BY SIMON EBEGBULEM
One day a man named Truth and another man named Lie stood by a river – just outside of town. They were twin brothers.
Lie challenged Truth to a race, claiming he could swim across the river faster than Truth.
Lie laid out the rules to the challenge stating that they both must remove all their clothes and at the count of 3, dive in to the freezing cold water swim to the other side and back.
Lie counted to 3, but when Truth jumped in, Lie did not. As Truth swam across the river, Lie put on Truth’s clothes and walked back in to town dressed as Truth.
He was proudly parading around town pretending to be Truth.
Truth eventually made it back to shore: but his clothes were gone! He was left naked with only Lie’s clothes to wear.
Refusing to dress himself as Lie, Truth walked back to town naked.
People stared and glared as naked Truth walked through town. He tried to explain what happened and that he was in fact Truth, but because he was naked and uncomfortable to look at, people mocked and shunned him; refusing to believe he was really Truth.
The people in town chose to believe Lie because he was dressed appropriately and easier to look at. This is the picture of the PDP propaganda against the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and the new National Chairman of the APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole. But they are failing because Oshiomhole has come to change the narratives of party politics in Nigeria and none of the PDP sponsored writers can stop the mission and vision of this Comrade in transforming the fortunes of the APC positively and making it one of the most progressive parties in the world.
Lie has been so much garbed in Truth’s clothing in our national lives to the extent that some innocent Nigerians have been willy nilly sunk into it. Our level of imposed poverty and share lack adds up in compounding our dilemma, as a country.
Barely had Oshiomhole assumed office than the spin yearners went to work, to the extent they would prefer to make Nigerians oblivious of the party’s victory at the Ekiti governorship election, where Dr Kayode Fayemi defeated Peter Ayo Fayose’s Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and his crony, would have been successor.
First, they got sponsored, nay willing writers to go on the attack of their misconceived Oshiomhole’s style, wishfully thinking that the latter will succumb, to allow that the APC go to the dogs and the way of ignominy.
What confronts us as a country is not only deserving of great introspection, but also demanding of great men of valour, that have risen to the occasion and are determined to take up the challenge, and no matter how stringent the orchestrated falsehood, Nigerians should see through their shenanigans and stand by those that have offered to take up the gauntlet of unrobing Mr. Lie and removing the veil from our collective sight.
Take for example the non-case of decamping governors and their cohorts; characters with no emotion, other than self-serving ambitions that bode their immediate constituencies or even units, no good.
They presumably departed the PDP house not too long ago, saying that the umbrella (house) had cracked. Question is, has there been any mend to the said crack? Pray, why they did not defect to any other party, at least one that Nigerians could consider stainless, rather than return to their vomit.
Truth is, governors are the leaders of the party in their respective states, aside membership of the National Executive Council (NEC). So, who infected the APC in Sokoto, Kwara or Benue, and at what referendum was the consensus reached in any of the three states, where the decision to defect was unanimously arrived at? All they did was to railroad pliant others into their selfish idea, without recourse to the better good of Nigeria as a country.
Be that as it may, it is heartening that we still have persons of sterling qualities, like President Muhammadu Buhari and Adams Oshiomhole, who are willing and committed to ensuring a better Nigeria, where greed, avarice, self aggrandisement and such other obnoxious inclinations will be completely relegated to the backwaters of our national polity.
Nigerians must gird their loins and join hands with well-meaning leaders in the onerous task of reversing a sickening trend of Corruption Incorporated, and then will Truth be allowed to take its rightful place in our national narrative.
Simon Ebegbulem is the Chief Press Secretary to the National Chairman of the APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole