Roguery Incorporated

Roguery, Incorporated

By Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh

Tomorrow weeps in deep groans and silent tears, when today is squandered. Posterity is alarmed at the embezzlement of the present. And rationality has no respect for this prospect. Political irresponsibility has never constructed the greatness of any human society. The peace and progress of every nation is forever predicated on, and guaranteed by responsible and visionary leadership, which pilots the affairs of the state, with a great sense of duty. History testifies to this fact. The Great Augustus Caesar was reputed to have found Rome a city of bricks, but left it a city of marbles. FDR gave America the New Deal, which not only brought it out of the Great Depression, but kick-started a socio-economic renaissance that would eventually set America at the pinnacle of global dominance. Winston Churchill led Britain during its darkest hour; leading it to snatch victory from the jaws of Nazi death and destruction. Konrad Adenauer and Friedrich Ebert inspired the German post-war economic miracle, which set Germany out as one of the global economic giants of today. China was carefully and rigidly managed by men, who nursed a vision of Sino-global dominance.

This crop of men not only had a dream, which was more than some delirious meanderings of synaptic import; they inspired their fellow citizens with the legitimacy of their vision. They were a purpose-driven lot; never an amorphous collage of looters, whose private pockets is god. The common good inspired their greatest vision, and drove their resolve. They were true patriots. They asked a la Kennedy, what they can do for their country, and not what their country can do for them, or how much they can steal from the commonweal. The emphasis was on what they can contribute; what they can sacrifice; what they can offer-not what can accrue to their avarice. That is rational. They knew that when the society is good, everybody benefits. And when it implodes into brazen inequality, the frustrations of those at the fringes will configure itself into crime and other social dissonances in other to restore equilibrium, and ensure the survival of the economically or socially disenfranchised.

That informs John F. Kennedy’s timeless observation that if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it can never save the few who are rich. If hunger weds the poor to insomnia; fear will invite the rich to a wake. That is the law of social existence. If the elite and rich steal every resource, leaving the poor to swim in the crumbs; the volcanic rumblings of frustrated stomachs would erupt to submerge the society in lava of insecurity. The Brazilian and South American favelas are reactions in this direction; the rise in armed robbery in the streets of Lagos and other major Nigerian cities; the militant agitation and secessionist moves in the Niger Delta, and other parts of Nigeria, are all rejoinders to this profound social disequilibrium.

Social disequilibrium arrives, when a society allows a league of buccaneers to access and control its source of social legitimacy. At this instance, the state is not only poised to be pillaged; its rendezvous with greatness is automatically and indefinitely postponed. The State then renegotiates a new appointment with poverty and social dissonance, which would rip the social health of the society asunder, with consequences that will forever echo across the historical landscape of that society. That is the case of Nigeria. Today, for instance, many countries are treating Nigerian citizens with sadistic disdain, due to the fact that we have a leadership that orchestrates our regress, instead of our progress. We have never had a government that has not been icons of corruption. Why Nigeria is so cursed with such misfortune is for sure not the guilt of our stars. The fault is in us. Shakespearean Cassius articulated it well: “Men are at times masters of their own fates. The fault Dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in us that we are underlings”. We need not drill into the depths to see reasons why the Nigerian predicament is not ready to yield in a hurry. But before going further, we need to establish some basis.

Politics is valuable only when it is geared towards guaranteeing social felicity to the citizenry. Politics is about the acquisition and control of power, and its subsequent deployment for the social good of the populace. That is the central dogma of politics. Power is for the people. And anything that has something to do with the people must be under-girded by some canons of reason and rules of ethics. If not chaos would be enthroned. This flows from the fact that although a gregarious and social being, every human person remains primarily a universe of conflicting possibilities. And the orbit or personal trajectories of these individual micro-universes must be subordinated to the social good. That is why ethics and law exist.

To this end, men with ethical deficits should never be in governance. Integrity is a compulsory qualification. But when touts and retired thieves are allowed to form coalitions like the PDP, with the sworn aim of hijacking power by hook or crook, then the abhorable abuse of the apparatus of state would be enthroned as a normal currency of operation. Plato the great Athenian philosopher knew that if the worst elements of a society are ever allowed to hijack power, the state is set to be embezzled out of existed by instalments. He condensed his fears in The Republic, where he advocated that only the wisest elements should be allowed admittance in the corridors of power. When the obverse obtains, then the state awaits its funeral. He warned that only the silence and inaction of good men would accelerate the empowerment and enthronement of buccaneers on the tribunes of power.

But since Nigerians never learn from history, they are forever, a la Santayana, condemned to repeat it. And Nigerians since 1960 have been making extraordinary effort to shamelessly repeat obnoxious history, with such obscene stupidity that is only resident in the hearts of primeval foolery.

Nigerian politics has been an essential arena, where corruption meets greed. This is a stinking morass where rottenness and decadence embrace. Here ethics is a victim of arrant disregard. The consideration of the people’s welfare is a meaningless vestige, cast in frozen irrelevance. The political actors kick and claw to advertise their worst natures to the world. Nothing is sacred for their leprous grasps. This nation of greats has been reduced to an icon of corruption and a laughing stock of the world, because criminal irresponsibility and roguery have been brazenly allowed a walkover in its political life. The Nigerian State is not only crucified in between a gang of thieves; she is being mercilessly raped for mercenary considerations, by her sons. No other construction acquits itself in this regard. Our discomfiture knows no bounds. How could a people be so cursed with mercenaries as citizens, who for a mere pittance, could auction off their heritage? It flogs the imagination speechless!

Nigerian leadership is an incorporation of inveterate rogues. That is the troubling thing. Although this has been the case since the invention of Nigeria, the PDP leadership of this nation has reached an optimum all time low in crass incompetence and grotesque impunity.

PDP is a boil on Nigeria’s scrotum. This conglomeration of highly qualified, hallmarks of corruption is politically a compromised piece of unbearable nightmare. This is the most charitable description that a crosspollination of decorum and common sense could contrive. This Party has acquitted itself terribly as a plague on the Nigerian body politic. Nigerians are screaming to wake up from this bad dream, which they are incidentally experiencing with their eyes wide open. But this behemoth keeps on strangulating the body politic with its orgy of corruption and visionlessness. To this end, this party comports itself as nothing but a cult of primitive greed, colonized by ethical monsters, who have variously written some profound lines in the history of greed. PDP not only underwrites unbelievable impunity, it licenses monumental thievery. Colossal thieves like Deprieye Alamesiegha, Tafa Balogun, Joshua Dariye, Peter Odili, Chimaroke Nnamani and the rest, are premium products of the PDP establishment. These men and many of their colleagues in the PDP are primeval crooks.

Over and above that, this party is a Machiavellian contraption that repackages; micro-mismanages, and peddles a crude politics of exclusive illusion. In Abuja and everywhere that the PDP is power, there exists this grand orchestrated pretence, flamboyantly designed to hoodwink the citizenry and keep their attention-span occupied, to the effect that the government is functioning, while underneath throbs directionlessness, anomie, and grotesque incompetence-classic symptoms of Machiavellian manipulative statecraft. This atmosphere abhors visionaries and smothers innovation. Creativity is hated, because it threatens the consolidated ignorance native to Machiavellian pretence with exposure. Proficiency here is abhorred because it indicts the pervasive incompetence that rules the corridors of Nigerian power. This was why Okonjo Iweala with her sterling qualities and rock solid integrity was frustrated into throwing in the towel. The only anchor of stability in that cabinet was lost to the envious benediction that incompetence pays to excellence.

The apogee of PDP’s inglorious scheming was attained in the the third term imbroglio. The same inglorious characters, who underwrote Abacha’s life presidency campaign, joined forces to contrive and attempt smuggling Obasanjo unto an unconstitutional life-presidency, via third term. Ojo Maduekwe and some corporate members of the cabal that is holding Nigeria to a ransom were the wandering minstrels. Maduekwe, one must remember, was a part of Abacha’s grand third term scheme. In places where people are given to morals, Ojo Maduekwe’s name will become a synonym for betrayal of all that is good, true and beautiful. But this guy retains relevance in Obasanjo’s sorry scheme of things. George Bush’s intelligence chiefs are incurable pedestrians. He was looking for an axis of evil, and all they could come up with was that meagre list; while the PDP that is the real axis of evil was not even mentioned. Poor Wole Soyinka! He was the lone visionary that really looked into the crystal ball, and saw this “nest of killers” for what it is.

This party deploys itself in subservience genuflection to the mercenary misapprehensions of some trans-tribal cabal of highly placed rogues, who love their pockets more than Nigeria. In this class of rogues, we have Lamidi Adedibu, who blackmailed, kicked, and arm twisted an elected governor to bribe him with 15 million every month from the state’s 65 million naira security vote. We equally have Chris Ubah; the rogue who was appointed a PDP trustee, who blackmailed and kidnapped a sitting governor to pay him 3 billion naira from the State’s coffers for rigging him into office. Here we equally have Obasanjo, who collected 100 million kicked back to his campaign by Joshua Dariye from the Plateau State ecological fund. The list is endless.

In fact, a roll call of this party reads like who-is-who in the creation and sustenance of the Nigerian predicament. The party’s top echelon is peopled by men who either exist on borrowed integrity or are structurally retarded northwards. A perfect example here is Fani Kayode, who should be an inmate of a psychiatric hospital, but was made a minister in the federal republic of Nigeria. That this man, whose dictionary does not know the word decorum, was given a ministerial portfolio is an index of the poverty of ideas dominating Nigerian leadership. This is a Rottweiler that attacks all who had the courage to disagree with PDP’s consolidated recklessness. This proves that PDP members are shopkeepers of unethical wares, and mercenaries who worship avarice. Nigeria at the hands of PDP will be bludgeoned to extinction.

This conglomeration of expired brains and frozen moralities fund the most inordinate political recklessness that Nigeria has witnessed in recent memory. And Nigerians seems to have rediscovered their civic timidity at this onslaught. The fault is not in our stars. Obasanjo and his co-wayfarers in this dispensation have raised a new benchmark in the inspiration of public repugnance. These political clowns are battening on and battering away our collective heritage. And Nigerians look on helplessly as spectators forced at gunpoint to watch the inglorious rape of their spouses.

PDP as an establishment inspires loathing and cordially invites disgust. And that Nigerians have not risen in mass revolution more seismic than the 1789 French revolution is not a testament to their satisfaction with their contrived circumstance. Neither is it silent approval for the debauched indiscretions of the PDP. Their inaction stems not only from their infinite propensity to endure evil, but from a crosspollination of factors consolidated by some incomprehensible absence of what William Abraham would identify as sciento-technical rationality; which breeds fatalism, superstition, and acts as opium that narcotises them from their immediate predicament.

Let’s now go to the court of facts, to reappraise the issues raised by the whole saga. We elect the ethico-historic appraisal method. In this method, we look at the facts, analyse them using interdisciplinary perceptual prisms offered us by philosophy, law, ethics, and commonsense. This is necessary because as time has shown, Nigerians have this unholy vocation of always succumbing to historical amnesia and therefore opening themselves up to the quackeries of historical revisionists. The facts must never be mutilated in furtherance of mercenary objectives. That is why we are writing.

At the pinnacle of the PDP, sits Mr Olusegun Obasanjo. This is a leader who has performed below all rational expectations that informed and validated his imposition on the rest of us since 1999. This is a leader who was re-imposed on Nigeria by the conservative Oligarchy made up of retired military brigands and the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy as their Man-Friday, who would protect and not probe their undeodorized asses since they shared the same lineage as corrupt looters of the Nigerian treasury. Alex Ekwueme was a better candidate as all Nigerians know. But after the charade of the Eagle square primaries, the coast was clear for the emergence of a civilian tyrant, whose word is not worth the paper it was written on.

Obasanjo, who has forever being a beneficiary of others people’s misfortune, had quite some squandermanic pedigree. His amblings today is in line with his nature. His first missionary journey in power was not uneventful. Fate has always given him an opportunity to write himself into history. But most times, his appropriation of these opportunities yields mediocre historical impact. For instance, he sat upon an oil boom that directed rivers of revenue flowing into Nigerian coffers. What did he do? He presided over the squandering of this wealth in senseless prestige projects that are bereft of every strategic content and economic sense. Under him during his first stint as a military head of state after Murtala Muhammed’s overthrow between 1976 and 1979, the Nigerian state embarked upon the manufacture of an illusion. FESTAC 77; an extravagant jamboree organized by the myopic Nigerian state to show off its newly found oil wealth was a festival of squandermania and corruption.

During FESTAC, Nigeria spent several billions of dollars to organize an opulent advertisement of a spectacular illusion. Here, Nigeria under Obasanjo attempted a repackaging of Nigeria’s diverse cultural traditions in a bid to create a national culture that would establish Nigeria as the centre of the black world. Today, the fact is increasingly being recognized that FESTAC foreshadowed and contributed to the politics of illusion and extreme corruption that have plagued Nigeria in recent times. Obasanjo’s government of those days husbanded our oil wealth into some obscene visionless manoeuvres. Our agricultural base was allowed to desiccate and die due to this myopia. The ultimate paradox of the Obasanjo’s regime then was that our apparent oil wealth was allowed to mask and speed up the decay of Nigeria’s real productive capacities, which resulted in the debilitating poverty and inequality that has persisted till today.

Why and how OFN (Operation Feed the Nation) metamorphosed into OFN—Obasanjo Farms Nigeria—is still one of the greatest miracles of that administration—a world class example of how to convert a national program into private ownership. One can see that Andy Ubah’s purchase of farm equipment for Obasanjo farms with smuggled funds has an “august” pedigree. After all the farm’s legitimacy is of doubtful provenance.

Resurfacing from Abacha’s valley and shadow of death in 1999, Obasanjo rode roughshod to power on the defunct mandate of MKO Abiola. Since 1999, till date, he has brazenly and systematic dishonoured almost all the promises he made to Nigerians on assumption of office. His inaugural speech on 29th May, 1999 against the backdrop of today is political perjury. This guy lied to Nigerians under oath. For instance, he promised to tackle corruption head on, not minding whose ox is gored in the process. He promised that he would not empathize with any sacred cow in the course of this campaign. What happened 8 years later?

We now have more sacred corrupt cows than before. And almost all of them are his friends and associates. That was why he did not hesitate to sack the Accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Vincent Azie, whose audit found out that the presidency regales in corruption. Those indicted by the report were neither prosecuted nor even mentioned. Azie’s report was suppressed, because it indicted the president and his hypocrisy. Today, in the twilight of his administration, he has been sending out confusing signals that he does not want to leave office; and that his corrupt friends are immune from prosecution and harassment of the EFCC, while anybody that ever opposed him would have the EFCC as nightmare.

This president has not satisfactorily accounted to Nigerians how his name became associated with the Transcorp shares. He has not explained to Nigerians why his Financial Crimes Commission is after his opponents, like Atiku Abubakar, while his friends like Bode George and Tony Anenih are yet to explain to Nigerians what happened to the billions that their parastatals got from the State treasury. He has not satisfactorily explained or defended himself from the accusation of the apparent conflict of interest between his office and his private business, as he was accused of still signing checks of the Obasanjo farms in Aso rock. He has not explained to Nigerians his role in the lingering Anambra saga, where he seems to have empowered a clique of renegades into ransacking the state to achieve some nebulous agenda only to known to him and his cohorts. He has not told us why Chris Ubah and his brother are yet to tell Nigerians why they engineered the kidnap of a sitting governor, and why the presidential jet was used to smuggle money into the USA.

Secondly, he promised to fix the Nigerian power sector. Today after some Billions of Dollars sunk in the power sector, Nigerians are yet to see the fruits of that labour. And no account has been rendered to them about what happened to those funds, and why they are not enjoying the utilities, after they have paid for the service. Nigeria still imports refined petroleum products since the Abacha days despite the billions sunk already in fixing the refineries. But Biafra refined her own petroleum under the most difficult conditions of constant bombardment in mobile refineries. And Nigeria is not at war, yet we cannot refine petroleum for domestic use. This President kept lying to Nigerians that the government was subsidising petrol for domestic use, while some independent analysis exploded that myth and the billions of dollars that disappeared into dark canals due to that lie sold to Nigerians over some decade. Bolaji Aluko asked OBJ and the NNPC: where is our subsidy? That question remains unanswered till date, even as OBJ doubled as president and petroleum minister.

This is a president that arbitrarily contravenes the constitution he swore to uphold. This is a president that looks on while his friends and associates violate the laws of the land with audacious impunity. Chris Ubah told him to his face that he rigged the 2003 elections in Anambra State in PDP’s favour. The president neither caused his arrest nor prosecution. Rather, he sanctioned the elevation of this rogue into the PDP’s board of trustees. This is a president whose misdemeanour has brought the high office of the presidency into disrepute. Yet he is still hanging in there. He disobeys court pronouncements with unparalleled impunity. He is yet to release Lagos state local government funds, even after the Supreme Court entered judgement to that effect. He selects the court orders he obeys.

The rule of law has been replaced by the rule of a Kabiyesi—a village tyrant. This is a president whose attorney general is more powerful than the Supreme Court of the land. This is a president, whose friend admitted before him to having rigged the elections and instead of causing the law to take its course, he posed a nelson’s eye to the whole thing; in a see no evil and hear no evil posture. This is a president who never deemed it fit to explain to Nigerians, how he got the money to give a car gift to one of his girl-friends. He never even explained to Nigerians why his Domestic Assistant that smuggled money unto the USA aboard his presidential jet has not been probed by the government.

That is the President and leader of this party, whose reputation has coagulated as a nest of killers.

Talk about compromised and borrowed reputations, here you find it in abundance. The PDP is an advanced repackaging of Nigeria’s most incorrigible treasury looters. This is an ethical desert populated by ethical beasts of no nation, whose social consciences are so thoroughly compromised by their vaulting greed, that their sole purpose is milking Nigeria dry, to enrich a few private pockets. Babangida may have enthroned the reign of corruption in Nigeria. But the PDP resurrected most of those hibernating creatures sired by IBB and other inglorious regimes across Nigeria’s politico-scape.

Ahmadu Ali, the chairman of this party is a mercenary bereft of the integrity and reputation to lead a party of visionaries. That is why he is stuck with this alliance of political knaves. Their sole purpose in politics is to capture power to brazenly advertise their brand of corporate knavery. Imputing PDP with a vision or future is a paranoidal accusation. Ahmadu Ali was literarily chased away by students in the late 70s because of his draconian policies as the minister of education under this same Obasanjo. Alli’s ascension to the Nigerian education ministry signalled the destruction of the Nigerian education system. In reaction to this brutal murder of education, Nigerian students rightly rose up in defence of their heritage. For them: “Alli must go” became more than a slogan. It became an imperative if Nigerian education is not to grow extinct. In this dispensation, Alli remains a beast of no nation. That was why he abided the elevation of the Anambra urchin—Chris Ubah as a trustee of his party. Under Alli, the PDP has laid siege to the rule of law in Nigeria. Audu Ogbe at least spoke out against Obasanjo’s reckless indiscretions. But Alli is the greatest cheerleader of a raving tyrant.

How could rationality ever abide Peter Odili’s mismanagement, if not out right stealing of as much as 200 Billion naira, while the poor people of Rivers State are married to a poverty that refuses to be intimidated by rhetoric? Democratic dividends under the PDP accrue only to a few leprous gangsters around the corridors of power. PDP governors across Nigeria seem to be crooks armed with an abundance of political quackery, criminal sophistication; and some license to steal. James Ibori may have purchased his way out of his legal conviction, but the general opinion, which is not without some truths, seems to be that this guy is pilfering large amounts of state resources, as nothing stands to show for the excessive revenue, which accrued to the State since 1999.

Chinwoke Mbadinuju still walks the streets after his abominations in Anambra State. He hid under the PDP to perpetrate abominable crimes on Anambra State. The brutal murder of Barnabas Igwe and the disembowelling of his pregnant wife marked the apogee of Mbadinuju’s iniquitous administration. EFCC has not deemed it fit to diligently prosecute this man for his dalliance with corruption in Anambra State.

Chimaroke Nnamani bestrides Enugu state with murderous fury, as only a congenital crook could. The “Ebeano family”—Chimaroke’s empire—is a medley of thieves, scoundrels, hangers-on, arrant sycophants, brazen profiteers and secret cultists. This guy has succeeded in robbing Enugu state blind. Sam Ejiofor, his chief political adviser; a notorious thug of no mean standing, is reputed to have stockpiled and banked millions of different currency denominations-stolen Enugu State money-in the overhead water tank in his house. The onus lie on the people of Enugu State, and Nigerians in general to kick out this infection out of its body politic, as he plans to impose a Man-Friday on Enugu State to facilitate the ease of his egress out of power come May 29.

In this and many other cases of thieving PDP governors, we can only see EFCC’s effectiveness when the cloud of immunity hanging between these rogues and prison is lifted on May, 29, 2007. EFCC should never offer Nigerians the kind of lame excuse they offered in Dariye’s and Fayose case. These two thieves were allowed, or rather aided to walk away and become fugitives from the law, under the nose of the EFCC and the Nigerian police. The acid test for Ribadu would be Obasanjo and his corrupt friends, seconds after May 29 when their immunity would expire. Atiku’s allegation against OBJ is weighty enough for a Kenneth Starr-esque independent prosecutor inquiry. The PDTF funds and its arrant mismanagement is a blot on OBJ’s presidency.

Both Atiku and Obasanjo are simply being economical with the truth. And being stewards of our mandate, we have a right to an explanation. And EFCC, to retain relevance, must ensure that Nigerians got that explanation. This should not be like the Oputa panel report, which is gathering dust in some outback shelf in the presidency, after taking Nigerians on a media ride akin to a soap opera, and after all the resources wasted in that charade of an effort. It should equally not be treated like the Pius Okigbo panel report, which grew wings and flew into oblivion under the nostrils of our guardians of state.

We should never make a mistake about this. As empiricism can never construct metaphysics, PDP can never rescue Nigeria. It is a mission impossible. Though Napoleon, consigned impossibility to the dictionary of fools; all the Napoleonic optimism nursed by millions of posturally unconcerned Nigerians; and all the attempts at self-deception of the best spin doctors and psycho-cybernetic experts would never convert PDP into kosher for our acceptance. The salvation of Nigeria is a contrary to the ontological reasons for the creation and floating of this pillaging behemoth. PDP remains an alliance of poor men, with money.

These Lincolnesque poor fellows happened upon tons of money, not based on their industry or enterprise; but on their sheer advertisement of primitive brigandage. And they deploy this resource in corrupting social moralities by buying up unearned privileges across our social spectrum. This explains why a Salisu Buhari; an impostor could cheat his way to the Speaker of the House of Representatives Seat, with a fake certificate. And he gets a presidential pardon for his crimes and reappointed into an education board by the president; in a mockery of the hallowed towers of knowledge that his deceit roundly desecrated. This equally explains why an Andy Ubah, who has been proved to be a drop-out, and a possible ex-convict, fraudulently dons a doctoral title; he neither earned nor got honoris causa. This equally explains why Wabara Adolphus, who did not win an election, was imposed upon the senate, by a president who views himself as Almighty God. And it explains why Maurice Iwu who could not explain the holes in his qualification still seats as an umpire to screen the qualification of other people. Nemo quod dat non habet retains eternal relevance here. Iwu cannot give what he does not have.

PDP remains a pompous platform of political myopia, populated by vision challenged mercenaries. This is a perfect kaleidoscope of opulent avarice, masquerading as visionaries. Today, Shehu Umar Yar Adua is imposed on the party as the presidential candidate because he fits the designs of Obasanjo’s hidden agenda. Other contestants were arm-twisted into declining and abandoning the race for Obasanjo’s stooge. Yar Adua had no manifesto and no vision for Nigeria. Not because he is a bad man, but because he never wanted the office. The office is being imposed on him to fulfil Obasanjo’s scripted plan. Just like Shagari was imposed on Nigerians in 1979 although he never nursed or articulated a vision for Nigeria, so is it about to happen again in Yar Adua’s case. Across the Federating States as well, the incumbent governors have finalised plans to cover the tracks of their monumental thieveries, by imposing handpicked candidates as successors, using the PDP discredited machinery.

The Nigerian tragedy remains that Maurice Iwu and his INEC, which is supposed to be the electoral umpire is not an impartial referee. INEC is so compromised by its romance with PDP that it can never be trusted to conduct a credible election this year. Iwu is Obasanjo’s stooge. He was simply appointed to announce the result that Obasanjo and PDP have already prepared. This is why Lamidi Adedibu—the so-called Garrison commander of Ibadan politics—could take possession of the Direct Data Capture Machines, meant for the elections, and he is not yet behind bars. This is an indication that the rigging of the elections has already been completed. Many Nigerians have been systematically disenfranchised in the recently concluded voter’s registration exercise; all in a bid to achieve PDP’s predetermined vision of continuously raping Nigeria.

2007 is here and the only credible candidate vying for the Nigerian presidency remains Patrick Utomi. Others are simply pretenders to borrowed integrity. Any vote for PDP in the forth coming elections is a nail hammered into the coffin readied for the burial of Nigeria.

What should Nigerians of goodwill do to save their country? Come Election Day, Nigerians of all persuasions should go to the polls and vote integrity into power. They should vote Pat Utomi. He is our only hope.

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Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh was born in Nigeria and currently lives in Germany. He had his Bachelors in Philosophy from the Pontificial Urban University Rome. Mr. Ogbunwezeh is currently working on a Ph.D. in Social Ethics and Economics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His book The Tragedy of a Tribe: The Grand Conspiracy Against Ndigbo and the Igbo Quest for Integration in Nigeria was published in 2004. "Shots at Immortality: Immortalizing Igbo Excellence" and "The Scandal of Poverty in Africa: Reinventing a Role for Social Ethics in Confronting the Socio-economic and Political Challenges of Africa of the Third Millennium" will be published in 2005. Additionally, Mr. Ogbunwezeh published dozens of articles in newspapers, magazines, internet sites, and trade journals.

See also: http://www.gbengasesan.com/blog/?p=52

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posted 14 February 2007 / updated 4 February 2008