The emperor strikes again!

Unless Newton's theory on gravity is about to be reversed not a few Nigerian lawmakers will be kissing the earth very shortly with a heavy thump and it will not be on their own free volition but that of our all- conquering Emperor Olusegun Obasanjo. After few weeks of noise making and chest thumping on their effort to impeach Mr. President, it now appears that the Kubwa vigilantes have backed down on their threat reportedly after a visit from the president in search of truce and; receiving the man in his office the Speaker Aminu Masari could even afford banters on old soldiers and their bad habits etcetera. Ces't fini? Not a chance by a long mile! As a matter of fact, any one familiar with the ways of the Emperor and his vindictive mindset should know for sure that that indeed, may just be the beginning of the story. The following are a few reasons why:

The late Senate President Chuba Okadigbo, was not only an excellent orator or a respected idealist but also a man of steel and principles. One breezy morning during his brief but eventful tenure, the Police then mercifully under Musliu Smith laid siege on his official residence to retrieve the mace we were told he removed from the Senate chambers to scuttle plans for his removal from office.

That was after agents of the presidency had failed in a previous plot to impeach him. Quite typical of the man, he stood on his balcony and delivered a stunning lecture on democracy and civility in which he declared that the Police's attempt to even touch the mace was pure sacrilege. As the siege lasted the romantic democrats among us were moved to tears by his ordeal but also quite expectedly, the normally vociferous human rights activists in Lagos were deafening in their silence and support for the man and his symbolic action.

Chuba was to survive that scare but only just. Days after, at the dedication of his official residence, the Emperor simply gate crashed the party and even danced with Chuba's wife as if all was long and truly forgotten. Chuba may have had a PHD in Political Science and may have indeed been an astute political strategist, but in lowering his guard thereafter he betrayed extreme naivety about the Emperor's character flaws and ultimately set himself up for the sucker punch, which was swift in coming. The rest is now history.

The manner of his election notwithstanding, erstwhile PDP Chairman Audu Ogbeh became intoxicated with the euphoria of his high office and felt he was man enough to rebuke the Emperor over his sinister handling of the still lingering Anambra political crises. The Emperor's courtiers quickly responded by going for his jugular. The normal public outcry followed after which the Emperor supposedly backed down and even tucked into a sumptuous meal of pounded yam at the residence of his adversary in supposed truce. Case over? The last time we heard of Chief Ogbeh he just survived an armed robbery attack at home in Makurdi. Before then and in between mouthfuls of pounded yam, he had the common sense to decipher the ominous message and quickly fled from his office and the capital for good measure but not before a visit to the FCT Minister Nasir El-Rufai to secure the title documents of his landed property in the city. He is generally considered to be lucky, having escaped with his life without a court appearance and without the indignity of being paraded in handcuffs. The same of course, cannot be said about Adolphus Wabara, whose major crime it seems, was in making himself such an easy target and a major obstacle to the desire of the Emperor to appear squeaky clean before the other majesties in London, Paris and Washington.

Now, cast your mind back to 1995 and the aborted coup plot to topple a certain dark-goggled General of diminutive stature. A few notable individuals including the Emperor were held, tried and convicted by a military tribunal. The death sentence on the Emperor was however subsequently commuted to a jail term but not before an intensive debate in the AFRC. It later emerged that a tall and bulky General from Zuru who also happened to be the Army Chief insisted that precedence should be followed, meaning all convicted coup plotters deserved the firing squad like Vatsa regardless of their pedigree. Alas, events leading onto 1999 ensured that the Emperor survived and; among the first tasks he accomplished was to jail Bamayi and company over the alleged murder of Kudirat Abiola the same way he did away with otherwise laudable projects such as the PTF and the Vision 2010 just principally because they originated from Abacha. The trial of Bamayi and Almustapha of course has since been reduced to a comical circus at a time sadistic killers in the mould of Ganiyu Adams can wine and dine at state functions. Today will mark nearly five years since their arrest while their trial remains inconclusive.

Again, flash your mind back to 2003 and the Shenanigans involved in the selection of the PDP Presidential candidate when the Emperor's re-nomination was generally thought to be in jeopardy due to the interest shown by his deputy, the sad faced ex Customs officer from Yola who was buoyed by support from most Governors in the PDP. Only last minute high-level politicking in which he was made to swallow his pride several times over saved the Emperor's scalp then but again, his response was quite predictable. The over ambitious deputy who previously doubled as the Chairman of the National Council on Privatisation was soon reduced to a bit-part player in state affairs only to surface barely two weeks ago at the fundraiser of perhaps the world's most expensive library where he delivered a stunning speech in praise of the Emperor! Incredible.

That aside, Nigerians collective are great shock absorbers. But even they cannot understand what has befallen them since 1999. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now possible to hazard a few guesses. Perhaps we should have stormed the Villa to force Abacha out when the Emperor was incarcerated. Maybe at a time most of his own brethren fled abroad, we should all have risked our lives by storming the gulag where the Emperor lay emaciated or; could it be that we failed to invite the Americans to invade the country in his aid? The posers seem unending, but whatever the answers may be, some basic facts are as clear as daylight. At no point in our eventful history have Nigerians been made to endure so much penury, pain, anguish, despair, assassinations, and ethno-religious bloodshed without just cause.

In the intermittent period never have we earned so much in hard currency without anything tangible to show for it, and never did we have as many qualified Nigerians in search of jobs without succour. We were promised three million jobs through NEEDS and got the boot instead with a promise of more to follow; They promised to fix NEPA within six months when they took over in 1999 but a great majority are still in darkness despite the colossal sums allegedly spent in hard currency; the Emperor junketed the globe in search of foreign investments but could not even recover the loot allegedly stolen by Abacha let alone to obtain debt relief; they sold the nation cheap on the international scene in search of friends and allies and received daggers in the back as exemplified by America's continued attempt to destabilise the country, the Charles Taylor affair or even the attitude of South Africa over the ambition of a Nigerian to assume the presidency of the African Development Bank.

So, what do we garner from all these? We remain hostages to a very terrible nightmare, which is scheduled to last another three years except there is divine intervention. It is precisely why I grimaced in anguish when the first pictures emerged from the Emperor's visit to the National Assembly; an institution whose members his foulmouthed aide had previously savaged as a bunch of nonentities. If our recent history is anything to go by, the originators of the impeachment move are about to pay a painful price for their docility and complacency.

For all we know, the EFCC and the other state agencies of coercion may already be knocking on their doors. If there is one thing about the Emperor, it is the manner in which he is easily predicted in the vindictive sense. He may be poised to strike, once again unless the assembly realises that what is fake goes beyond a symbolic visit to placate individual egos!

tempthist@yahoo.com