Believe APC Govt, You’ll Believe Anything!

By Reno Omokri

There is only one thing worse than the show of shame that took place at the National Assembly on Tuesday, August 7, 2018, when the Buhari administration laid siege on the National Assembly. The one thing worse than that despicable is the attempt by the executive to spin the whole thing as a conspiracy between Senate President, Bukola Saraki and the bow sacked DSS Boss, Lawal Daura. 

Oshiomhole and Buhari 

If you believe that tale, then I can assure you that you will believe anything. So preposterous is the allegation that I would have wondered why anyone will tell such a monumental lie. And then it hit me. The tactic now being employed by the Buhari administration to spin the National Assembly siege as a conspiracy between Senate President Bukola Saraki and the now disgraced DSS Director General, Lawal Daura is known as the Big Lie. 

The Big Lie was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler, who wrote in his now infamous book, Mein Kampf, that in the pursuit of propaganda, it is best for the authorities to cook up a lie so “colossal” that the public would not believe that anyone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”. This is exactly what the Buhari administration is doing. Their big lie is that Lawal Daura, the disgraced DSS DG who allegedly wept like a little girl when he was arrested, was working for Bukola Saraki.

Believe this and you will believe anything. Daura was the face of the cabal. He is from the same village as President Muhammadu Buhari. He has been an acolyte of the President for decades. What motive would he have to work against the President and for Senator Saraki? And the fact that the government continues to sell this theory and that even reputable news media are writing about it as if it were true seems to validate the theory propounded by Joseph Goebbels who said: “when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it.”

The fact that the Buhari government was behind the siege of the National Assembly is very clear going by the desperation of the All Progressives Congress Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, to get Saraki out of office as Senate President. Mr Oshiomhole, a man without tact, finesse, or diplomacy, uses every opportunity to lambast the Senate President and ask for his resignation.

In a press conference on Friday, August 10, 2018, Mr Oshiomhole stood logic on his head by claiming that since the Peoples Democratic Party was in the minority at the Senate, then the Senate President must give up his seat seeing as he is a member of the PDP. No law in the Nigerian statute books supports Mr Oshiomhole’s position. In fact, it was precisely his party, the APC,  that started (at least in this republic) the practice of asking its members to retain their  parliamentary seats and titles even if they left the parties. They did it with Aminu Waziri Tambuwal after he cross carpeted from the PDP to the APC on October 29, 2014.

As a matter of fact, Muhammadu Buhari, the man responsible for installing Oshiomhole as APC chairman, actually praised Tambuwal when he left the PDP and still retained his speakership. If you go back to the remarks Muhammadu Buhari made, you would find that he expressed admiration for what Tambuwal did. I mean, these are the sorts of hypocrisy that the APC has become known for. And it has become more of a pattern under Oshiomhole, a man who behaves as if he has a death-wish for his party.

For example, at the ceremony marking Godswill Akpabio‘s defection to the APC, both Oshiomhole and the APC’s somewhat tamed National Leader, Bola Tinubu, presented Akpabio to Akwa-Ibom as the panacea to PDP’s alleged ‘sixteen years of destruction in Akwa-Ibom state’. ‪But how could they present Akpabio to Akwa-Ibom in one breath and in the next breath ask Akwa-Ibom to reject the PDP because PDP destroyed Akwa-Ibom for sixteen years? Do they not see the contradiction?

For eight solid years out of those ‘sixteen years of destruction,’ Akpabio was the Governor! So Akwa-Ibom should reject Akpabio and also accept Akpabio! This is what in literature we call a paradox! ‪They said PDP’s sixteen-year rule in Akwa-Ibom was a waste. Victor Attah ruled for the first eight years. Godswill Akpabio ruled for the second eight years. Both men are now in APC. My question is this: Is APC a WASTE RECYCLING PLANT?

If that is the case, then PDP has recycled its waste to APC and is now clean! Another thing is that the APC styles itself as an anti-corruption party (although according to Transparency International, Nigeria is more corrupt today than it was under the PDP). Akpabio admitted that he has a case with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. The EFCC itself also admitted that Akpabio has a case with them. Yet, this is the man that the quartet of Buhari, Osinbajo, Tinubu and Oshiomhole all met.

This is the man they appointed ‘Leader of the APC in Akwa-Ibom’. And tomorrow the APC will say President Buhari has ZERO tolerance for corruption! When you celebrate alleged corruption, how can you be celebrated as an anti-corruption administration? And how could they say that the PDP destroyed Akwa-Ibom when the airport the APC leaders landed in at Uyo, the road they drove on from Uyo to Ikot-Ekpene and the stadium at which they received Akpabio were all built by the same PDP that ‘wasted sixteen years’.

Let them go to the nearest APC states to Akwa-Ibom (Imo and Edo) and see if they experience the level of uncommon infrastructural development they witnessed in Akwa-Ibom that PDP destroyed! The fact is that the APC under Adams Oshiomhole has become a party set on self-destruction. A party that is turning itself into the definition of hypocrisy. By replacing John Odigie Oyegun with Adams Oshiomhole, what the APC did was jump from frying pan to fire.