Nigerians,Use Your PVCs;Protect Your Votes And Your Future By; Ozekhome SAN

Fellow country men,women and youth,tomorrow,Saturday,16th
February,2019,marks a watershed in Nigeria’s political history.It
constitutes a divine date with our individual and collective
destinies.It is the day when we shall decide whether to be
consigned to perpetual bondage,servitude and
slavery,hate,devisiveness,clannishness,cronysm,nepotism and
directionlessness;or to seek our inalienable God-given
freedom,liberties,unity,peace,tranquillity and egalitarianism.

Your vote is crucial for this epic battle of survival between
cabalistic forces of darkness that haemorragingly hold the country
down by the jogular,and the progressive and inclusive forces of
light that seek to oxiginate a receding country in the asphixiating
throes of death.Let me exhort u with some useful quotations of why
it is crucial that you must vote tomorrow.George Carlin once
famously said,”if you don’t vote,you lose the right to
complain”.Former American president,John Fitzgerald
Kennedy,captured it when he counselled that “the ignorance of one
voter in a democracy impairs the security of all”.To Thomas
Jefferson,one of the heroes of American history,”we do not have
government by the majority.

We have government by the majority who participate”.This is
because “every election is determined by the people who show
up”(Larry Sabato).Let me fire you more as to why you must vote
tomorrow.Know it that “bad officials are elected by good citizens
who don’t vote”.This therefore means that according to the law of
Karma,it is what you sow that you reap.You cannot sow maize and
hope to reap groundnut at harvest time.Nor can you refuse to plant
yam seedlings at the beginning of the planting season and suddenly
go the farm to harvest tubers of yam at harvest time.

The Nigerian bleeding faultlines that have always been there
since her forcible union by Lord Luggard on January 1,1914,through
the amalgamation of Southern and Northern Protectorates,are wider
today than ever before.Mutual suspicion,hate speech and raw hatred
dominate the clime.Brazen irredentism,ethnical and religious
expansionism appear to be the order of the day.Nigeria has been
reduced to a grisly and horrific theatre of blood and mind-bungling
slaughter odeon through unchecked herdsmen invasions and
attacks.

The cries for restructuring have been forced to dry on
government brick walls erected against the people.The tail now wags
the dog as government (the servant under section 14 of the 1999
Constitution) has become the master.The Buhari government tells us
it is fighting corruption.Yet,the latest Transparency
Internactional (TI) Corruption Index rating shows Nigeria to be the
18th most corrupt nation in Africa and the 19th in Sub-Saharan
Africa.It is the most corrupt nation in the West African
sub-region.We are continuously told that corruption is the
brainchild of the PDP,which the ruling APC argues tirelessly,like a
stuck record,ruined the country.But,the last time I checked,I
discovered that the prime movers and first-eleven personalities in
APC today were the same people in the PDP that allegedly “ruined”
Nigeria.22 of the 24 APC’s governors today were PDP members that
ruled for 14 whopping years as Governors before the formation of
still inchoate APC.

They are cruising home with another 4 years after seizing power
under APC nearly 4 years ago.Right now,20 former governors of the
PDP have since nested in the APC of today.But they do not appear in
the radar of Buhari’s “corruption fight”,because like Naaman the
leper who dipped himself into River Jordan seven times and became
cleansed of his leprosy (like a little child),on the wise counsel
of prophet Elisha,all these defecting governors by their singular
act of such decampment have suddenly become cleansed of their
political leprosy.They were immediately embraced and inducted into
the APC sacred pantheon of heroes where they campaigned for Buhari
across Nigeria on the same podium.As at today,3 out of the 5 former
Speakers of the House of Representatives under PDP are bedraggled
in the APC,which also conveniently harbours 2 former Chairmen of
the PDP.

Hundreds of former PDP ministers,Senators,House of
Representatives members,state
legislators,Commissioners,Councillors,Heads and members of MDAs are
those in APC today,and they are obscenely and oxymoronically
mouthing “PDP ruined Nigeria for 16 years”.These APC Czars are the
same people who “looted” our resources and common patrimony.APC and
Buhari fight “corruption” within its inner and government circles
with sweet smelling sasarabia perfume,whilst fighting the same
corruption amongst opposition and critical dissenting voices with
insecticides,herbicides and pesticides.

We,the Nigerian people are not so stupid and idiotic as to
suffer collective amnesia.Nigeria,which by 2014,was rebased $500
billion by the World Bank and IMF as the biggest economy in
Africa,having overtaken South Africa,and one of the fastest growing
economies in the world,has today become the poverty capital of the
world,having overtaken India.We are not so naive not to know that
the naira exchanged for 180-N195 naira to the dollar 4 years
ago,but is today exchanging for N365;that a bag of rice which sold
for N7,500 in 2014 is today selling for between N15000 and
N25000;that pms(,fuel) sold for N86 per litre in 2014,but sells
officially for N145 today.

We can not easily forget that the security situation in Nigeria
in 2014 was such that only 3 states,mostly in the North
East,suffered Boko Haram insurgency,but that as at today,INEC has
just informed us that 15 states across Nigeria suffer Boko Haram
and other forms of deadly insurgency, including kidnapping,arned
robbery and other terrorist activities.

We can not easily forget that violation of human rights,rule of
law and due process,and lack of obedience to court orders,whose
observance were taken for granted in 2014,have since become the
order of the day.Where is Col Sabo Dasuki today? In Buhari’s
government gulag inspite of 6 court orders for his
release,including that of Ecowas,the sub-regional court.Where are
Islanic cleric,Sheik El-Zakzaky and his wife whose over 300 shiite
members were cruelly slaughtered in cold blood? Still cocooned away
in government confines inspite of many court orders for their
release.The government in a manner worse than a fascist and
absolutist junta has elevated itself as a super Supreme Court over
designated designated courts of law.

Where is leading human rights Activist and social critic,Deji
Adeyanju,whom I have been defending probono? Still quarantined off
in a hot Kano prison on the “holden charge” orders of a magistrate
that has no jurisdiction,over trumped up charges of attempted
culpable homicide,charges on which he was discharged and acqitted
over 10 years ago.The judiciary has been brazenly assaulted and
intimidated,Judges and Justices cowed,denigrated and humiliated.The
legislature has been emasculated,with its leadership and leading
lights harassed,detained and tried on trumped up charges.The
doctrine of separation of powers so ably propounded by the great
French Philosopher,Baron de Montesque in 1748,has been bestially
desecrated.Prof A V. Dicey’s concept of the rule of law has been
brutally swept under the dirty mat by APC’s selectively imperious
broom.

The Constitution,our birth certificate,has been ingloriously
subverted and democracy endangered.Well horned lies,propaganda and
opaqueness in governance have been elevated to the dizzying heights
of the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state
policy.Never before in Nigeria’s fractured history have we beholden
such crass opportunism,prebendalism,cluelessness and incapacity of
government;or such
hopelessness,haplessness,poverty,pains,pangs,tears,blood,sorrow and
anguish of beleaguered Nigerian people.Life has become cheap,so
cheap that children now leisurely gather around corpses of
slaughtered citizens as if viewing a film in a cinema house.They
are sometimes caught laughing hilariously.

Has anyone since noticed that chilling killings by Miyetti
Allah’s herdsmen have suddenly curiously gone down to near zero
since the campaigns for Buhari’s re-election commenced? Where are
the abducted Chibok and Dapchi girls and Leah Sharibu who are still
held in captivity,even after government paid for their
release,unexplained humongous ransome sums in various foreign
currency? This was a step that actually armedthe Boko Haram
insurgents morally,materially,psychologically and physically more
than anything else? Why is Buhari consistently subjugating to his
own Fulani tribe,the other 374 ethnic groups of Nigeria (Otite
Onigu),or 480 ethnic groups (M Onwuejeogwu),that speak about 520
ethnic languages out of which 9 have since become extinct? Some
ethnic nationalities have been turned into mere drawers of water
and hewers of wood,whilst others have been elevated to lords of the
manor and imperial masters.

The entire security apparachik and architecture of Nigeria today
is over 95% dominated by Buhari’s ethnic and religious groups in
such an ugly way that they can sit and decide Nigeria’s security
fate,speaking only the Hausa language.Why is Nigeria so polarised
today along ethnic,religious,linguistic,gender, class and tribal
lines than ever before? The overwhelming majority of the youths who
labour day and night to eke out a living are termed ” lazy youth”
by Buhari.The Almajaris who had been given some breather by the
Goodluck Jonathan government to uplift presences from poverty and
ignorance through the building of Almajari schools,have since been
brought back to their despicable and unspeakable state of nadir and
doldrums,so that they can continue to “rankadede” their oppressor
masters whose children are all in the best ivory leagues across the
world.

We certainly have an option to get out of Phaero’s suffocating
prison in Egypt.The Israelites did so against all odds.We must free
Nigeria and Nigerians from the iron grip of a very powerful,but
tiny cabal that Aishat Buhari,the president’s own wife,says are
just two to three persons.These shadowing unelected characters are
shamelessly exploiting a weak and unwell president,whom we have all
seen during the campaigns as pitifully lacking the presence of mind
and knowledge of his environment.We must help him,by saving him
from the excruciating grip of this obsequious tiny selfish
clique.We have to help him by retiring him to his well deserved
rest in Daura,having exhausted his optimum governance capacity.

The only way to do this is by voting him out tomorrow.To do
this,you must cast your vote for his leading opponent,Waziri Atiku
Abubakar.Although other younger presidential candidates are equally
intellectually fit as Atiku for the position of president,my honest
view,based on present realities,is that they do not for now possess
the national spread,political structures,cult followership and deep
pockets as Atiku,to successfully prosecute their presidential
ambition and win the tough race.

Therefore,fellow countrymen,go out there enmasse tomrrow and
vote for Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as our next president Even though he
will not be able to commandeer a utopian Eldorado through
abracadabra magic,he is surely miles ahead of president Buhari in
terms of
pan-Nigerianess,energy,vision,industry,intelligence,competence,national
reach,inclusiveness and detribalised posture.Nigerians,free
yourselves from the big prison Nigeria has been turned
into.Tomorrow is the D-Day.Seize your future now.Control your
destiny now.May God bless you all and grant Nigeria
peace,prosperity and freedom during and after tomorrow’s
presidential and NASS elections.Good luck.