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Its Christmas time and the time is calling for the obvious act. Nothing can better trigger the momentum than the folly of now and there is obviously, no stopping the raging soul train when the die is cast. Its Christmas time but they don’t know the meaning. They’re celebrating and cheering whilst their doom draws near.

 

Yar’Adua: Do they know it’s Christmas Time?
by Frisky Larr

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Christmas time is Yar’Adua’s time. Yar’Adua is not Jesus though. Yar’Adua is no sanctity. He even has no divine calling. But Christmas time highlights his being if Nigerians know what Christmas means. The hand of the clock repeatedly runs a circumference of twelve hours. The calendar year runs a length of twelve good months. Take each hour in the course of a clock to mean one month on the calendar’s page. December would stand for the zero hour where the hand of the clock would start its race. 25th December – a week to the end of the zero hour – would spell convergence on the end of time. Not the birth of Jesus. Not sanctity or divinity. It would mean two minutes to the middle of night when the lights would go off and darkness would take control. Such is the nature of Nigeria’s rudderless state in our present day. Its Christmas time and Yar’Adua’s boys are celebrating recurrent victories in individual battles while the question of victory in the overall war is thrown wider open than ever before. Many have not realized for whom the bell of death is loudly tolling. Ernest Hemmingway seems to have had the Yar’Adua boys in mind when he wrote in 1940: "No Man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; [...] and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Those South-South boys in the Board of Trustees of the People’s Democratic Party are symptomatic today, of the height of foolishness, childishness and the boundless reach of stupidity. Whoever read the headlines a few days ago will understand where my anger is directed. The long-gone factor of journalistic objectivity had one more opportunity of rearing its head in these sad days, while highlighting the failure of Ex-President Obasanjo to secure the support of the Board of Trustees that he heads, in mobilizing action on the constitutional replacement of Yar’Adua in the aftermath of his long-drawn absence from the seat of power. Whichever media outlet broke the news, it took pleasure in reflecting Obasanjo’s poor understanding of practical politics by failing to rally support for his position before gathering his boys in the Board of Trustees. He was described as a sad man as only two persons in the BoT supported his stance and even the men from his home-base in the South-South region abandoned the old man to leave him in the cold. Schadenfreude was obvious in invisible grins in an endless onslaught to humiliate a man and show him where he belongs. But did the timing make any sense? Did the action achieve any aim? Is the man Obasanjo any smaller now than he was yesterday because his BoT rejected his stance? Did these fools consider the collateral damage of their childish vendetta? Who stands to lose aside from the country that they had vowed to defend? When will Nigerians learn to keep the perception of overblown personal importance in the background and do first things first? What consultation did those people require to recognize the truth? Should consultation precede every issue including the flimsiest of them and those that are more than obvious? For the avoidance of doubt, there is no question whatsoever that prior consultation with the right people, at the right place and at the right time is an inevitable quality of good leadership in the management of civil organizations. There should be no mistaking however, that the inevitability of preliminary consultations is fundamentally the brainchild of complexity when subjects prove difficult to resolve. No positive skills in practical politics are for instance required to realize that the nomination of a Presidential candidate for a political party requires preliminary consultations for broader support. But what support would you need when the constitution of a land is wantonly breached and the culprits are not even making a secret of it. The pages of our newspapers is awash day-in, day-out with headlines underscoring an avowed intention of stopping the Vice President from becoming an acting President no matter how long the President takes to recuperate. Yet, it was the time deemed so fit for vendetta and childish reckoning in the spirit of misplaced humiliation? Feelers from foreign countries have been mounting in recent days signaling a general readiness to tolerate a military coup if one happened in Nigeria today. Functionaries – one after the other – have given this salient hint in recent times, above all else, from the USA. Yet we placed personal conceitedness at the fore of our actions? Whose bell of death is tolling here? Obasanjo’s alone? The time is close to darkness. Christmas time is there in our collective destiny. Yet we fail to see the signs on the blood-stained wall. “In the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty in a rat race!” Everyone knows who once sang these wise words. The fools are celebrating the senseless defeat of a meaningful step in the abundance of solutions. A minimal first step that would not even have gone halfway to resolve the persisting impasse but only have sent a positive signal to the Yar’Adua mafia that is presently acting with careless impunity. Political parties we have in abundance. Students Unions and Civil Societies too! Wole Soyinka played a ball that he shot to the courts of civil societies. It was not hard to see what message he had in mind. Civil Society is simply refusing to play the ball back and take control of civil disobedience as would have been the case in grown democracies. Time is overdue to wrest the nation from the mafia and its extended arms in the BoT of the ruling party. In all of these though, the current Vice President is pathetically shitting himself with fear, dreading the days that he be seen as disloyal. Disloyal to a man who never picked him out of love in the first place! Questionable “loyalty” in a scene that is decorated with a constitution that he swore to uphold! Goodluck Jonathan is long becoming a problem more than a victim. He is transmitting the image of imbecility that raises questions about his fitness for politics. The bile and the guts to stand tall and demand one’s rights with the gallantry of knighthood once made heroes of the middle ages. These days though, the courts and camps of political interest take the place of the swords and shields. Yet Jonathan proudly and stoically refuses to show his colors and stand by them. He takes pride in playing loyal while his adversaries openly swear to dislodge him and declare him a traitor in Obasanjo’s camp. Yet he fails to detect when silence is no longer golden but outright foolish. While he flourishes in the renewal of vows of loyalty to some Turais and even Aondoaakas, his days as a viable politician capable of leaving his mark on the history of Nigeria are fast dwindling and his dwarfish image soaring high. In the calculation of loyalty to Ex-President Obasanjo as allegedly advanced by the Yar’Adua mafia, the fear of undoing all pro-Northern policy reversals undertaken by Yar’Adua and his cabals is seen as the driving force behind the relentless sabotage of Jonathan’s constitutional rights. Aside from the faulty reckoning not taking cognizance of the time and resources a pro-Obasanjo Jonathan would require to embark in an impossible anti-northern task in a 14-month tenure, the ridiculing of Jonathan in the swearing-in of a Chief Justice and the repeated chant of vows to dislodge Jonathan should have been reasons enough for Jonathan to reposition himself and throw down the gauntlets. After all those kinky Aondoaakas and the mafia they serve only put on their pants also one leg at a time like everyone of us. Does Jonathan fear for his life? Is there anything of importance that he has not yet achieved for his kids and anyone he may leave behind? Why can’t a politician understand that serving a country honestly requires putting one’s own life on the line of fire? Why is the preparedness never there whilst there is readiness to loot the treasury? What more could have portrayed Jonathan as leading a fight for the restoration of constitutional democracy today than seeking the implementation of the relevant sections of the constitution? Would this not attract public support? The dubious and often illegal fights led by Atiku Abubakar in the days of Olusegun Obasanjo do not measure in magnitude to what obtains today in the questionable scene of Nigeria’s fraudulent politics. David Mark of the Senate and the Bankole man of the House of Representatives are currently treading a thorny path that will place them on the path of destruction if the button of revolution finally triggers. They seem to be relentlessly acting to frustrate positive actions in doing what is simply right. They remind me of Nicolai Causcescu of Romania who was blinded by the blin-blin shine of the presidential palace and failed to see the writing on the wall and in good time too. Those shameless thugs of the BoT and the ambitious political assassins of the broader scene are up against a battle they are bound to lose and Jonathan’s show of cowardice is extending our days of doom in the midst of shame and disrespect. Its Christmas time and the time is calling for the obvious act. Nothing can better trigger the momentum than the folly of now and there is obviously, no stopping the raging soul train when the die is cast. Its Christmas time but they don’t know the meaning. They’re celebrating and cheering whilst their doom draws near. Enter your search terms Submit search form   Web www.nigeriannews.com

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