Fashola gets under the skin of Goodluck Jonathan’s TAN. Dr Udenta Udenta goes RED with vituperation. His big grammar reminds me of the popular-for-the-wrong-reason former Parliamentarian, Patrick Obahiagbon. I am beginning to notice an interesting trend. Any person that criticises President Goodluck is tagged a demon and an enemy of the state. Never heard of Dr Udenta Udenta before now, not sure if apologies need to be extended as he too has admitted he had never heard of Babatunde Fashola in the heady days of Abacha, as if we all must show off our scars for tackling the ill in the state. Whatever it was that had gotten under the skin of Udenta Udenta – laughing my head off here – I just can’t help it, I must say has worked. To reveal Udenta Udenta is vexed is to insult the reader of the interview posted below courtesy of Nigeria Tribune. My sincere apologies in advance as it wasn’t intended to patronize you. Take a read and I will congratulate you if you are able to read for 5 minutes without pause, without smiling or laughing or shaking your head in amazement or amusement. Enjoy!

Oh by the way, before you commence reading, Dr Udenta Udenta is the Director of Public Communications and Strategy of TAN.

…and what is TAN? or Who is TAN?

Apologies! I thought you were in the know. Its nothing to do with TAN, skin lotion and all that ‘oyibo’ stuff.

TAN, incredibly stands for Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria. Yes!  Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (I repeat). Apparently, it legally presents itself as an NGO. Apologies once again.

Over here in Nigeria, we love acronyms.

Did you know that OAP in Nigeria stands for ‘On Air Personalities (just found that out a few weeks back) Duh!…oh, that’s not an acronym by the way…well, not that I know of.

So TAN is an NGO – another acronym – for.…wait for ….NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATION.

What has an NGO got to do with ENDORSING a POLITICAL CANDIDATE, especially as its a non-profit, voluntary citizens’ group?

Oh yea, you are free to shake your head in amusement if you don’t want to suddenly succumb to high blood pressure .

By the way, Udenta Udenta boasts that TAN has run over 100 television jingles, broadcast over 7,000 times in four of Nigeria’s leading television stations, demonstrating, with verifiable facts and figures, that President Jonathan has performed very well in key national sectors……rolling on the floor Laughing. The acronym for that is ROFL.

Now you are free to proceed to Dr Udenta Udenta’s interview below. I just may have to add that it requires READERS’ DISCRETION . Especially at the manner he busts his guts to defend his integrity and that of TAN. Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria….(laughing)..

Nigeria no go kill me o with laughter….I know its a serious matter, but its the only way to keep the blood pressure down..

 

Dr Udenta Udenta is the Director of Public Communication and Strategy, Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) canvassing the candidature of President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 election. He is also a former national secretary of the Alliance for Democracy (AD). In this interview, he speaks of the level of confidence in Jonathan’s camp about the election. 2015 elections. Group Politics Editor, TAIWO ADISA, brings the excerpts:

The opposition All Progressives Congress has criticised the activities of your organisation, Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), insisting that you are merely projecting the president’s non-existent achievements. How do you react to this criticism?

I have addressed this issue in the past in a number of media outings. But because of the persistence of the ill-conceived, ill-mannered and ill-informed attacks and unwarranted vituperations being poured on TAN and President Goodluck Jonathan by some leading figures in the opposition APC, it is necessary to set the record right again. These unconscionable attacks on TAN and President Jonathan stem from a distorted mindset and a warped worldview laden with insensate animosity, pathological hatred and the cruel application of amoral political principles. The APC is embarrassed by TAN’s success and the effortless ease with which we deconstructed and delegitimised their false narratives about President Jonathan’s ability to govern the nation efficiently. If you examine the context and content of their wild and fanciful claims, you will notice that it is nothing but a rehash of the pitiable falsehoods they have been peddling for sometime; claims that are rightly confined to the garbage heap of forgotten history where they belong.

In what sense?

In the sense that TAN has run over 100 television jingles, broadcast over 7,000 times in four of Nigeria’s leading television stations, demonstrating, with verifiable facts and figures, that President Jonathan has performed very well in key national sectors. And in the sense that TAN organised seven major, well-attended citizens’ democratic conversations without a single pushback or counter media programming by these very lazy armchair critics who are nothing but profoundly confused, wandering political souls. Take the case of Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, for example. His rising media profile may well stem from the fact that he may well be undergoing grooming for a major political assignment within his party. That is no skin off the nose of us in TAN. But every time the APC leadership open their mouth to attack TAN, insult the person of President Jonathan and demean the office and institution of the Nigerian Presidency, they reveal the depth of their ignorance and portray themselves as a subject suffering from what I have previously described as the baffling disease of intellectual indolence. Lagos, for instance, had been a beneficiary of massive Federal Government investments from the colonial times to about 1991, in the same way that, if Abuja were to ever become a state in future, the inheritor government will benefit handsomely from the on-going investments in the FCT. We challenge Governor Babatunde Fashola to, without delay, publish all Lagos State’s revenue receipts since June 2007, both revenues from the Federation Account (IGR), sale of bonds, loans, etc, in all leading newspapers in Nigeria. He surely has the money to do so.

Why are you particular about Governor Fashola (pictured)?

Precisely because Fashola is not just particular about TAN, he is obsessed by his mission to criminalise and demonise it as an entity. As he has embarked on this destructive course, he must be reminded that TAN is not a faceless organisation or an amorphous public advocacy platform. TAN is rich with highly informed and very knowledgeable human resources who are spiritually, intellectually and strategically equipped with the right skills and tools to respond to the challenges we daily confront. He must be reminded that every time he attacks TAN, he is attacking each and every single one of us, our integrity, our reputation and our very humanity. Every time he attacks TAN, he attacks me as its spokesperson, its public face. He surely must be naive not to expect a strong rebuttal from TAN. Let me make it abundantly clear that from now, not a single attack on TAN or President Jonathan will go without a robust response from us. Some of us have come a long way and do not need to blow our trumpet.

You ask if I know Governor Fashola very well. No, I don’t. When I was the National Secretary of Alliance for Democracy (AD), he was an aide to governor Bola Tinubu, so our path never crossed. But as often happens in Nigeria with our style of leadership production and reproduction, he somehow became the darling of the Lagos political establishment. I don’t know where he was between 1993 and 1998, but surely not in the struggle for democracy or in political exile or detention because I would have known.

What is your take on Speaker Aminu Tambuwal’s defection to the APC? Do you think he should resign his position?

Let us deal with the moral element. The decision to resign or not, even in the context of the legal issues surrounding his audacious political moves, rests squarely with him. It will be a test of his character and moral stature, his inner ethical impulses and his spiritual resolve. Yes, I am very much aware that, in fundamental terms, bourgeois political practice often times transgresses and subverts bourgeois political morality, meaning that as a member of Nigeria’s growing tribe of political nomads, he may listen more to his cold political calculations than the constant intimations of his conscience.

Having said this, my personal take on the matter is that he should take the narrow path of honour rather the highway that inexorably leads to political perdition and resign his position as the Speaker of the House, a position he immorally occupies. Again, having joined the club of name-callers whose idle past time is to heap abuses on President Jonathan because they have very little to offer the nation in terms of governance. Ideas and empowering vision as he did recently at Ilorin, he should be reminded that there are those out there who have elected to protect the humanity of our President and defend the integrity of the institution of the Nigerian presidency. Enough is enough even though he may have run with his mouth, as the saying goes, to garner the accolades of his fellow travelers.

But his defection is not the first; we have witnessed a spate of defections recently?

Let us take a cue from Professor Attahiru Jega’s two potent statements of late on the matter. During the last All-Political Parties and Political Stakeholders Summit, Jega declared that political decampment across board is a form of crippling political nomadism that imposes unnecessary stress and strain on Nigeria’s democratic process, stultifies the growth of party infrastructure and damages the coherence of Nigeria’s political evolution. I cannot but agree with him that this trend is a curse on Nigeria’s democratic system and an eloquent testimony of the vacillating, opportunistic and amoral character of some Nigerian political elite.

Again, just a week or so ago, Professor Jega also stressed that carpet-crossing is not a feature of the Nigerian constitution. I also agree with him. His first position is loaded with ethical issues, the second with legal principles. A while ago, Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State celebrated the 7th anniversary of his Supreme Court triumph without telling the crowd that his name was not on the ballot paper: that he did not contest any election and that indeed only the names and logos of political parties appeared on Nigeria’s electoral ballot papers. His obsession of running President Jonathan down- apparently his only known path to political stardom and glory- that part of the Supreme Court ruling is that governance mandates are conferred only on political parties and not on individuals, meaning that he is still carrying the mandate of the PDP, a mandate he cannot transfer as fancy possesses him.

I know this from experience because in 1999 AD won the Oyo South Senatorial District. But there was a doubt about who was the legitimate candidate of the party for the said election. Months after Peter Adeyemo was sworn-in as Senator and the issue lingered on at the tribunal between him and Chief (Mrs) Ayoka Lawani. The AD eventually resolved to settle the matter out of court and literally awarded the seat to Adeyemo. The Senator Joy Emordi’s situation in Anambra State, as painful and tragic as that was, and the situation with the then CPC’s candidates for Katsina State attest to the veracity of this position. Governors Amaechi, Kwankwaso, Aliyu Wamakko, etc are without doubt renegade members of the PDP who have decided to immorally transfer the party’s mandate to another through dubious legal parameters and political gamesmanship. The current Nigerian enterprise will benefit more from the clear provision in the 1979 constitution that stipulates that an elected office holder will relinquish his position if he or she decamps to another political party. The late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi towed this path of honour and resigned as governor of Kano State when he decamped to the NPP from the PRP, paving way for his deputy, Alhaji Dawakin Tofa, to be sworn-in as governor. The present generation of Nigerian politicians should tow this path of honour and not engage in reprehensible political conduct that bothers on ethical ataraxia when they willfully transfer a collective mandate delivered to a political party to another, and thereafter proclaim their states new frontiers of their latest nomadic dwelling point as the Rivers governor and co-travelers currently do.

How convinced or rather optimistic is TAN of a Jonathan victory come 2015?

Our optimism stems from the success of the on-going project of deepening Nigerian democratic system and human transformation prerogatives by the Jonathan administration in the context of the paradigm of national transformation. You are living witnesses to the revolution TAN has brought to the national advocacy space and the ground breaking multimedia strategies we have used to showcase the achievements of the Jonathan government. When you add this to the massive political apparatus of the PDP that has met and overcome different historic tests in the past fifteen or so years, there is no doubt that President will be re-elected handsomely in 2015. Need I add that as things now stand Nigeria has no viable political opposition in terms of a radically different and contradistinctionally located ontological, philosophical and ideological divergences of values and principles, meaning that the APC is nothing but a pale imitation of the PDP, in spite of the loquacious claims and false narratives about its progressive credentials in the hands of its pseudo-demagogues. If anything, the metaphysical space around which the post-1998 political infrastructure was constructed is substantially de-ideologised in consideration of pluralistic ideological categories. It permits only the operation of ideological singularity except for those social forces that attempt to de-legitimise this metaphysical construct. And the APC is light ways away from apprehending and absorbing these tendencies as essential part of its being.

Let’s take a look at Amaechi, for example. What do you see as his grouse against President Jonathan, especially looking at his constant criticisms of the president?

I have tried to address this issue elsewhere. Maybe the Rivers governor has lost interest in governing the people of the state, so he finds morbid joy in attacking the president. Maybe he has a significantly reduced workload that frees enough space for him to indulge in the idle past time of demeaning the president and his office. Again, don’t forget that some individuals take pleasure in criticising others to announce their social and political presence, to show that they have arrived and to assure their drumbeaters that they can take on just about anybody, any target, no matter how unjustified these attacks may be. You know he is always in the media so it won’t take you too long to ask him. Maybe I will be the next target of his insolent disdain of contrary views, but I doubt it as he may consider me too insignificant a subject to bother with.

How easy is it to sell the Jonathan brand in the midst of escalated insurgency in some parts of the country and the Chibok girls’ saga?

As a patriot, I will first of all extend my condolences to the families of all those whose lives were cut short by these barbaric hordes, and deep sense of empathy with those who are either injured or displaced by these callous and shadowy forces of darkness and evil. I extend a hand of encouragement to the men and women of the nation’s armed and security forces who put their lives on the firing line that we may be safe, who confront an enemy they often times do not see and who are waging an asymmetrical war, the art of which they were previously untrained for. I will most of all appreciate our President for the steady, mature and robust manner he is confronting this threat. President Jonathan is doing the right things, taking the right steps and co-coordinating well with our regional and international partners. Of course, there is always room for improvement in terms of intelligence gathering and sharing of data, community buy- in into the war against terror and a holistic approach to peace enforcement and peace building as is to be expected in all new threat situations whose dynamic and elemental essence are previously unknown.

Yes, it is easy to sell the Jonathan brand in the context of the current situation in some states in the North East in the same way that it was easy to sell the George W Bush brand in 2004 in the midst of two wars and the Obama brand in 2012 while those wars were still on-going, and are still on-going if I may add.

Let’s come back to TAN once more. The organisation is becoming highly visible in the polity, especially in view of your nationwide rallies public advocacy methods. What would you say really necessitated its emergence. Is it merely a propaganda tool or a political reality?

We are proud of our declaration that TAN is an idea whose time has come. We are not only proud of the accomplishments of President Jonathan in his first term in office; we are proud Nigerians who are intent in telling the Nigerian story in the Nigerian way. We admit that our nation, like most other societies, have deep challenges, but these challenges can never be allowed to define the Nigerian condition, the Nigerian character. In our public advocacy campaign we do not politicise the terrorist scourge in some parts of the country as some others do. We do not haul abuse at our President; demean his office and person as some others do. We not travel abroad to desecrate the homestead for a mess of foreign accolades as some others do. We are not possessed by a narcissistic bent of mind nor are we citizens suffused with hubris, the tragic type that sees belligerent narratives and cesspit incantations as the fundamental essence that defines one’s being as some others do.

Do you envisage a violence-free election in 2015?

My vision for 2015 is an electoral process that is efficient and an electoral practice that is credible, free, fair and transparent. Finally, my vision for 2015 is one in which every vote must be counted and in which every vote must count.