We must never be tired of demanding that any government should chasten itself and give us the foundation and the example to propel us forward. We must demand that any government should deal hon
estly with us and level with us…. We must have accountability and transparency that we are not getting now. If any administration is turning evil we should spare no efforts and no sacrifice to remove it. General Olusegun Obasanjo, Keynote Address to the participants at the Workshop on Nigeria: The State of the Nation and the Way Forward, Arewa House, Kaduna, 1994, p.29
The abrupt, unscheduled Saudi trip and PDP’S reaction to a keen observer of events in the normal discontented salariate can quickly conclude that turbulence and tempests have returned in due course, leaving an intact nomenclature that whenever a President sneezes, the country catches cold. The time has come when the long hidden bloated enduring image of the President’s health is playing itself out distinctly and more transparently.
History is replete with stories of full blown dictatorships which were eventually swept out of power by the collective will and determination of the people. In 1986, people’s power brought down two oppressive and tyrannical regimes; one in Haiti, and the other in Philippines. That year was a sad one for dictators all over the world, and a fruitful one for all lovers of decency and freedom, because the governments of two despots- Baby Dor Duvalier of Haiti and Ferdinand Marcos of Philippines crashed like sack of beans. Dictatorship has been referred to as ‘’power without responsibility’’, and to which James Baldwin noted as ‘’historical and official privilege of prostitutes’’- because the effectiveness only last for the governed, dictators by their very nature are vulnerable, because dictatorship is a confidence trick. However for any trick to be effective, the perception or feeling of the people upon whom the trick is played is crucial. If the people are gullible or credulous and are unable to detect such a fraud when it is unleashed on them, then the trickster becomes unsteadied, more undecided, uncertain than the previous ones and fall becomes inevitable. Such a fall may occur at anytime during this diabolic tri
p, and it may be soon, as in Liberia, where Samuel Doe’s ludicrous antics paved the way for his eventual waterloo. On the other hand, it may take several years as in Haiti, Zaire, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Philippines, where the people have been brainwashed to believing and accepting that the dynasties or imperial lords in power would be there till eternity, more so that they had plenty of time and acolytes to establish themselves firmly. In the end, they were swept off, like dead cockroaches into the waste bin of history.
