By Joe Igbokwe

Either by design or accident, this date was the fifth anniversary of the Ikeja cantonment blast, when thousands of Nigerians perished in the aftermath of the carelessness and clear negligence of the PDP government. This manifested in its failure as in every state policy between 1999 and 2007, to manage the immediate aftermath of the incident. Confronted by the distraught survivors of the holocaust at Ejigbo canal, when he was forced to pay a visit to the cantonment, President Obasanjo, the sole owner of the PDP had to snap, �Shut up, I don�t even need to be here�. A bewildered nation watched the emergence of a power glutton and an unfeeling despot, goaded by a band of hirelings� charlatans and jesters that conveniently go by the appellation, PDP. As usual, the Lagos Governor, Bola Tinubu, was on top of the situation and to the admiration of all, provided the needed elixir that managed the aftermath of the crisis and saved many lives that would have perished.

For eight years and under a regime of unending oil boom that had accounted for trillions of Naira in oil revenue, Nigerians are living in unprecedented squalor, poverty and misery. No road, no light, no job, no food, no security, increasing deaths, fraud, corruption, disease, political killings, public looting, armed robbery, lawlessness, inflation, etc are the hallmarks of PDP�s reign for these past years. It is such that PDP, to the millions of long suffering, defeated and diseased Nigerians now variously stand for �People Destroying People�. "People Deceiving People�, �People Demolishing People�, �Papa Destroying Pickin� etc. while its slogan is �PDP�. Share the money�.

To drive home its morbid value, the PDP that has not slept because of its inability to steal the votes of Lagosians in the previous elections has spared nothing to punish Lagos for their insistence on being governed by a government they freely choose. From abandoning its infrastructures to impudently withholding its statutory allocations, down to launching an army of hoodlums on its streets, the PDP federal government has done everything humanly possible to break the strong will of Lagosians but met a solid brick wall in the resolute stand of Lagosians under their thorough and hyper-active Governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, arguably the best and most competent governor in Nigeria today. PDP�s last act, which flows from its frustration with the people of Lagos, is the population gerrymandering in the name of census results that was manufactured the other day. Callously and with no sense of history, it reduced the status of Lagos and came out with a stupid position that Lagos trails Kano State thereby mortgaging the interests of Lagos, just for a blind pursuit of political space. But the PDP never reckoned with the pro-active bent of their nemesis, Bola Tinubu who carried out a detailed enumeration of Lagosians and his result would stand against the vindictive concoctions of the empty-headed PDP and its government to deal with Lagosians permanently.

But Lagosians never knew the morbid rapacity of the PDP till January 27, 2007, five years after thousands perished in the Oke Afa canal. It was the day the PDP mobilized all their members nationwide to dance and revel on the graves and memories of the bomb blast victims. From Sokoto to Kaduna, Rivers to Kano, Imo to Osun, they all descended on Lagos like itinerant locusts with the aim of selling their wish to continue the destruction of Nigeria and capture Lagos. Corrupt governors, stealing ministers, prostitutes, hirelings, lay bouts, scavengers and vultures that have elevated themselves to lofty positions in the last eight years and who have plundered the wealth of the nation with reckless fervours came to a jamboree in Lagos.

Hear Tony Anenih who some say is yet to account for the three hundred billion scam at the Work Ministry, �The people of Lagos State should not make a mistake this time around because a PDP government will not prevent the federal government from developing Lagos �. This must be from the heist he lifted from the works ministry.

To Bode George, still running with the nation�s N83 billion lifted from the NPA, according to EFCC, �we have decided to come to this arena (TBS) of independence because from now, Obasanjo with the PDP support is giving Nigeria a second independence�. Independence of stealing, corruption, hunger, armed robbery, killings, fraud, deceit and unemployment, you may say. Hear a certain Olagunsoye Oyinlola, the no-bitumen governor that raided Lagos without repairing even one road, �I urge you Lagosians to support PDP and ensure that a PDP governor emerge (sic) because if we all go in one direction, we will be able to use our influence to get whatever we desire at the centre�. As if he needs Lagos to improve on the charade he is running in Osun State since 2003.

Yet hear Peter Odili, who was blackmailed out of his dear presidential dream by his sordid financial scandals, �Let us all go out and begin to work. From Lagos here, Obanikoro must take this state�. It is obvious that he is still suffering from the self inflicted daze his wild ambition imposed on him not to see that PDP has no candidate in a certain Obanikoro that has achieved practically nothing in life, save by the grace of Bola Tinubu.

To a certain Hajia Mariam Ciroma, �There is no government in Lagos State. They have all kind (sic) of parties there-Labour Party, AC, AD. They have many parties in Alausa. Obanikoro, the place is for you, just go and take it�. This tells you how low public office has sunk in Nigeria as one needs what he/she has down there than what he/she has up here to become Obasanjo�s minister in this woe-ridden era.

Hear one John Odey, a character that has licked his way to become the spokesman of PDP. �We have come to Lagos to capture the state and re-align it with progress. We have come to paralyse Lagos and capture the state for realignment with development�. One never knew whether what this jobber was slaving to say was that he can recommend any of the states presently under the demolishing thumbs of the PDP as a model for Lagos to emulate.

At the end of that tale of an idiot, the PDP dispersed and the landlord swept off the vestiges of horror the party brought to Lagos and with it, the dream of the locusts to add Lagos to their vassal empire when Nigerians are working for the extinction of that coalition of horrible characters that is responsible for its present pallid state.

Fact is that the PDP is desperate to cling to power so as to continue the mindless plunder for which it is known for so as to cover the many acts of corruption it has launched in Nigeria. It is also desperate to capture Lagos at all costs but Lagosians, being the most sophisticated educated and exposed crop of Nigerians see through this dubious mission. It had tried all tricks in its full luggage of vices but these cut no ice with Lagosians desire to drive and be at the vanguard of the progressive reclamation of Nigeria from these locusts. It had tried a first �tsunami� rally in Lagos but that ended as an anti-climax. After so much frustrated shuffles, it sees as its standard bearer a character that has neither the carriage of a governor nor the requisite competence to grasp, talk not of understanding Lagos. To advertise his bare wits on what governance, he made the hollow reference of Lagos �being so dirty� at a time a government with a will has, to the sorrow of his � Abuja sponsors� dealt drastically with the environmental problems of Lagos. On January 27, 2007 when other reasonable Lagosians were mourning a batch the victims of PDP�s callous touch on power who got drowned in the Oke Afa canal, the PDP went on a nationwide recruitment of known apostles of corruption, thieving fawners, crooks, charlatans who are presently in the epilogue of a vibrant rich nation and goaded them into Tafawa Balewa Square to insult Lagosians with their empty campaigns that irritates the ears of rational Nigerians.

The leadership of PDP that dance around their molten images in their bid to cover their atrocities (for that is what their quest for territories means) should address the simple question of how it has used over N35 trillion revenue from oil and over N10 trillion from the sale of public properties to create poverty, hopelessness, permanent darkness, collapsed roads, joblessness and so many other terrible damage to the nation. That will capture Lagos more than assembling all the crooks, money launderers, felons, swindlers, scammers and court jesters to dance at the feet of the molten god they know and ruminate over the fact that the real battle for the efficacy of that god will start on May 30, 2007.