Rotimi Fashakin: Dokpesi’s desperate hold on straw!

It is not always that you see supposed elders dancing nakedly in the market square; Africans are guided by strict societal and cultural norms which mitigate on some extremely unbecoming behaviors.

Exception to this rule, however, are elders who are aspiring politicians; they indulge in vomiting all manner of gibberish in the languid attempt at cheap populism.

An elder in this mould is Chief (Dr) Raymond Dokpesi, the Chairman of Daar Communications Ltd. The other day, he was at a much advertised visit to the PDP state secretariat in Abakaliki, Ebonyi state in continuation of his campaigns to be the next National Chairman of the fractious party, where he reportedly said that: “the APC came to power by accident.”

It is important to remind Chief Dokpesi that he missed the point because the APC’s victory came out of the popular desire of Nigerians across nooks and crannies of the Nation-space to consign the then ruling PDP contraption  into dung hill at the 2015 general election.  Expectedly, Dr Dokpesi is oblivious of the strenuous work done by the founding fathers of APC in laying the proper foundation for the Party. The merger of the legacy parties and, subsequent registration exercise of Nigerian people across the length and breadth of the Nigerian landscape, prepared the groundswell for the party’s eventual victory at the polls over PDP, a nest of killers of the Nigerian economy!

PDP’s erstwhile invincibility at the polls had largely rested on its well-oiled rigging machinery; the birth of a mega party with broad base literally forestalled that undemocratic practice!

Perhaps, people have not read in-between the lines Chief Dokpesi’s statement. Dr Dokpesi can still not come around the fact that PDP lost the election despite the unethical use of his Television and Radio outfits in spreading the most grotesquely scurrilous character assassination of APC leaders.

Hey! Dr Dokpesi was not done; the Niger-Delta high chief also allegedly said that APC lacked experience for governance.

It may be necessary to unreel the experience profile of Dr Dokpesi in Nigeria’s political history. In 2010, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, the former President, insisted on contesting the Presidency for the 2011 election, in a move that was seen as breaking faith with his party’s zoning arrangement. He (Jonathan) locked horns with three Northern elements (Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Gen. Aliyu Gusau) for the PDP’s presidential nomination.

Dr. Dokpesi worked as campaign manager for Ibrahim Babangida, Nigeria’s former military president. In a bid not to split the Northern delegates’ votes among the three combatants, the Arewa group mooted the idea of a consensus candidate to face the incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, for the party’s ticket. While the plan was afoot, there was a bomb blast at the Eagle Square during the Independence anniversary celebration onOctober 1, 2010. The state’s security apparatus deliberately skewed the narrative to deceive the citizens as regards the causal agents of the security breach. In pursuant of this deliberate deception, Dr Dokpesi was arrested by the DSS. According to him, the selected consensus candidate formed the kernel of the enquiry by the security outfit. Eventually, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the former Vice President, was selected as the consensus candidate and Chief Raymond Dokpesi showed up in the Goodluck Jonathan camp as member of the Campaign team. That is the antecedent in political treachery that Dr Dokpesi can lay claim to.

Dr Dokpesi has also proven not to be given to selfless service in his political endeavors. The recent arms procurement probe of the office of the erstwhile National security Adviser, Col Sambo Dasuki, revealed that Dr Dokpesi received a hefty slice of our common patrimony to prosecute that iniquitous use of his media outfits (Television and Radio) to propagate the most invidious and unprofessional piece of libelous character assassination of APC leaders.

When he switched allegiance to Dr Jonathan’s camp in 2010, it was also not pro bono. It would not be out of place to assert that this latest aspiration to be PDP’s chairman is anything but noble desire for a virile Nigerian polity.

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When a person with that aforementioned political antecedent speaks or writes about political experience, it is Important to posit his disquisition within the framework of nobility in governance which the APC government has been striving hard and long to build since its inauguration in May 29, 2015.

Undoubtedly, Dr Dokpesi’s politics cannot fit into the meaningful and desirable future for the Nigerian state. Perhaps, he needs to be reminded that the grand larcenies of the PDP’s locust years, which have imperiled the nation to this impecunious state, did not happen without his fringe benefits. It is good for such a bloke to allow for the rebuilding of the nation from the ruins of that selfish indiscretion and not continue to rear his head with such galling impunity again.

God bless Nigeria.