Let us set a befitting background for today’s essay as such will help us to understand the subject hereunder captured.
I must however confirm my biased respect for the French Army General; Napoleon Bonaparte, more for his commanding military policy of “bring the bad news to me at once while the good news can wait”. And according to him, “it is the bad news that teaches me if what l am doing is right or wrong in battles, and it is only through it that l know how to reorganize my war strategies”.
A little more about the man – Napoleon Bonaparte and that disastrous battle he lost at that very small village called Waterloo in Belgium.
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on June 18, 1815, between Napoleon’s French Army and a coalition led by the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blücher. This battle concluded a war that had raged for 23 years, and ended French attempts to dominate Europe. It also destroyed Napoleon’s imperial power forever.
The battle of waterloo was a devastating event for the armies involved as well as the community itself. The combined number of men killed or wounded reached nearly 50,000, with close to 25,000 casualties on the French side and approximately 23,000 for the Allied army.
We can see that there was a very highly devastative casualty from both sides; a thing that would have been avoided if precaution was taken.
But precaution was never taken then; as it remains in most cases till date, it merely proved to be a blunder-trend that defines how human being cookie crumbles, even from the beginning of human history on earth.
It is probably for that reason that our own dearly cherished Cicero – the late Chief James Ajibola Idowu Ige, told us about the difficulty of people learning from history, which made him to conclude that “inability of people to learn from history is the reason why history keep repeating itself”.
Unfortunately, our beloved great lawyer; a man that was delightedly eloquent, both in Latin and the English languages’ inability to learn from history, made him climbing the Tiger’s back and, unfortunately, ended up in the Tiger’s stomach.
We are not embarking on that historical voyage today, so we must return to the narration of almost likely battle of Waterloo which this acrimony between Wike and Atiku may result to.
A presidential political Primary of the People Democratic Party [PDP] took place at the MKO Abiola Stadium in Abuja a few months ago. Most of the contenders deviated from bargaining with the Nigerian Naira at the event. They staked the Delegates with US Dollars instead of the Nigerian legal currency – Naira.
The Delegates fell for the trap. And who won’t go down for such temptation in the market place where Delegates became cash and carry products? Dollarization of election was thus massively introduced into the Nigerian political lexicon. The All Progressive Congress [APC] followed same pattern, though in a much larger scale, a few months after the PDP introduced the Dollarization concept.
The Dollar game might not necessarily be the factor that promoted Atiku Abubakar over and above Nyeson Wike at the end of the day because what Dollar could not complete, sentiment of religion and tribe completed – to wit: in favour of Atiku Abubakar. For that reason, Wike left the scene a bruised candidate.
That “first among equals” of an infamous stone that hit Wike became something smallish compared to the water of opprobrium poured on him when the vice-presidential running mate of the Party was picked, as Wike, who was meritoriously invited to face the Selection Panel, performed creditably [three times – as we were told] over and above his contemporaries, but was dumped for Delta State Governor candidature. It was at this point that “yawa gas” as Warri people would say.
Ego-bruised Nyesom Wike withdrew to his cocoon to strategized, while Atiku Abubakar kept the tempo of his dance of victory momentously growing. Every other thing since then has become history well-known to the Nigerian people.
One thing for sure that the Nigerian people know too well about the man Nwike – l called him the “Hippopotamus from the Sea”, is that he is always fearless, audacious and dangerously ravaging in all his political pursuits. He lives a life of an open book. He says what he wants to do in advance. And he does what he had said he would.
But above all, he remains a Party man, and in this case – fully-blooded-PDP-man-totally. He remained just one of the very few that stood for the PDP throughout the country when the Party almost went into extinction.
In the other hand, Atiku Abubakar; the former Vice President, has proved to be a fair-weather political man. He could come and go with connective failure or victory. Within the past few years, this big man from Adamawa has floated from the PDP; a Party which he co-founded in 1998, three times and each time he saw pepper at his new “golden land” he returned without qualms and good conscience.
On the principle of continuous political loyalty, the two men stand millions of miles apart. Let us leave that much for now.
Now the battle between the two – Atiku and Wike, which for sure, if not resolved fast by the leadership of the Party [minus Senator Iyorchia Ayu – the National Chairman of the Party], has the capacity of tearing the Party into pieces.
And the stone throwing by Senator Iyorchia Ayu, when he referred to Wike; and possibly Chief Olabode George – a very senior ranking member of the PDP Board of Trustee, “as children that were never born when we formed the Party”, is most likely to take the Party down to abyss of no return.
And of course, Wike has replied Ayu adequately, telling him that “since they want to lose the election, we will help them”.
It means therefore that the present “macabre dance of death” some personae dramatis leaders of the PDP [led by Nyesom Wike and Iyorchia Ayu] are embarking upon is almost becoming one-too-much.
Enough is enough because the Centre cannot hold more than this, and God forbid bad thing, if the Accord Concordia; in the words of the late Dr Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe, fabric snaps, Nigeria could blow up. And if that happens, all of us will be in one terrible mess.
Let me provide a direct and more succinct political answer to those that might want to ask me the question of why am I crying more than the bereaved or why am I taking Panadol for someone else’s headache.
Yes, l am not a politician. I have no membership Card of any Political Party. I am contented doing what is my God-given assignment, which is being and remaining a Political Technocrat. But because I am involved – being the caption of the late Odumegwu Ojukwu’s book, the collapse of Nigeria will almost remain a permanent disaster to all of us. I am “crying more than the bereaved” because I am a Nigerian who surely must be a victim of this country goes under.
Nigeria is currently overstressed already – courtesy of President Muhammadu Buhari’s clueless administration; any little push by any of these Political Dealers parading themselves as Political Leaders, the country [Nigeria] would go over the cliff, straight into the bottomless pit.
God forbid such from happening. That is why l am always prepared to cry more than the bereaved and willing to swallow as many Panadols for our connective headache because l remain a fantastically one patriotic Nigerian.
This C-o-u-r-t adjourns!
Godwin Etakibuebu; a veteran Journalist, wrote from Lagos.
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