•‘He is a jester who won’t go anywhere’
Ademola Babalola, Ibadan
FORMER Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida (rtd), will this morning arrive the ancient city of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital and the political nerve centre of South-West to flag-off his presidential campaign for the 2011 election.
However, elsewhere yesterday in Ibadan, a newly-inaugurated group routing for President Goodluck Jonathan beyond 2011 and headed by a former member of the House of Representatives, Chief Alli Balogun, vowed to stop Babangida from ruling Nigeria again.
The group, at a news conference addressed by Balogun, pointedly declared Babangida “as a jester who won’t go anywhere”, stressing that Nigerians in their majority are now wiser to allow another former military General, an evil genius to retard the gains so far recorded by the Jonathan-led Federal Government.
The President’s group then expressed optimism that Jonathan would contest the 2011 election “and win convincingly”, saying he has been ordained by God to lead Nigeria out of the doldrums and bad leadership of the past.
But on Tuesday, just two days to today’s planned rally in Ibadan for Babangida, a former Deputy-Governor of the State, Alhaji Azeem Gbolarumi, said those planning to jettison the zoning arrangement in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) constitution are being unfair to the North.
Gbolarumi, a former top aide of the late Ibadan colourful politician and Garrison Commander, Chief Lamidi Adedibu, is presently the South-West Coordinator for Ibrahim Babangida 2011 Presidential ambition and the arrowhead of the Ibadan rally coming up today at the Eleyele Polo Club of the ancient city, the same venue where a special reception was organised for President Goodluck Jonathan on June 3, this year by the state government.
The former Deputy-Governor’s position came as a pioneer President for the Disabled in Nigeria, Prince Paul Adelabu, described Babangida as the ‘messiah’ Nigeria earnestly needs to solve the myriads of problems confronting the almost 50-year-old nation, especially its seemingly comatose socio-economic and political problems, youth restiveness in the Niger Delta, kidnapping in the South-East and general emancipation of the down-trodden masses.
To actualise Babangida’s dream of governing the most populous black nation again come 2011 after his first eight years of military rule (1985-1993), Adelabu said he would ensure that over 19 million disables, deaf and the dumb, lepers, among other people living with one form of disabilities or the other, are mobilised for the 2011 election because of Babangida’s antecedents as the first Head of State to recognise and personally left the Aso Rock villa to pay a visit to the disables in their camp.
Gbolarumi, who was flanked by the group’s secretary, Asiwaju ‘Yemi Aderibigbe, and other Coordinators from the six states of Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti and Lagos States, also cautioned the party against incurring the wrath of the people because of the on-going debate and argument from some sections of the country that zoning should be jettisoned to allow Jonathan clinch the PDP’s ticket and govern the country beyond 2011.
According to Gbolarumi, any such move would only spell doom for the future of the country because Section 7(2c) of the PDP Constitution was explicit and had for long settle the issue that may arise over the vexed zoning, saying those canvassing for the dropping of the zoning arrangement were unnecessarily being unfair to Northerners who should be in government till 2015 after a Southerner, former President Olusegun Obasanjo had ruled the country based on the same zoning arrangement between 1999-2007.
Describing as unfortunate the death of erstwhile President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Gbolarumi queried that had the President been alive till 2011, “will the party deny him the second term ticket? “What is good for the goose is equally good for the gander”.
Gbolarumi also used the opportunity to respond to a media report credited to Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala that politicians of his ilk from Adedibu’s political family and some other aides in his administration are expired politicians, following the public support they are daily giving to the former President.
The statement, according to Gbolarumi, was unguarded and not directed at him, saying the governor would never categorise him as an expired politician.
He remarked that what Alao-Akala and others in government today are benefitting from was a structure left behind by Adedibu of which he was an arrow head, going by the efforts they mustered to remove former Governor Rashidi Ladoja from office, which eventually paved the way for Akala to be governor and he (Gbolarumi) as deputy for the 11 months that the illegal impeachment lasted before the Supreme Court invalidated all the processes that led to Ladoja’s ouster and restored Ladoja’s mandate as governor.
