Written by Ugochukwu Ogbonnaya
We know exactly what is going on in Nigeria today. It is a situation where few individuals, who in any case ranks amongst the lowest of the “dumbest” and most daft people in Nigeria, now thinks they can outsmart the rest of Nigerians - a population of over 140million according to the Nigerian government's official figure on the country's population. These “dumbees” are not just thinking but are doing everything within their really large muscles to prove themselves capable of fooling the rest of us that are foolish enough to go around with this tag of being Nigerian. And I'm afraid, they are really doing a good job. They are winning, and we are becoming more foolish and stupid by the day as a result.
But have these people the right to do what they are doing, making a mess of an entire country, of a whole nation state, of an internationally recognized sovereign? It is unbelievable what we, the various peoples and ethnic nationalities that constitutes this political entity presently called Nigeria, can really put up with.
No! In my own opinion, the likes of Mrs Yar'Adua, Tanimu-Kurfi, Aondoakaa, and other members of the failed President Yar'Adua's kitchen cabinet have no right whatsoever to take an entire country and its peoples on a dummies ride. These individuals for even thinking of - not to talk of acting out - the course of action they are on at the moment, deserves to be slammed with the highest charge of treasonable felony ever known in history.
But looking at the whole issue closely, who actually handed over the power to these individuals to do to Nigeria what they are doing at the moment? To answer this question, let's go to Honduras, a small country which it's people recently proved more intelligent than Nigerians and that such rubbish going on in Nigeria today can never happen in their country.
According to a report dated July 7, 2009 by the news website, www.telegraph.co.uk, in June 28, 2009, the Honduran vainglorious President Manuel Zeleya was “bundled out of bed at gunpoint by his own soldiers, and sent into exile, following a bitter dispute with the country's establishment over his controversial push for Venezuelan-style constitutional reform. But that his administration had taken a radical turn in the first place was something of a surprise. After being elected by a slim margin in 2005, as the candidate of the centrist Liberal party, the moustachioed six-footer with slicked-back hair made headlines for his flamboyance... Admittedly, he courted controversy by singing along with troubadours, lionising drug traffickers, and calling for such narcotics to be legalised as a way of controlling the drugs trade. But what really alarmed conservatives was his dramatic move Leftwards, into the orbit of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who uses his country's oil wealth to fund a regional bloc of protégés.
Mr Zelaya had initially persuaded many Hondurans, even members of the business community, that he was merely signing up for the economic aid and subsidised fuel that Mr Chavez lavishes on friendly states. But over the past two years it became increasingly clear that Mr Zelaya had bought into the political package, too. Earlier this year, during a pilgrimage to Havana, he was pictured listening reverentially to Fidel Castro. It was an image that sent shivers down the spine of many Hondurans. At home, Mr Zelaya boosted the minimum wage by 60 per cent, a populist move that forced thousands of small businesses to lay off workers; picked fights with the country's top entrepreneurs, while fending off persistent accusations of crony capitalism; and was constantly at loggerheads with the media magnates. As a result of this increasingly confrontational and unpredictable behaviour, there were widespread fears over his proposed constitutional reforms. Mr Zelaya's plans, which would enhance the president's power and remove the term limits on his tenure, seemed to be modelled on those adopted by other Chavez allies, and he was pressing ahead with the vote despite it being ruled illegal by the courts. It was, for his enemies, the last straw.”
The simple observation here is that if a small country like Honduras can be so intolerant to nonsense to the extent that they rose to bundle their serving President out of office because of the President's insistence on pushing forward with a controversial constitutional reform in addition to other previous excesses of his, what is wrong with Nigeria and Nigerians where an obviously arrant nonsense is going on, a kind of nonsense that will be very difficult for a people like Hondurans to even comprehend.
Here is a country where it's very clear that the president is “dead” and the immediate family and close associates of the dead man have vowed to keep the information away from the rest of the country in a very criminal bid to hold the entire country hostage and bring it to a wicked halt in the fashion of a dog in a manger. And yet there are people who are in the position and have all the required resources and power to do the right things, to rein in these criminals and bring them to justice while causing the country to continue again in the vital forward motion. But these individuals have refused to do anything.
When ex President Manuel Zeleya was given the booth by his no nonsense countrymen, he was subsequently replaced by Roberto Micheletti who was serving as the chairman of the Honduran parliament, or the Tegucigalpa congress, before the removal of Zeleya. Micheletti was no doubt amongst the arrowheads and Honduras elites who championed the riddance of the bad rubbish called Zeleya from the body politic of Honduras at that mattering moment. He was a political leader who was courageous enough to use his position well to the service of his country which he believes so much in. The most interesting thing about the Honduras case is that both Manuel Zeleya and Roberto Micheletti are from the same Liberal Party of Honduras.
According to the report by the Telegraph website, Mrs Zeleya went into hiding following the deposition of her husband as President of Honduras. And this is exactly where Turai Yar'Adua should be now – in shameful hiding – if we the so foolish Nigerians hadn't given her the power to be doing what she is doing at the moment: attempting to run, on behalf of some dead men, a country which her “dead” husband was incapable and has failed woefully to run.
