africa. The Tiv riots in the 1960s, the politicisation of the Nigerian army and the coup of 1966 is an example. Therefore if obasanjo invites the security forces to quell opposition to his yet -to-be-inaugurated illegitimate regime, he is by extension inviting the military to take over. By invoking the use of force in a civil electoral matter, obasanjo is therefore unwittingly scripting the speech of the next set of military rulers in Nigeria: "fellow countrymen…"
3. Obasanjo fetishes force, a thing which he has no monopoly over the use of in Nigeria. Neither the Igbo nor the Hausa-Fulani will sit by while Yoruba-controlled state violence is unleashed on them. Threat of use of state force will therefore achieve the following counter-productive outcome for obasanjo: Hausa-Fulani will rally behind Buhari, Igbo will rally behind Ojukwu and the Yoruba will rally behind their man- obasanjo. In this scenario, if Ojukwu and Buhari are arrested by the Yoruba and their agents, then the Nigerian state will start to unravel in its very foundations.
Let it be known that Nigeria is a federation of three main population blocs. It is this tripodal structure that constitutes its fundamental core as a state player in the global arena. Any attempt to upturn this is doomed to failure. The unity which obasanjo seeks .i.e. unity without legality is destructive. It is destructive in the sense that a forcibly unified state with which obasanjo and his clique identify as the highest good Nigerians is conceived in illegal terms- the imposition of Yoruba hegemony on the rest of us.
It is clear that obasanjo's position is dictated by a gross misunderstanding of this basic fundamental of the Nigerian state. This gross misunderstanding propels obasanjo towards a condition of crisis in which he has no form of escape. And because obasnjo has no proper understanding of the Nigerian state, he tends to necessarily imbue Nigerian disputes with inflexible and uncompromising elements of ignorant fanaticism. Clearly, if a couple of almajiri agitators can make a gross mockery of Nigeria during the Miss World debacle, obasanjo is mistaken, grossly mistaken about the grave danger to Nigeria of his unrestrained utterances.
Finally, in 4 years of lacklustre leadership, obasanjo has developed no political, economic or social vision. He has embraced Oduadom as his central ideology with the concomitant hatred for the Igbo, Hausa-Fulani and other non-Yoruba peoples of Nigeria. Obasnjo's deep hatred for democratic institutions and commitment to the ideals of a one-party state has led him to enact pointless electoral manipulations.
What is more, Obasanjo now seeks to suppress the autonomous institutions of the Nigerian plural society in order to impose himself as the sole _expression of the will of the people. Like all forms of fascist dictatorship one theory to explain Obasnjo's irrational behaviour is sexual repression experienced as a prisoner under Gen. Abacha. The bizarre outcome is the final transformation of governance in Nigeria into an affair of myth, perversion, lunacy, banditry and state terror. For obasanjo, and his narrow treasonable clique, all stages of Nigerian "democracy" are marked by conquest and memories of conquest.
Mr obasanjo has again shot himself on the foot by being the first to invoke violence in the ongoing saga. Force is a two-edged sword: obasanjo seeks to win and maintain power by the invocation of state force. This amazing endorsement of force has now removed any lingering moral or ethical objection for the deployment of the same state force by whoever can to ethically terminate obasanjo's fraudulently acquired mandate. In other words, obasanjo has now legitimised the use of force to remove him.
What conclusion emerges from this discussion? Amidst the quicksand of Nigeria's political situation, obasanjo has now endorsed the use of force to acquire and retain power. Therefore, like all fascist tales, the obasanjo saga leaves us with only one question yet unanswered: at what point and under what circumstances will the obasanjo tale of dread be itself forcibly terminated to save Nigeria from its impending disintegration and chaos?
Mazi Kevin O Ani Executive Director CIVIL RIGHTS LEAGUE -NIGERIA
___________________ achieve Biafra and show the difference Posts: 646 | From: Los Angeles, CA | Registered: Nov 2002
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As a twenty year old university student in Nigeria, I doff my hat for The Ikemba Ndi Nnewi and General Buhari. I examined the conduct of the selection process on the 11 and 19th of April. If these results stand, we will be doing the greatest disservice to the future generation of Nigerians. What moral example will the socalled professed born again Gen Obasanjo and his supporters led by "Bishop" Mbang be setting? what right do they have to jail criminals if they cannot condenm criminality? Why should we allow illegality to reign because of "stability". In the past four years have we been stable? Corruption is on an alltime high under a transperent ruler. We students have been out of school for the past four months. Our roads are in tatters. Armed robbery and thuggery have become the official tool for targeting opponents of the government. Our brothers are unable to get jobs. Why cant the voice of millions of Nigerians be heard?
For those who believe Obasanjo would have the election regardless of rigging, I believe they are not only exhibiting immaturity in their thoughts but are being foolish. Is it right for and armed robber to steal and maim people? will it be a reasonable excuse to state that he would have gotten the item if he had not stolen it. Only a 1 month old kid will examine the election results and conclude it was not the greatest sham in the history of nigeria. As a young kid, I believe that tribalism was a thing brought by the older generation which was being eroded. I believed that when the yorubas defended abiola, they defended him based on their conviction, that good should prevail over evil. But today, I am totally surprised at the ridiculous and irresponsible defense of obasanjo victory by the yorubas. Their silence and acquisence have shown and confirmed my suspicion that tribalism reigns supreme over good in yorubaland. Ikemba and Buhari have every right in the world to defend the millions of Nigerians who were disenfranchised in the elections. Nobody in this world can tell me that Obasanjo won the elections in the southeast. How can anyone tell me that the igbos love Obasanjo more than their sons like Alex Ekwueme who was treated in a bad manner by Obasanjo. How can the igbos love Obasanjo more than Ojukwu who defended his kinsmen from annihilation. how can the igbos love Obasanjo more than Chuba Okadigbo. Obasanjo took Ndi Igbo for a ride and we must stand up and support Ojukwu. How many of the promises made to the Igbos were fulfilled. All we got were insults from him and his ministers.
Posts: 6 | From: Michigan | Registered: Jan 2003
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It is a fact that Obasanjo used the machinery of incumbency to rig himself into a second term as president.
It is also a fact that the same machinery of incumbency will be employed to quash any efforts by contestants calling for a re-election through the judiciary system.
And the recent arrival of Israeli anti-terrorism squad in Nigeria exemplifies how far this same disgusting machinery of incumbency will go to checkmate the only option - violence, or threats of it - available to disgruntled contestants.
Nigerians may huff, puff and whine all they like but the country is stuck with this selfish, devious and incompetent man for the next 4 years. Come May 29th, Obasanjo will be sworn in and life will go on as usual in Nigeria.
posted
If other parts of Nigeria refuse to support a Yoruba president, why should Yoruba people support any non-Yoruba who becomes president in the future?
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Presidential candidate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) in the April 19 presidential elections, Chief Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, yesterday said he has had a chat with President Olusegun Obasanjo in which he advised that the only condition for dousing tension in the country was for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to concede the states in which APGA and other parties won to them.
The true voice of NdiIgbo, it is now or never, the elders has spoken, only right is might.
___________________ He likened the second coming of Christ to the realisation of the Biafran dream, stating that at a time people least expect, the much sought Biafra would be a reality..Rev. Fr. Cornelius Ezeiloaku Posts: 622 | From: santiago, chile | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote: However, the APGA chairman, Okorie, who traced the sufferings of the Igbos since 1964 said the people had been in the wilderness all along and that 2003 remained their year of liberation.
"No person in Nigeria, no matter how highly placed can prevent Igbo emancipation this year. The people voted for the people they want to rule them. Yet they are now trying to impose leaders on us from Abuja. It is not proper. Why are they afraid? They didn't want us to go, yet, they don't want us to co-exist. It will no longer happen," he said.
Obasanjo has struck himself and yoruba on the leg, Igbo has spoken, it's freedom or death, we chose freedom at any price.
___________________ He likened the second coming of Christ to the realisation of the Biafran dream, stating that at a time people least expect, the much sought Biafra would be a reality..Rev. Fr. Cornelius Ezeiloaku Posts: 622 | From: santiago, chile | Registered: Jan 2002
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Daud: If you are suprised at Soyinka, wait until the day Obasanjo will be IMPOSED on the Nigerian people on the 29th of May. That is, assuming that he succeeds in killing everyone that has sworn to stop him. While some were here lambasting at other Nigerian tribes for Nigeria's woes, on my part, after dealing extensively with the Yorubas politically, I have come to the conclusion that of all Nigerian tribes, the Yorubas are the MOST DISHONEST and TRIBALISED when it comes to politics, so I long took the irriversible decision not to trust anything that goes by the spelling, Y-O-R-U-B-A. Anyone (be you Igbo or not) who doubts this view should going into any political alliance with even the most "urbane" Yorubas and you will sooner than later come out with same view. Sad as it may be, TRUTH must be told. Now I know why one northern politician who on visiting one asian country which Nigeria started its independence journey at same time was asked why Nigeria is still in the woods despite its human and material resources, to which the northern politcian replied the journalist sarcastically, "is there a Yorubas tribe here?"
Events of the last four years of Obasanjo's pro-Yoruba presidency and this election saga has confirmed that Nigeria's enemy NUMBER 1 are the Yorubas. No amount of weak defence by the Addys will change that fact.
Propernaija: No matter what happens on May 29, I repeat what I had earlier said, which stands now and even after Obasanjo is gone: EVEN IF OBASANO IS SWORN-IN HUNDRED TIMES OVER, THIS SHAME HE HAS BROUGHT UPON HIMSELF AND TO HIS YORUBA RACE WILL NEVER GO AWAY.
All, Its not only the Igbos who seem to have drawn a line on the sand to say "ENOUGH OF THE THIS IMPOSITION!" Even the god-like Emir of Kano got his blue-blood ass almost wiped in the public by his hitherto follow-follow subjects for paying a "solidarity visit" to the moron from Otta while the mouth-piece of the North (Buhari) was suggesting that Nigerians use the "Kennedy and Gadghi solution" to teach Obasanjo and those who will dare follow his foot-steps in future a LESSON.
There is a limit to a people's patience. Like all dictators, in his inordinate ambition and lust for RAW POWER, Obasanjo has really milk out every drop of patience there is in any forward-thinking Nigerian. So what we are seeing in the east and some parts of the north is a reaction of a people who are fed up with lies, unfulfilled promises and betrayals.
As for we Igbos who are already down, we have nothing, absolutely NOTHINg to lose if we are crushed beneath the earth. ITS NOW OR NEVER!
Posts: 997 | From: Germany | Registered: Mar 2001
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Bola Ige must be fuming in his grave?
