Government Shutdown: Blocking the budget to punish the people - by Reno Omokri

Article written by Reno Omokri -Special
Assistant on New Media to President
Jonathan. Please read!
When I heard about the directive
from the All Progressive Congress,
APC, to its members in the
National Assembly to block the
passage of the 2014 budget, all
Executive Bills and to abort the
screening of the Service Chiefs as
well as any Ministerial nominees,
my first reaction was that the news
couldn't be true. And then it was
confirmed on television by Lai
Mohammed.
I thought, why would a political
party that styles itself as a
progressive party take such an
anti people action? Block all Bills,
even if they are in the interest of
the masses! Imagine that! Well,
there are progressives and then
there are pro-aggressives!
The APC claim they are taking this
route in order to protect the lives of
the good people of Rivers State from
alleged police brutality.
Really! Let's fact check this assertion.
Since the administration of Rotimi
Amaechi of Rivers State started having
a power tussle with their opposition, it
is on record that not one life has been
lost due to the activities of the
Nigerian police. The only reported loss
of life occurred when an ally of the
governor, Honourable Chidi Lloyd,
allegedly ran down a political rival,
Kingsley Ejeuo, with his car, as well as
a police sergeant, Urang Obadiah, who
was performing his legitimate duties.
On the contrary, in the APC controlled
state of Ogun, several people have
been killed in the last month in intra
party conflicts over who controls party
structures in the state. In one of these
incidents, eight people were killed as
they met with members of the
National Assembly from Ogun State
including Senator Gbenga Kaka,
Senator Akin Odunsi, Hon. Kunle
Adeyemi, Hon. Olumide Osoba, Hon.
Segun Williams and Hon. Ibrahim
Ogunola . Now, the APC want these
same Ogun legislators, whose lives
were almost taken by alleged APC
thugs working for the faction opposed
to the Segun Osoba faction which they
belong to to help them shut down the
government because of a crisis in
Rivers State where no life has been
lost? What about their own lives that
were almost lost and the lives of their
supporters?
Now let us zero in on Ekiti state. Since
Honourable Opeyemi Bamidele
indicated interest in challenging
Governor Kayode Fayemi in the
upcoming gubernatorial election, he
has not known peace. First, he was
undemocratically ordered to pull out of
the race, when he insisted on his
constitutional right to contest. Then he
was ostracized by the APC hierarchy.
When this did not dampen his
enthusiasm, he and his supporters
suffered persecution and on the 4th of
November 2013, one of his
supporters, Mr. Foluso Ogundare, was
shot to death during a meeting of
Bamidele's support group, Ekiti Bibiire
Coalition. Another member, Mrs.
Beatrice Ige, was shot and almost lost
her life.
As I write, Bamidele's supporters
continue to be hounded in Ekiti and
the man himself has been forced to
leave the party he helped build for the
Labour Party after he was told
unequivocally that the party was set
on giving its ticket to Governor Kayode
Fayemi even without a democratic
primary.
Being addicted to propaganda, the
APC has used the media to blow the
situation in Rivers out of proportion
while minimizing media coverage of
the killing spree in Ogun and Ekiti
States.
Now let us ask ourselves objectively,
which state is more deserving of the
scrutiny of the APC amongst Rivers,
Ogun and Ekiti states?
But then you may argue and say that
even if lives were not lost in Rivers
State, there have been rallies called by
Amaechi's loyalists which have ended
in violence.
But then, much of that violence was
contrived by a media manipulating
administration that carries out
government business like a Nollywood
script.
Nigerians witnessed firsthand a
demonstration of this media
manipulation when Hon. Chidi Lloyd
and certain other legislators of the
Rivers State House of Assembly
claimed they had been beaten by their
colleagues and the police in July of
2013. For a few days they dominated
the media and gained public
sympathy until a video of the
incidence was released on the Internet
and Nigerians saw that rather than
being a victim as he claimed, Lloyd
was the main aggressor who almost
killed his colleagues by repeatedly
pummelling him on the head with a
mace! If not for the release of that
video, Nigerians would have been
none the wiser and would have been
duped by the sleek and well oiled
media team operating in that state
whose job is to manipulate the minds
of Nigerians by manipulating events in
the media.
It was a matter for tears that the same
governor for whom the APC want to
shut down Nigeria was present at that
event and that his ADC and Chief
Security Officer were captured on tape
actually beating up elected assembly
men in their hallowed chamber.
But let's even agree for the sake of
argument that what they say of Rivers
State is true, and that the citizens of
the state, though not being killed, are
under a siege from the police, I would
like Nigerians to cast their minds back
to December 17, 2011. On that day,
thousands of Lagosians trooped out in
a peaceful rally to protest against the
tolling of the main road leading to
Lekki. Instead of yearning to the cries
of these innocent citizens, the Lagos
State Government unleashed armed
policemen on the unarmed peaceful
citizens.
According to the Tribune of December
18, 2011, one person was killed while
several of the peaceful protesters were
beaten, brutalized, arrested and
clamped into detention. Journalists
were brutalized with their cameras
seized and broken. Human rights
lawyer, Bamidele Aturu, described the
situation as "an orgy of maniacal
violence"! Google is ever available and
my readers can avail themselves of
the search engine to verify if I have
made this story up.
Is it not hypocrisy of the highest order
for the APC to have unleashed this
level of Gestapo like violence on
unarmed civilians only to turn round
and direct its legislators to shut down
Nigeria because of a situation in Rivers
that is nowhere near the ordeal
Lagosians endured on December 17,
2011?
Moreover, the directive by the APC to
its legislators, if obeyed, would
amount to robbing the Nigerian tax
payers, because legislators are paid to
perform legislative duties and not to
impede them.
In fact, it amounts to hypocrisy for the
APC to order its legislators to take such
an action and still collect their salaries
and entitlements. With reports that
our legislators are the highest paid in
the world, is it morally justifiable for
APC legislators to block legislative
activities for partisan reasons and still
draw on their princely salaries and
emoluments?
Why do I say this? Twice in the recent
history of Lagos State (while Bola
Tinubu was governor and then again
under the administration of the
incumbent) lecturers at the Lagos
State University and doctors under the
Lagos State Ministry of Health have
gone on strike. On both occasions, the
governors (first Tinubu, then Fashola)
threatened the striking workers with a
policy of no work no pay. In fact, as
recently as January 3rd, 2014, the
Lagos State government issued a
statement directed at its doctors, who
are proposing to go on strike, saying
"the state government would not
hesitate to enforce "no-work-no- pay''.
And now, these same people who
believe that people should not be paid
if they refuse to do the work they were
employed to do now advocate that
legislators who are paid from the taxes
paid by Nigerian workers should refuse
to do the work they are employed to
do. Apparently, for the APC, what is
sauce for the goose is not sauce for
the gander!
And even beyond these points, the
question begging an answer in my
view is this: Whose interest should a
legislator pursue between his party's
interests and the interest of his
constituents?
It is clear that the APC is power hungry
and has stared into the political crystal
ball and have seen clearly what awaits
them in 2015 and like students who
have refused to read, they would
rather provoke a crisis so that the
authorities can postpone the
examinations they know they are
going to fail.
Their failure is so obvious and
imminent that in every state where
they thought they had enticed
People's Democratic Party, PDP,
governors to cross carpet, those who
built the APC are now seeing that they
have been used and tossed aside. All
their work has gone unrewarded as
the party has handed over the
structures they suffered to build to
new comers for no other reason than
because the new comers control the
treasury of their states.
Nigerians are watching, the displaced
chieftains are watching, and those who
are about to be displaced by the APC
are also watching knowing full well
that a slave that sees his fellow slave
buried in a shallow grave knows that
he will be buried likewise when his
own time comes!
It is gradually becoming clear to
Nigerians and certainly to the ousted
APC chieftains that the APC's ability to
make friends is only superseded by
their ability to lose them. As they
make more powerful and wealthy
friends, they dump those they
perceive as being less powerful and
wealthy. In fact, it has been
speculated that in their desperation to
garner membership and a huge war
chest, the APC would not mind
approaching the devil to help them in
their quest to "save Nigeria" or maybe
to 'slave Nigeria'!
If what is going on in Ogun and Ekiti
state is the type of salvation the APC is
offering to Nigerians, I shudder to
think of what awaits those states
whose governors recently cross
carpeted to their fold!
The APC can go the undemocratic
route and instruct its legislators to
shut down the government. They can
go desperate as was seen when their
party chief, conscious of the defeat
that stares the party in the face says
"the only alternative left to get power
is to take it by force". But the APC
must know, like one of its own
chieftains warned in a recent article,
that "the Nigeria of 2014 is very
different to the Nigeria of 1993". In the
new Nigeria of 2014 and beyond,
power must flow from the ballot box,
not through violence, blackmail or
desperate political manoeuvres.
Many things have changed in Nigeria.
Gone are the days of "do or die
elections". In the Nigeria of 2011 and
beyond, Nigerians enjoy free and fair
elections hailed by The Commonwealth
of Nations, The European Union and
The African Union as "the most
credible elections since Nigeria
returned to civil rule".
Let us not forget that the Federal
Government pays salaries and
pensions to more than a million
Nigerians. These salaries and pensions
are tied to the free flow of the
legislative process. If the budget is not
passed, it is not politicians that would
lose out. It is the market men and
women who depend on them to buy
their goods and services that will
suffer. It is the banking sector which
depends on them to make deposits
that would suffer. It is their children
who depend on them to pay their
school fees that would suffer. It is their
aged parents in the village who
depend on them for a monthly
allowance that would suffer.
The budget is not a Peoples
Democratic Party budget. It is a
budget for all Nigerians. If you have a
grouse with the PDP, by all means
punish them, but please leave the
Nigerian masses alone.
These are the people that the APC
want to throw into poverty because to
them power is a zero sum game where
the sufferings of huge swathes of the
population is only a collateral damage
as long as they get what they want.
The end justifies the means to them.
If the APC were as concerned with
what goes into their minds as they are
with what goes into their mouths, they
would not have dreamt up a directive
whose effect would be to increase
poverty in the land at a time when the
World Bank has just commended the
Jonathan Administration for
significantly reducing poverty in
Nigeria.
Who cuts their nose to spite their face?
The APC apparently.
Regards,
Reno