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The spate of recant their apex leaders in the fight to sustain the Jonathan regime did last week added to the open sores of March 28 for those who have embraced witless and headless opposition to every action taken thus far by President Buhari to mend the ship-wrecked Nigerian state that was writhing on the throes of death before March 28, as a way of advertising their anger and shock for that epochal defeat. For some who have been known as the Wailing Wailers in Nigerian media, the shock has been so overwhelming that they have become wordless.
The first was former President Jonathan's Godfather, Edwin Clark, who may be considered the PDP's patron saint. He was a sort of clearing house for the converging inclinations that converged to keep Jonathan in office after what was widely regarded as a terrible six years in power. Edwin Clark worried and threatened so much for Jonathan's re-election that nothing and no one was safe from his bile, including former President Obasanjo. He stopped short of declaring war on anyone who didn't see the logic in voting for Jonathan in March, and he was involved in assembling a motley crew of old PDP loyalists in the South to form the Southern Elders Forum, which openly campaigned for Jonathan and the PDP.
But it was another Edwin Clark who, last week, not only disavowed the PDP but also endorsed President Buhari wholeheartedly, particularly in his fight against corruption. Clark not only refuted the claim of selective prosecution of the anti-corruption war, which has become a daily catena for the PDP's hirelings, but he stopped short of characterizing his godson, Jonathan, as a wimp who lacks the courage to combat corruption. Were the zealous anti-Buharists taken aback? They were shellacked, not shellacked! They were beaten to a pulp because here is their godfather, a general in the conflict that their syndicated hysteria is prolonging by tossing them under the bus and discrediting the man they have worked so hard to promote. For the Wailing Wailers, it was a bad day.
If there was ever a lady who fit the feminine counterpart of Edwin Clark in the Wailing Wailers' order of adoration, it was Jonathan's immediate previous Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy. Even though the majority of Nigerians believe that this woman's long tenure as our economic manager has had a detrimental impact on the lives of Nigerians, Jonathanians and PDP apologists, including the wailing Wailers, worship her as the next best thing God bestowed on Nigerians after clean water. She is omniscient and without fault and dishonor to them. They follow her every step and have called her the Jonathan regime's Prime Minister. Okonjo-Iweala was to shower encomiums on President Buhari's government like a nubile girl serenading her newfound lover last week, seemingly out of nowhere. She not only lauded Buhari's statecraft, but she also said that working for Jonathan was a mistake! She was a guest lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States on September 30.
Then there was Stella Oduah, one of Jonathan's poster girls who was involved in a slew of scandals as Minister of Aviation under Jonathan but was nonetheless backed by the PDP to become a senator in Anambra State. In a recent interview, Oduah not only praised the Buhari administration's "clear policy direction." Her main sources of excitement were the Buhari regime's robust action in Burkina Faso, which ended the coup, and the regime's ambition to reestablish the national carrier.
Then came Godswill Akpabio, the guy who made an a-rating appearance in all the shenanigans and intrigues orchestrated to keep PDP in power indefinitely. If Edwin Clark was the Commander in Chief of the PDP/Jonathan entrenchment operations, then Akpabio was the Chief of Staff. He was the enforcer of the PDP's will among PDP members, and he manned the party's gate, deciding who entered, stayed, and left. He was notorious for using his state's resources to aid Jonathan's re-election campaign, as well as many other illicit sources of finance that fueled that ill-fated war. This enfant terrible of the Jonathanian PDP was to address his people on the day he returned from hospitalization abroad following a road accident in Abuja (many wonder why he did not patronize the so-called world-class hospital he lousily boasts of building in Akwa Ibom), giving high marks to the Buhari regime's government and policies so far.
These are blasphemies, according to the Wailing Wailers, coming from the very heart of their temple. They've lost their crest. They've had their hearts crushed. They're still reeling from the shock of their leaders abandoning them in the middle of nowhere, under the blazing sun. They are upset that those who brought them to an embarrassing situation in which they have even become humiliating to themselves, struggling with the truth and his best ways to deface it, have abandoned them at a critical juncture. They're still attempting to piece together their shattered selves into furious replies to these earth-shattering setbacks. They are gradually amassing angry comments and abuses directed towards Clark, Okonjo-Iweala, and Oduah. They are sour. They're frustrated, and they're unsure who else to trust.
For the avoidance of doubt, I've never been a fan of the four, and I won't be, despite their valiant efforts to admit the truth that their stranded supporters would prefer them to keep hidden. We have a President who is indifferent to flattery and humor; a President who can smell jesting and fawning from a mile away; a President who can never ever be found to fund and reward flattery, so currying his favor through such curtsying as implied in the confessions of the PDP's pole leaders is a futile effort. But I don't believe that by confessing the truth, they and other PDP leaders, who have been battling with their consciences since the much-applauded political change, were looking for favors. It's such a relief when you turn around and surrender after struggling with the truth, since no one wins a war against reality.
But the great pity is the withering club of Wailing Wailers who pose as commissioned newspaper columnists, stranded politicians, errant passengers on public buses, the ready-to-snap lay-about, the ubiquitous Facebook politicians and their ilk who have found themselves in the uncomfortable position of being condemned to wail on every move taken by President Buhari. The heartbroken, desolate, pained, and inconsolable scoffers who have made a living out of mocking Buhari's attempts to clean up the rotten stable he inherited on May 28 have been the hardest hit by the recent flurry of confessions from PDP senior officials. Those who have built ready-made weeping points on every subject since March 28 because they lost their crooked enrichment fonts have been the hardest hit in the ensuing political development. They've become distraught and befuddled orphans who have lost their parents as a result of the war with reality. They are currently dangling dangerously in the back alleys of our politics, frantically trying to figure out what has struck their camps so early in the reign of a regime that has dealt such severe wounds.
Oparah, Peter Claver
