|
Dozie
Ikem Ezeife, Esq
Attorney-At-Law
Oakland, California
SENATOR FRANCIS ARTHUR NZERIBE:
End the road for the ubiquitous and loquacious gadfly
STAKEHOLDERS' CONVERGE: A task
that must be accomplished
Chief Audu Ogbe: The Mikhail
Gorbachev of the PDP
Does "Democracy"
Necessarily Exclude Military Regimes?
2003 And The Illegal Use of
Public Resources For Personal Political Campaign Activities.
Brain Drain - A legitimate
Commercial Asset for Export
The Savanah Bank Imbroglio - A
critical look!
|
SENATOR FRANCIS ARTHUR
NZERIBE: End of the road for the ubiquitous and loquacious gadfly
by Dozie Ikem Ezeife, Esq
“Basket mouth don bigin to talk again”, apologies to Fela Anikulapo
Kuti.
Chief Francis Arthur Nzeribe,
Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has been variously
described as controversial, a loose cannon and a double-edged
sword. He covets being called a maverick and prides himself as an
astute politician and a relevant Nigerian. Recently the bubble
burst and the coward showed his true stripes. By taking on his
colleagues in the Senate, he bit more than he could chew. He
apparently decided to bail out of a jet at 35,000 feet above the
earth without first arming himself with a parachute. The result of
that senseless folly obviously was sure political demise.
The “maverick” cut his
political teeth in 1979 when he bulldozed himself into political
limelight by “donating” a decrepit jet to the Owelle of Onitsha for
his presidential campaign. The plane reportedly made only one
flight before it was scrapped. That stunt earned him a senate seat
in the Second Republic and catapulted him into political
prominence. He circulated the rumor that he had inexhaustible cache
of foreign currency and gullible Nigerians lapped up that con. The
con man found a pedestal from which to fleece the nation. During
his entire stint as an NPP senator, the party caucus could not
predict which way the erratic senator would vote. Nobody had the
guts to reign him in. He delighted in reeking political havoc and
pulled all manners of stunts at the drop of a hat.
Following the Buhari/Idiagbon
coup of 1983, the maverick faded into temporary oblivion from which
he will emerge in 1992. In 1992 he colluded with the military
establishment to scuttle the democratic exercise and consequently
denied Chief MKO Abiola his mandate. It is sickening to hear him
claim credit for this perfidious act. What a guy! Soon after he
took on another client. He became late General Abacha’s choirboy.
Upon the inception of the Abubakar transition program in 1998, he
joined the APP and eventually emerged as the Senator representing
the Orlu Senatorial District of Imo State. True to type, within a
few months of coming to the Senate, he attempted to move an
impeachment motion against the President. His colleagues rebuffed
him. Following the depletion of the leadership ranks of the PDP
Southeast caucus in the Senate by the Presidency, Senator Nzeribe
saw a silver lining in the horizon and decided to jump ship in order
to improve his chances of someday becoming the Senate President.
The man has the morals of an ant. Soon after abandoning his party
for the ruling PDP, he dusted off his choir gown and went to work
for President Obasanjo, the man he attempted to impeach a few months
back. He derided the call for a President of Igbo extraction in
2003 and vowed that Obasanjo will win again in 2003. He was a
prominent fixture at the jamboree in Ottah in April of last year and
the subsequent charade in Abuja.
Senator Nzeribe’s appetite for
corruption is gargantuan. He has proven time and time again that he
is an unrepentant opportunist. No price is too high for him to pay
in order to score a quick buck or to attract cheap publicity. His
selfishness is celebrated and his capacity for doublespeak
unparalleled. The man is completely without conscience or
compulsion. He will do or say virtually anything so as to appear
politically relevant. Nzeribe through his nefarious activities and
unguarded utterances have wrecked havoc on the reputation of the
Senate and had made the Senate the butt of ugly jokes. Joseph
Ushigiale in his “End of the Road for Mr. Maverick?”
published in This Day of October 10, 2002, very succinctly
articulated the character of and person Senator Nzeribe is in the
following words:
“Nzeribe established a reputation as an enigmatic politician who
thrives in stewing from one political and intriguing controversy to
another... Nzeribe introduced what many today described as money
politics because of his monetized campaign approaches... Nzeribe has
attracted the toga of a politician who revels in endless webs of
intrigues and schemings and is largely viewed as very very
inconsistent and unreliable... Nzeribe has carved a niche for
himself within political circles as a highly ambitious and
insatiably greedy politician with scant regard for decorum. He is
believed to be motivated by the craze to make money than the
conviction to sustain democracy and is described as capable of
reaching whatever length to make money.”
For several weeks Senator
Nzeribe has boasted that he will spearhead the filibuster of the
impeachment moves against President Obasanjo in the Senate. He also
told whosoever cared to listen that he has the necessary votes in
the Senate to dethrone Senate President, Pius Anyim. He
emphatically announced that he would make the Senate drop the
impeachment exercise this past week. He claimed he had 74 senators
on board for this project. Typical of the Nigerian press, nobody
sought from him the names of these phantom 74. What pipe dream it
turned out to be. When it was time for a showdown, it turned out he
had zip! His war chants wet our appetites and we eagerly awaited an
epochal political showdown on the floor of the senate. What we saw
was a political spanking by the Senate inflicted on the wimpy
urchin. Instead of a manly firefight, the noise bag tucked his
frazzled tails between his spidery legs and scurried out of the
senate chambers and hid inside his senate cubicle. What a
despicable exhibition of cowardice. When Senator Jonathan Zwingina
moved his motion to suspend Senator Nzeribe, all 68 Senators present
voted in favor. So much for his fictional supporters in the
Senate. The “political strongman” in the final hour did not even
have the guts and decency to stay in the chambers and accept his ass
kicking in person. What a spineless coward. I am often amused by
these self-proclaimed political heavyweights, who when the chips are
down prove to have the political savvy and experience of a president
of a high school debating society.
Only a mental retard will go to
the floor of the Senate with no single supporter on a day he plans
to sponsor a motion to defeat the impeachment of the President.
Only in Nigeria can that madness take place. Only a half-wit like
Senator Nzeribe will pull a stunt like that. And the man has the
temerity to regard himself as politically relevant in Nigeria. What
an air-head. The suspension of Senator Nzeribe bodes well for the
Senate. It has proven that politics is not a circus show and that
our leaders are not performing bears in a ring put in political
positions merely to entertain the press and the public. Rabiu
Ibrahim in his “Insight Nzeribe: A Maverick’s
Meltdown” published in the Weekly Trust of October 25,
2002 surmised Nzeribe’s disappointing performance on the senate
floor on the day of reckoning. He said:
“Nevertheless, this particular day was supposed to be his day of
glory, when by his deft or daft calculation, he would lead a majority
of the members of the senate to first proclaim distaste to impeachment
proceedings of President Obasanjo. And secondly, turn the game on the
Senate President by roundly voting to impeach him. The culmination
would have been the anointing of his very self, seen as gadfly of
Nigerian politics, as the new and third Senate President in the spate
of four years. It was not to be. The day could well be described as
his waterloo, as his colleagues clamped an indefinite suspension on
him until he purges himself of ‘anti-democratic and disreputable
conduct.”
Arthur Nzeribe made a career of
shooting down fellow Igbo men and women and working against the
interest of Ndigbo. Like the old lady in Osita Osadebe’s “Agadi
nwanyi na inine”, Senator Nzeribe is currently battling running
stomach. I shudder to think that some people rank Arthur Nzeribe as
one of the Igbo political leaders. Evidently we have so lowered our
ethical, moral and intelligence scales as to allow such a decrepit
clown to scale through. Nzeribe’s demise and the number of Senators
who nailed shut his political coffin is an indication to those who
believe that the Senate cannot muster enough support to impeach the
President, that their optimism is rather misplaced.
By suspending Senator Nzeribe,
the Nigerian Senate has managed to rid itself of a destructive cancer
that was wrecking havoc on its reputation. Nzeribe was a ticking time
bomb and his suspension and hopefully, his recall by his constituency,
will send a message to the rest of the political clowns out there who
think that they can play games with Nigeria and Nigerians, that the
time of reckoning is at hand. Senator Jonathan Zwingina in moving his
motion for Nzeribe’s suspension said that Nzeribe has by his
“consistent and unchanging anti-democratic character has become a
chronic, active cancerous cell in the senate and in our democratic
polity.” I agree. Now that “Basket mouth” has been put in this place
the National Assembly should hasten to make a decision whether or not
to proceed with Obasanjo’s impeachment. They should do so
immediately.
[back
to Top News]
Let
us empower ourselves so that we can be strong, Register your new Domain
Name (i.e yourDomain.com) with no other company but with MICN
DOMAIN
REGISTRATION SERVICE and also HOST this domain with MICN
DOMAIN HOSTING SERVICE. If you are in MICN
DIAL-UP coverage area, why will you want to DIAL-UP
to another company?
If the price is the problem, email us and we shall see what we can do. USE
OUR DIAL-UP NETWORK.
We will reasonably match any price for the sake of our unity. Send
personal email to admin@micn.com. Let
us stop what has hitherto set us back Let this be a new day! Patronize our
people today, in our neighborhood!
|
"The
“maverick” cut his political teeth in 1979 when he bulldozed himself
into political limelight by “donating” a decrepit jet to the Owelle of
Onitsha for his presidential campaign. The plane reportedly made only
one flight before it was scrapped. That stunt earned him a senate
seat in the Second Republic and catapulted him into political
prominence. He circulated the rumor that he had inexhaustible cache
of foreign currency and gullible Nigerians lapped up that con. The
con man found a pedestal from which to fleece the nation. During his
entire stint as an NPP senator, the party caucus could not predict
which way the erratic senator would vote. Nobody had the guts to
reign him in. He delighted in reeking political havoc and pulled all
manners of stunts at the drop of a hat."
|
