by Sufuyan Ojeifo / 2006-01-25

Reacting yesterday to unconfirmed reports that President Olusegun Obasanjo would be meeting with some selected northern governors in Abuja tomorrow in a bid to have them endorse the tenure extension, Awoniyi said the governors are mature people and collectively will do the right thing in the present circumstance.

Speaking in an interview with reporters in Abuja, he stated, “I have heard the rumour myself and I believe very many Nigerians have heard it too. Whether it is true or not, I do not know. But I think on behalf of the governors, from the bit I know about them and their mood, they are not children; they will do the right thing ultimately.
“They cannot be unaware of the mood of the electorates in each of their states and I believe they are not likely to go against the mood of the electorate sin their states. The mood is against the third term bid and it will be very unwise to go against the mood of the people, no matter the pressure”.

Awoniyi said that he does not expect that any governor would wish to have President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration continue beyond May 2007 against the backdrop of the “horrendous” things that happened in Anambra and Oyo states.

According to him: “In fair-ness to the governors, at the national political reform conference, they stood firm and told Obasanjo that they could not go against the decisions of the Northern delegates as Obasanjo had wished because the delegates spoke for their people.
“The northern members of the Senate at their meeting in Kaduna, rejected the project. The spokesman of the Governors Forum at that same meeting also spoke against the project. Everybody including the governors saw the derision and boos with which the proponents of the project were greeted as members filed out after the meeting. Some senate members who were known to be for it dared not show their faces at the Kaduna meeting.

“Also, some three weeks later at the 40th anniversary to commemorate of the death of the Sardauna of Sokoto at Arewa House, Kaduna on 14th January this year, the northern senators and members of the House of Representatives sent a joint message to the jam-packed audience that they were united against the third term project.

“That meeting passed three unanimous resolutions. The first resolution was that the governors should meet urgently to forge unity among themselves and work out a programme of unity for the good of Nigeria and the North with the support of the former Heads of State and Presidents of Northern origin and present the programme to the North for action.

“A resolution was also passed to congratulate the northern senators and members of the House of Representatives for their joint message, promising to keep to their words and that the people of the North were fully behind them.

“The northern governors meeting now proposed, I believe, must take these resolutions into account and seek ways to give them effect. At the personal level, I know that several of the governors are NOT seeking a return to power. I believe they will prove to be honourable men and that they will oppose a third term even if they do not proclaim so from the rooftops.

“I do not see how a governor or any prudent man for that matter, can give his support to inflicting a further four years of the kind of shameful mode of grotesque illegality in governance we experienced publicly in Anambra and Oyo states, not to mention great failures of character and performance and the kind of blind loyalty that the present regime considers proper or indeed necessary.”

He stressed further, “In any case, in view of what has happened in Anambra and Oyo states where democracy has been set back by local warlords and their thugs and where arbitrariness has replaced decent rule of law, why would any governor wish to have that type of regime inflicted on this country for another four years come May 2007 and probably beyond?

“I think things are getting worse everyday in terms of constitutionality and one thing that these governors can do for this country is to ensure that the rule of law reigns supreme between now and 2007. If they can do this, they will go down in our history as a group of men who upheld democracy and good governance at our great hour of need.”

Awoniyi, who described Obasanjo as our modern day budding Hitler, alerted on the dangers of tyranny and dictatorship staring the nation in the face on account of Obasanjo’s leadership and urged leaders and well-meaning Nigerians to stand up and be counted in the fight to nip the third term project in the bud.

According to him, “the nation is in very, very grave danger and anybody who is in doubt about tyranny and dictatorship staring us in the face, step by step, should go and read and re-read how Adolf Hitler became the dictator of Germany using thugs, murder, terror, rigged elections and subversion of the very constitution that brought him into power until a stage was reached when leaders did not stand up.

“The German parliament even passed an enabling Act which made it possible for Hitler to abolish legitimately all other political parties and to then declare himself the supreme leader of Germany. It took great sufferings, loss of lives and the second world war to put Hitler down. A similar scenario is emerging in Nigeria today and all right thinking people must stand up and be counted to make sure that it does not succeed,” he warned.