BEING TEXT OF A PAPER PRESENTED BY APOSTLE EUGENE OGU,
FOUNDER, ABUNDANT LIFE EVANGELIC MISSION
FORMER CHAIRMAN, PFN, RIVERS BRANCH
ANAMBRA ELECTION A BAD OMEN FOR 2015
I have watched with keen interest the brouhaha that characterized the
Anambra State Election. And I am still in shock and wondering about the future
that awaits us in this country.
For over a year now, our televisions and
newspapers have featured all manner of dangerous trend of events happening in
almost every sector that makes the component of government and governance.
Beginning from the corruption of the oil subsidy, inflation of road
contracts, stealing of pension funds, secrecy of oil production, corruption and
extravagant spending in their various sector, oil theft, alarming increment of
external and internal debt of over N8 trillion, kidnappings and
assassinations, publications of falsehood, media character assassination,
corruption and politicizing of the judiciary, infiltration of the media houses
and prints, disappearance of funds budgeted for various ministries and
unimaginable leakages, unbelievable decay of our educational sector and insecurity.
There is now exclusions of voters name and the shameless and irresponsible
display of thuggery, daylight robbery and impunity in the handling of our electoral
process.
These have become a deadly
gathering storm that we must confront if we ever desire a future. The
admittance, of mix-up and failures of Professor Jega and the electoral
commissioners in the Anambra election on itself is a shot INEC's foot. The
level of unlawful and reckless used of our security agency to perpetuate
oppressions with impunity on our citizenry has become alarming. The dangerous
trend and failure of the Anambra State Election needs no prophet to tell that a
war silently declared against Nigerians.
Most disheartening is the nonchalant and care free attitude of the
leadership of this country over this monstrous and deadly day-to-day occurrence
of these ills. Beginning from the South to North and West to the East, as I
ponder on this our journey through this dark tunnel I am force to
cry the song of Jim Reeves which says “where do we go from here?”
.
I must call on the chairman of INEC Professor Jega to as a matter of
urgency cancel with immediate effect this label of reproach called “election” in
Anambra State and withdraw all the electoral commissioners who were sent to
conduct the charade of election, if possible deploy the electoral commissioner
of Cross Rivers State, set up a judicial panel of inquiry to investigate the
show of shame, fish out the bad eggs in INEC in order to save our faces from
the international community.
How could we explain to the entire world that INEC, after the huge sum
of money pumped into the preparation of Anambra State Election and the drafting
of over 28,000 policemen from different parts of this country with our tax
payers’ money and other funds provided for logistics to conduct election for
just a a state that we are ready for an election in 2015 or is Anambra State
Election a test run to see what Nigerians would do when such illegality and
impunity is perpetuated in 2015?
If anyone is in doubt of the insensitivity of our leaders on the plight
of common man in this country, Anambra State Election says it loud and clear. I
could not hold back tears when I saw hundreds of women who trooped out on the
highway and lay on the main road in protest of how they were disfranchised and
their rights violently taken away from them. Nigerians should be ready to
take their destinies in their hands by insisting that we can no longer fold our
hands and watch the leadership of this country plunge us into a chaotic and
unimaginable crisis. We must rise and stop this before it gets too late. Events
have proved that the only language the Nigerian leadership understands is
massive protest or strike.
ASUU can tell you that it was the only language the Government understood
to get its dues as NMA, NASSU, NUT and NLC . Must we continue to watch the
trend to continue in this country? It took channel television to expose the
plight and rot in the police college, Lagos to receive the attention it has
today, while other police quarters in other states remain a mirage, not to talk
of the alleged police pension of USD2 billion frauds.
Socrates aptly puts it thus: “the only thing the upright could do for
evil to strive or take over the land is to do nothing”
To sit, fold our hands and watch all these ills being perpetuated across
the land, is to our own undoing.
“A word clearly spoken is enough for a wise”
Apostle Eugene Ogu,
Founder, Abundant Life Evangelic Ministry
Port Harcourt
