Our attention In the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) has been drawn to the utterly vitriolic response from the Nation’s presidency to General Muhammadu Buhari’s (GMB) statesman-like communication on the armed attack on the Emir of Kano, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Ado Bayero. In the said response, Dr Doyin Okupe, the Presidential aide on Public affairs, was reported to have described GMB’s statement, which aptly mentioned the constitutional provision that the ‘purpose of government is the welfare and security of the people’, as irresponsible, reckless and opportunistic. It is never surprising that Dr Okupe’s communication is often laden on asininity and acerbic profanity, what is befuddling is the quality of leadership of the Nation’s presidency that bears with such immeasurable indecency!
As a respected Nigerian once said, “the greatest threat to Liberty is the absence of criticism”; we believe that the bullish tactics of Dr Okupe in excoriating every critic of this PDP-led regime is not only deleterious to a harmonious polity but also an affront on personal liberty.
The pertinent questions are:
- Does it not speak eloquently on the mind-set of the President that he encourages his aides to lambast a former Nigerian leader and respected statesman for volunteering his concern on the general insecurity in the Nation state?
- Is it not a matter of grave concern that when a respected monarch, with all the retinue of security staff, could be so gruesomely attacked on the street, what hope is there for the ordinary Nigerian in this dispensation?
- Does this latest attack not confirm our well-reasoned belief that the insecurity besetting the nation goes beyond religion and ethnicity?
- Is it not ludicrous that, for more than one year since this President declared the infiltration of his government by Boko Haram, nobody (within his government) has been handed over for judicial prosecution?
- Should this President not be accused of unduly overheating the polity by his penchant for abdicating responsibility for the foreboding evil of insecurity in the Land?
- Is it not true that, rather than making the polity safe for the Citizens (based on the oath of allegiance sworn to on 29th May, 2011), this President has lately renewed his assault on our collective psyche with all the shenanigans of devious politicking, ahead of 2015 elections?
- Is it not time we asked the relevant question that, with the yearly increase in the fatalities from Nigeria’s insecure nation-space, when shall this president transform from rhetoric of vacuous promises to making the polity safe for lives and property?
As a responsible political party, we cannot be cowed by the indignity and loquacity of a crude presidential aide in failing to discharge our responsibility of nudging those that bear executive responsibility on the gaping need for security (as enshrined in the Nation’s statute book). This, we believe, is the irreducible minimum in our article of faith with the Nigerian people.
God bless Nigeria.
Rotimi Fashakin (Engr.)
National Publicity Secretary, CPC.
(Wednesday, January 23, 2013).
