Since Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, released what he called a ‘teaser’ to the list of looters that vandalized and wrecked the country’s treasury especially during the immediate past PDP government, all hell has been let loose as every PDP member and supporter has made efforts to reply to that list. In an effort to deny the damning facts in that list, all members, supporters and sympathizers of PDP have embarked on a riotous effort to water down the facts contained in the list be releasing their own versions of looters list which is nothing more than failed efforts to water down the importance of the list and generalize the guilt for the exclusive sins the PDP did in 16 whole years. The release by the minister, in the first instance, flowed from the challenge from the PDP for the present government to name those in its ranks that partook n that grand larceny. The challenge came as a result of the APC reaction to PDP’s apology some weeks ago. The APC, like other right thinking Nigerians, advised PDP to go further than a few seconds apology for its grievous sins by returning the huge amount its members stole in the last 16 years, which was responsible for the parlous state of the country after a providential oil boom.
A study of PDP’s reactions to Lai Mohammed’s release is a riotous effort to deny the obvious truth. It is a competition to use the mundane, the inane and the profane to deny what Nigerians hold as a sacred truth. It was a grand effort to live in denial even when the facts are so obvious. For some PDP members, the party never stole. Infact, those of its members that stole have left the sinking party and relocated to the more buoyant APC-which itself is an admittance of the truth they are desperately trying to run away from; which is that what it ran was a rouge empire. To yet others, the trillions of Naira that were reported stolen when they held dubious watch were all fiction and no truth. As a result of this effort to cover the sun with bare palms, several PDP officials and members have gone father to release their own ‘looters list’ which are exclusively made up of all its members that defected to the APC. So, in effect, PDP disingenuously confirmed that the party organized a stealing competition where only those that bolted from its drowning boat were complicit while the saints remained. One is bound to ask why PDP is straining itself to deny that it ran a thieving regime when it maintains with a straight face that those that left their party for APC were the looters.
Coming to the looters’ lists, while the list released by Lai Mohammed contained the names of the looters, what they stole and from where they stole and the dates they stole, the various lists by PDP contained only names of those that left their party. No attempt was made to state what they looted, from where they looted and the dates they looted as contained in Lai Mohammed’s list. This shows that PDP was only interested in muddling the whole issue like a pig deeply engrossed in mud, whose only duty is ensuring it splashes enough mud about to get everyone soiled. By just listing names it could remember, PDP is showing it has no solid defense to the putrefying charge of filth that trails it. By not making any efforts to back up its list with the needed proof, PDP has voluntarily pledged guilty to the grand stealing that laid prostrate the country in 16 years.
Again, how can PDP even deny that it ran a thieving empire when it listed those that left its party as being the looters while still denying that it never organized the looting of the country? What manner of defence is PDP putting or is the party utterly confused that it doesn’t even know when it implicates itself? Is it that PDP is not aware that by childishly listing those that eft its party for APC as looters, it had admitted to the charge of being a stealing ring? Going, PDP held power for 16 years, so how is it that it has no solid proof to attach to those it wants us to see as looters? How come a party that stayed in power for 16 years have no solid proof to back up its claim of those that stole the nation blind under its watch? How come a PDP that was in absolute control of power for 16 whole years has no shred of evidence to back its hollow claim of looting against those that left the party? How come PDP after sixteen years in power, is childishly splashing mud about as a defence of the horrendous looting it carried out here for those years?
The answers to the above is that PDP which operated under the mantra of stealing not being corruption, got so badly enmeshed in corruption that it never believed that a day like this will come when it would be required to answer for its sins. PDP got so deeply entrenched in corruption that it was lured into believing that it was immune from charges for its sordid acts in power. It is certain that PDP was caught unawares by the anti-corruption gospel that swept it out of power. It was certain that while it was indulging in overwhelming corrupt acts, PDP had a dream of invincibility that unraveled in March 2015 when Nigerians brushed aside its massive corrupt dragnet to drive it off power. So the subsequent effort to cleanse the Augean stable it left behind has caught it so badly unnerved and disoriented such that the only defence it can marshal is to indulge in very elaborate desperate means to discredit the war against corruption and walk away with a dubious generalization of corruption as an escape route from its huge sins. That was the idea behind the fabrication and release of spurious looters’ lists by every PDP member as a reaction to the Federal government’s naming of those culpable in the grand plundering that happened under PDP. This is the reason PDP is not ashamed to indict itself by shamelessly saying, without any effort to attach proof, that there was massive looting in its era but that those that left the PDP for the APC were those that indulged in looting. Interesting. And you ask, why did they leave the PDP if they were the beneficiaries of the free loading that became the birthmark of PDP’s rulership of the country?
Most importantly, why did PDP tender what many have come to see as a dubious apology some few weeks ago, if it is playing the ostrich on its complicit status in the looting of Nigeria? Why is PDP apologizing to Nigerians when it knew that sinners have left its covens and only saints remain in the party? Why is it that all those who were indicted and are being probed and prosecuted for looting not been able to name those defectors from PDP and the amount they stole? Why have Dasuki, Diezani, Patience Jonathan and even Goodluck Jonathan, among the many fountains of lacerating looting, not named these defectors PDP wants us to believe were responsible for the banal stealing that happened under the immediate past regime, not been able to name any of those that left the party for APC in their well-followed bazaar when they were in power? So far, all those they have implicated in their many trials and probes have been the faithful saints that have stuck to PDP till date. Did they suffer memory loss as to name those that abandoned its sinking ship for the APC and limited themselves only to faithful PDP members? This is very instructive as we pore into PDP’s childish efforts to evade its indictment and offload its sins to others.
Let us not forget that very many former PDP members that joined APC are in various courts answering for their sins but still what remains of the PDP are what could best be described as hardcore, hardened and fanatic beneficiaries of the orgy of corruption the PDP organized here for 16 years. They remain perpetually indicted for that sad turn of our national history when the state treasury was a free-feeding trough for all manners of thieves to feed on. They have indicted themselves seriously by admitting they did nothing than organize horrendous stealing by their effort to deny the obvious and telling us that those that left PDP were the people that looted the country under its corrupt criminal watch. The onus is for them to provide proof to back their claim and hold it against President Buhari if he fails to subject those they named to trial. For now, what PDP is doing amounts to self-indictment in the effort to trivialize the anti-corruption war and divert attention from its historical role in the vandalization of Nigeria’s treasury. Whichever way one looks at it, PDP stands heavily implicated in the wreckage of the country and try it does, it will not escape the historical indictment for such deliberate crime.
