A state executive refuses to not see lapses in judgment then reverts to spin the truth. Only in Nigeria Excerpts from ThisDay (Agagu blasts Elumelu over power probe report):
More controversies continue to trail the House of Representatives Committee report on the Power Sector Probe as one of those indicted, Ondo State Governor Olusegun Agagu, has faulted the report, saying the committee’s chairman, Hon. Ndudi Elumelu, played to the gallery.
He also said Elumelu-led committee ignored all the necessary documentary evidence presented by him and deliberately went ahead to indict him.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja yesterday, the Chief of Staff to the governor, Chief Femi Agagu, who said he was mandated to speak on behalf of the governor said: “The panel got it wrong because it failed to take into consideration all documentary evidence that we placed before it, all attesting to the fact that all the contractors who took up jobs were dully registered with the CAC.
“From what we have read in the newspapers, the panel did not say that Agagu perpetrated fraud during his tenure as Minister of Power and Steel. It only concluded erroneously that the governor awarded contracts to unregistered contractors.
“If the Committee had had it in mind to do a thorough job and was not interested in playing politics, it would have verified all the claims made by the governor with the Federal Government, after all documents do not lie.
“We thought that with the explanations the governor gave the Committee members even when they visited him in Akure, Nigeria would eventually be treated to an unbiased report from its investigations. We were wrong.
“The committee got so desperate after failing to establish its initial suspicion against the governor and so decided to just find a fault with someone to give an impression that it had caught somebody at least. We see this as playing to the gallery and this is not good for our democracy.”
“Who did Kutigi vote for and, my take on Obama
I am returning to this beat after a very long and boring break. While stepping aside from this weekly commune with you I had promised to be back when the seven-point agenda of President Umaru MusaYar’Adua might have taken form. I was actually waiting for Godot I soon concluded especially when two months to the end of the year, the Yar’Adua government is still in battle with the National Assembly over the 2008 budget. I still can’t understand what that was all about and with what the government has been planning for the nation. What does the government need N683.3bn supplementary budget for? And why this move a day after the legislature adopted some N2.6trillion amended budget for the year after four months of bickerings?
I just realized my hope in his government was fractured more so since his administration has failed to effect the change he promised, about two months ago,at the now lacklustre federal executive council,thus forcing government activity to grind to a halt. Why promise what you have no muscle to effect? But, as I have always argued, we all are stuck with the Yar’Adua style of governance; there is no escaping his drabness, his lily-livered approach to governance because those who jostled with him and are now waiting on the Supreme Court to undo what has been done are no better. They are myopic, stiff or just want to be president because of the glamour associated with the office.
Those who today want us to believe that they are in the opposition are terribly low in intelligence and have not shown the requisite abilities for such high offices. Lately, I have been stuck with the US elections and, sentiments apart, either of the two will be a good president for America. They both are very prepared and have workable solutions to the myriad of problem bedevilling their country and the world. They just don’t shout POWER! Or wave brooms around town becoming emergency sanitary inspectors in the process.
Watching the very engaging debates ongoing in America I am appalled at the level of illiteracy in our political process, From state to state you witness the sham called opposition. We must however underscore that those in power have found nothing good to do with governance. Those outside who should position themselves as better alternatives are disappointingly worse. Take Lagos primary election for the local government election as an example. While one will try to sidestep the legality of the election one was embarrassed that the now good boy of Lagos, Babatunde Fashola allowed himself to be rubbished in a primary that witnessed the use of cutlasses, guns by people who were against the general imposition of candidates by Tinubu and his ilk. This act was from people who labelled the PDP as a party of brigands.
I have also been focusing on the situation in Ondo State where the media battle for the seat of governor appears fiercer than that the tribunal. The opposition in this state cannot, unfortunately, extricate itself from whatever blame or anomaly experienced during the election. The Labour Party appears as the outside faction of the PDP. Those who made the Labour party popular in Ondo were actually few months to the election, strong members of the PDP. So whatever malpractice that was built into the electoral system could have been infected by everybody, by the pot who is now calling the kettle black. Most importantly, there was so much media mention made of the fact that some strange names were found in the voters’ register? So what is new? Isn’t that the hue of politics in Nigeria? Such names as Justice Legbo Kutigi and Mike Tyson found their names into the register and became an issue at the tribunal. But, if the opposition was truly serious about the electoral process why were these names not made an issue during the display of voters’ register? Is this not because those now fighting at the tribunal were birds of the same feather as at the time all these were done? And who knows who ‘Kutigi’ and co voted for, if they voted? Why were the names found only in places where Agagu won? Are Nigerians being told that such malfeasance are limited only to where Agagu won when those who made up Labour are estranged members of the PDP? So there could be no Klitscho or Karibi-Whyte in areas won by Rahman Mimiko?
But, of course, INEC of Iwu the best in the world will be blamed. He supervised a shambled election made much worse by politicians from both divides that were bent on winning. And because they have not been found out, they are now playing the Ostrich. Tells you so much of what the future portends.
My take on all these is that the opposition in this part are just on the other side because they are aggrieved over the limited opportunity they were given. By their utterances and actions the slowness of Yar’Adua and the ineptitude of some men in power will continue and that means the nation, Nigeria will not be able to have the experience of a Mccain, someone I believe who has the deep knowledge of the workings of the American system and that of a charismatic Obama, who is so deep to the extent that he is offering a new perspective on how America could work. They sold themselves to the whole world and they are very, very good choices for anybody’s presidency. Who compares to them here?
Obama, especially, should be of interest to those in opposition in this country. He has never been a member of the GOP thus he is not playing politics of convenience. He was a bloody nobody about fifteen years ago; today he is aspiring to the highest political office in the world. I doff my hat for this audacious young man. Of hope and believe in his aspiration but my problem is his colour and his heritage. Will Americans actually make him their Commander-in-Chief? November 4will tell.
This guy is a Kenyan in spite of his being born in America by an American mother. He is definitely different from those we have come to know as African-Americans. If he makes it to the White House that means a Hakeem Olajuwon can also one day be an American president. Can we allow Joop Berkhout or Raymond Zard or their children to hold political offices here? I don’t think so because just in my backyard here during the last elections that produced Alao-Akala as governor, the Ibadans did not want an Ogbomoso as governor of a state they co-own just because the capital is in Ibadan. So also my brother, Babatunde Oduyoye was disallowed from within his party of flying the flag of his party for the governorship of Oyo State by those who want us to remember that his grandfather migrated to Ibadan from Ijebu. Such nonsense. We are all guilty of such short-sightedness as I have also never failed to remind Bola Ahmed Tinubu to go back to his roots in Iragbiji, Osun State and stop disturbing the peace in Lagos.
It is this kind of segregation that those who are outside government should fight so that an Obama can happen here in 2011. What we will continue to witness, however, is the kind of cross-carpeting that will make a politician be in three parties within eight years and now cry foul after being at the receiving end of the same tactic he and his former colleagues had been using to scare opponents”.
October 26, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I am not suprised that Agagu in his usual faction is denying his involvement and faulting findings even in the Power Sector Probe. If you have followed Agagu’s political demise/suicide in Ondo State, it has been characterised by same denials, faulting, labelling and what have you. This is the only style that Agagu knows and this doesnt mean a thing anymore for we have all heard it one too many times. What is important is not what Agagu has to say but what Waziri intends to do about this matter. There are so many unanswered questions in cases that EFCC have been involved in. Seems to me (pardon if I am wrong), that since Nuhu Ribadu was forced out, EFCC cases are no longer result oriented. This sort of things make Nigeria very frustrating, and one tends to ask, will there be any light at the end of this political/corruption tunnel in Nigeria?
October 27, 2008 at 3:24 pm