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Ojo Maduekwe at his seditious best
By: Prof. Sullivan Odumegwu
 Published
September 23rd, 2009
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In the Vanguard newspaper of September
22, it was reported on front page that the Minister of
External Affairs, Ojo Maduekwe said that President
Yar’Adua is reeling under some guilt of coming to power
through a ‘flawed’ election procured by Prof Iwu. And
that, in effect, the President will expiate his great
guilt (or please American critics) by not re-appointing
Iwu to a second term as Chairman of INEC after Iwu’s
tenure expires in mid 2010. Ojo spoke in the absolutes,
like he was speaking for the President in a way that
portrayed the Yar’Adua as some pathetic snitch and
frenetic ‘confessionist’ to a fraudulent mandate. That
said, I will now turn to the consequences of Ojo’s
statements on President Yar’Adua and the lawfully
constituted Government of Nigeria, if not on the greater
national security interests of the Federation of
Nigeria. But first, let me say these: I am not and will
not be an apologist for Professor Maurice Iwu. Iwu has
enough critics and defenders already; so nothing I write
for, or against him here or elsewhere will add much to
the media blitz on the issue. Suffice it to say that if
Ojo’s intention was to hurt Iwu or ingratiate himself to
a certain fringe audience of the international
community, he failed in both attempts woefully. But
knowing vintage Ojo, I wager that his true target was a
President Yar’Adua that may not know that Ojo harbours a
consuming grudge against his person, all with the rising
international profile of Turai Yar’Adua, which Ojo, in
his petty ways, is reported to see as trespassing into a
foreign policy arena he has come to see as his exclusive
fiefdom. Add the desperation Ojo must be feeling from
the credible rumour that he is slated to fall on the
hammer of the next cabinet reshuffle.
To be sure, Ojo was plainly disloyal to the President,
hugely embarrassed his own party – the PDP, and came
damn near close to courting a criminal action for
committing sedition (by some stretch) against the very
government he serves; and again, he breached the sacred
frontiers of our national security, and rankled the
stable political order. Now you may ask: How was Ojo
disloyal to Yar’Adua? Well, here is the way I see it: By
telling the whole world, aggravated by using a foreign
platform, that his President and government are
struggling under the grand illegitimacy of a flawed
election, is, by every definition supremely disloyal to
the President and to the lawfully constituted government
of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, including a National
Assembly and constituents units of the Federation that
will now have to live with the stigma and political
liability that one of their own – Ojo has publicly
condemned them to coming to office through electoral
fraud, and made it worse by putting those demining words
into the President’s mouth. There is no other way any
reasonable person can read Ojo’s runaway remarks, except
to water it down to the less offense that Ojo was
‘simply’ pre-emptive of the President, the Minister of
Information (whose duty it is to announce such a major
policy shift) and to the Federal Executive Council that
has never deliberated on such matters of collective
electoral guilt and then directed him to seek
forgiveness of Americans. The only saving grace is if
Ojo can prove that he was misquoted totally but I doubt
it because the kernel of his remarks were too brazen and
rendered with much exactitude.
Now, let’s turn to the seditious aspect of Ojo’s
indictment of his President’s mandate. The word
‘sedition’ is a term of art universally employed in the
Common Law to mean the following:
“Sedition is a term of law which refers to overt
conduct, such as speech.... that is deemed by the legal
authority as tending toward insurrection against the
established order. Sedition often includes......
incitement of discontent to lawful authority”. It
connotes the "notion of inciting by words or writings
disaffection towards the state or constituted
authority". “A seditionist is one who engages in or
promotes the interests of sedition”. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seditionm;
and Laws of Federation of Nigeria and pertinent
legislative histories in the Commonwealth.
A plain reading of the above definition squarely reveals
Ojo Maduekwe as a seditionist extraordinaire because his
statements tended to foist President Yar’Adua and the
lawfully constituted Government of Nigeria with
illegality of tenure or fraudulent procurement of
electoral victory. And when made by a high official of
the government, these remarks can incite discontent or
disaffection towards the state of Nigeria and her
constituted authorities. Incitement can lead to violent
demonstrations or military coup against the government.
And doing so before an international audience, plus at a
time when Nigeria is looking to rebrand and reach an
accommodation with some restive units of the federation,
makes the offense much more aggravating; besides
threatening our national security and stability
vis-a-vis the world community. And with the current
state of insecurity in the land – Boko Haram and its
genre, restiveness in the Delta, kidnappings, and of
course, the approaching Anambra guber elections, Ojo’s
mean-spirited remarks might also sound too tempting to
those looking to overawe Nigeria or isolate her
government.
The above line of argument cannot be rebutted by the
simplistic argument that the government of Nigeria has
chosen - in the interest of free speech - to shy away
from the many other acts of sedition that are committed
against it every day. In good times, most democratic
governments have a tendency of ignoring many acts of
sedition as harmless (though prosecutable) acts of
taking free speech too far; if not as a trade-off to the
opposition political flanks to vent their political
frustrations. Even then, once in a while, the government
invokes its discretion to prosecute or take other lawful
actions to repel rank seditionists. There are probably
one or two cases now pending in the land, with at least
one instituted by Yar’Adua himself. And when the Feds
come to town to engage seditionists, they may decide to
nail them on yet other more (or less) aggravated
felonies. I am not sure that Ojo will survive any
aggressive federal scrutiny bordering on moral
turpitudes and he has no immunity to duck under. Hint:
He is said to be wealthier than all financially-strapped
and dilapidated Nigerian missions combined. And recall
the hard queries and media scrutiny he received over his
role in the suspicious manner he sold off choice
Nigerian real estate in the US for a fraction and the
loss of credibility he blamed on those he blames for
leaking ‘official secrets’ over the deal.
On the brighter side, despite the severity of Ojo’s
seditious speech and record of serial undiplomatic
conduct in office, I doubt that the Nigerian Government
will border to prosecute him. Yet, I also doubt that he
will go scot-free, politically. Why? Because if his
commission of sedition is as yet inchoate or did not
rise to the level of hurting Nigeria’s national security
and diplomatic standing, then he committed grand heresy
against a government he purports to serve in high office
and the party that he and the President belong to. So, I
will be surprised if he survives an outright dismissal
from office or does not fall on the next cabinet
reshuffle. Further, pure political justice requires that
Ojo be immediately arraigned for expulsion from the PDP,
to free him to join another party which has been in the
rumor mills since the past two months. At best,
President Yar’Adua will do well to censure him publicly
and leave him to wallow in remorse and self-doubt.
Finally, let’s turn to the Americans before whom Ojo
made his remarks. First of all, Americans are extremely
intelligent, albeit in some funny ways. And that helps
them to quickly figure out jumpy political turncoats,
charlatans, self-haters and their genre, all in one fell
swoop. Ojo seems to qualify. So, while Ojo was mouthing
obscenities against the very government he serves,
calling it fraudulent, flawed and guilt-ridden, his
American audience will be wondering why he has not
resigned; why he is flying red-eye shuttles around the
world, promoting the foreign policy of a government and
a President he claims have admitted to illegitimate
mandate. And it does not help matters that the blacks
amongst the Americans may be shocked that Ojo may be
acting the way he does because of some inferiority
complex he always seems to exhibit in the presence of
white people. Add the fact that the American audience
before whom Ojo is posturing as a later-day ‘electoral’
reformer already possesses a prodigious and infamous
dossier on him, including his shameful political
conducts dating from the ‘YEAA’ and ‘leprous’ days of
military dictatorships where Ojo was the poster boy for
subduing pro-democracy elements, which, lest we forget,
comprised people like the President’s late older
brother.
Further, the Americans would have since correctly read
that Yar’Adua’s ‘admission of electoral flaws’ simply
meant fundamental and system flaws in the general
conduct of, and attitudes to elections in Nigeria, not
the warped interpretation Ojo sought to give a more than
two-year old well-intentioned remark that has since
receded from the memory of real-world Americans. And
finally, the Americans would have figured from CIA
‘country checks and prompts’ that Ojo has gotten wind
that he won’t survive Yar’Adua’s imminent cabinet
reshuffle. So, taking on Yar’Adua ‘diplomatically via
Iwu’ was a ruse to secure some ‘pro-democratic’
executive job with any of the imperialist think thanks
in the US that love to put us down as a nation and as a
people of black race. The ‘put down aspect’ fully
comports with Ojo’s notoriety for self-hatred and
consuming racial inferiority complex – a bewildering
combination of psychological conditions I will rather
leave to psycho-analysts to ponder.
Prof Odumegwu is of the Coalition Against Defamation
of Nigeria (CADON)
sodumegwu@yahoo.com
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