Jonathan’s Terrorism Against Lagosians

By Sanya Osijo

Millions of the people of Lagos and visitors to the state were rudely awakened on Monday, March 16, 2015, to the grand plot by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to unleash acts of unprecedented terrorism against their peaceful state which is Nigeria’s economic capital and the most populous state in the country. In the name of staging a so-called peaceful protest against the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the PDP and its controlled Federal Government mobilized a heavily compromised faction of the Odua People’s Congress (OPC) and a handful of out-of-work entertainers to forcibly take over Ikorodu Road and Funso Williams Avenue, which together form the longest, broadest and busiest road in Lagos, to protest against preparations of the forthcoming general elections in the country.   

The protesters who arrived in 100 buses were armed with guns, cudgels, machetes, clubs, sticks, irons, broken bottles, spears, arrows, daggers and other dangerous paraphernalia of violence. Many of them with blood shot eyes were smoking marijuana and consuming more dangerous drugs in defiance of the law in full public glare. The leader of the faction of the OPC involved in this act of lawlessness, Gani Adams, told journalists that he was in constant touch with President Goodluck Jonathan as the demonstration was going on. This faction, widely reported last week of collecting a hefty N150m from Jonathan in Lagos, was the same OPC group which attempted to assassinate our national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, in December, 1999, when, as Lagos State governor, he was carrying out a night inspection of solid waste collection.

Though the violent demonstration was claimed by the organisers to be a peaceful action against INEC, it was clear to all and sundry that it was a prelude to the planned grand violence against Lagosians in a desperate attempt to hijack the state government by all means possible. For instance, the demonstrators destroyed every poster and billboard of candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in sight and chased away innocent road users and passers-by. Traffic was paralysed for over three hours, worsening the condition of patients in need of emergency medical attention.

  The whole nation is still in shock that President Jonathan is the brain behind this violent act. Contrary to the Public Order Act, the organisers did not obtain police permission, nor did they bother to do so. The police authorities could not have permitted them to use the critical and ever busy Ikorodu Road/Funso Williams Avenue, all the more so on a Monday morning. And the police would not have allowed them to harass hapless citizens and even foreigners with weapons of war.

We are puzzled that President Jonathan and his cohorts in the PDP want to turn Lagos into another Rivers State of 2003 during which the PDP-controlled state government hired a large army of armed robbers, school dropouts and other social miscreants and armed them to the teeth with the sole purpose of using them to retain the state, despite its abysmal performance record. When these armed unemployed youths were used and dumped after the 2003 general elections, they turned to kidnapping of expatriate oil workers for ransom and later turned to kidnapping rich Nigerians; with time they turned to kidnapping of people of average means for ransom. This is the genesis of what Nigerians call militancy in the Niger Delta.

The nation is shocked that several years after the PDP unleashed sustained violence in Anambra State during the governorship of Senator Chris Ngige, the party and its controlled Federal Government in Abuja are determined to re-enact in Lagos State the notorious mayhem scenario which attracted global attention and condemnation.    The same characters who created the militancy crisis in the Niger Delta and the Anambra State mayhem are the very ones working in cahoots with Jonathan to unleash grand scale violence on Lagos State in order to capture it. We are surprised that after the repercussions which Janjaweed and their sponsors have earned for turning a substantial part of the Sudan into a killing field, President Jonathan wants to go the way of Al-Bashir of the Sudan, a notorious international outcast. Jonathan enjoys the dubious distinction of being the only Nigerian leader to work openly with ethnic militias which do not believe in the peaceful co-existence of the Nigerian people. At the rate he is going, Jonathan will be too delighted to provide huge funds for terrorist organizations like Boko Haram if they could assure him of a few votes.   

We are pleased that officers, members and agents of the International Criminal Court (ICC) are already in Nigeria with an eye on taking swift actions against those who use the forthcoming elections to cause violence. We are glad to note that the ICC is already studying a petition to it by the London branch of our great party following the public directive by the First Lady, Mrs Patience Jonathan, at a campaign rally in Cross River State to PDP supporters to stone everyone who  advocates “change”, the APC mantra. We are also delighted that the ICC has just sentenced Mrs Simone Gbagbo, wife of ex Ivorian President Laurent Gbgbo, to 20 years imprisonment for her role in the violence which erupted in the wake of Gbabo’s refusal to concede victory to President Alhassan Quatara in Cote d’Ivoire.

We are distressed that at a time African rulers are ending  the culture of impunity which has contributed significantly to Africa’s gross underdevelopment, President Jonathan and his ruling PDP are taking this horrible political phenomenon to a new level. The consolation of the Nigerian people is that change is coming to the nation from March 28 and that  the international community, through institutions and organs like the ICC, will hold people like President Jonathan accountable for their actions. The PDP must always bear in mind that every action has consequences.

•Osijo is member APC Publicity Committee, Lagos State