IF LOYALTY MUST DETERMINE THE SUCCESSOR OF PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI... Written by KEMKA S. IBEJI

Just like in the days preceeding rainfall or rainy season, the sky has turned heavy and the rest parts of our thinking have gotten boldly pregnant with huge uncertainties. Many who will want to be seen as tactically sound have amassed so much on their desks of political analysis and flipping through pages for sticking predictions.

The field workers have gone to farm ploughing their fingers out with the hope to come home with the raw stones for refinement and subsequent windfall. The bright sky has made itself the most fearsome slippery substance. Who knows what will happen?

The foregoing question will determine the life of millions of people in and out of Nigeria and Africa as the largest black country in the world gets set for change of political baton in 2023. Nigeria will, once again, go to the polls to make choice of who manages the common will of the commonwealth from 2023.

Hitherto, media Maradonas especially from the Southwestern part of Nigeria who are trying to mold public mind towards accepting their choice of the outgoing Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo have advanced many theories to fasten their wishes on national hearts. One major teaser they have been brandishing is a loan they have given to Mr. Vice President in character. They have been struggling to paint Prof. Yemi Osinbajo with the colours of loyalty and dedication. While this questionable view is kept for clarification, it will help the Nigerian electorate and even Mr. President (Muhammadu Buhari) himself if we have to make an analysis of what the Osinbajo campaigners mean by loyalty and dedication.

When we say someone is loyal, there is usually an import of selflessness and dispassionate standing to it. Same applies to the idea of dedication as used in the campaigns. If we say that the Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has the character of loyalty and dedication as loaned to him, even without collateral, by his image laundering folks, how therefore do we explain the circulating rumour of one audio document where he expressed wondrously and dastardly shocking lack of trust and the height of moral degradation by the contents of the voice chat?

How do we explain his overambitious via by going ahead to make such earliest declaration to take over the seat of his principal (President Muhammadu Buhari) even when there is approximately 24 months balance for their joint tenure?

How can we rely on that oversized character foisted on Osinbajo as a loyal and dedicated ally or assistant when his pictures, banners, billboards and sundry media warfare arsenals have been unleashed on the country many months ago while his benefactor (Sen. Bola Ahmed Tinubu) was yet hospitalized and struggling for his dear life in London? What is loyalty in such act even as he is the only top ranking political actor who did not spare a few moment to visit the hospital bedside of Mr. Tinubu?

Can we cast our minds back to recall the desperate moves taken by this same Mr. Vice President Osinbajo within his short bite acting as the president of Nigeria in the short absence of Mr. President. How he hastily sacked the Director General of the Department of State Security (DSS) without consultation with the President Muhammadu Buhari person is still fresh. The point here is not whether the sack was right or wrong but the processes in measurement of the bogus clothing of loyalty and dedication prescribed as the features of Prof. Osinbajo.

Loyalty, as the case may be, is a wild concept which means many things depending on the perspective of consideration. Obviously, from the point of the relationship between the President and the Vice President Osinbajo, it is lucid even to the blind that he was merely playing the eye service and bidding time with the President while many in their camp believed that the president would die before the end of their tenure - unfortunately!

Again, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo was not loyal and dedicated to President Muhammadu Buhari in the real sense of the word loyalty and dedication. He was merely not engraved with the opportunity to show up his real being. Nature of Mr. President denied him such ample opportunity such that the slightest chance that came close betrayed him. We could recall the reactions of the Kaduna State Governor (Mallam Nasir El-Rufai) as regards the character of Mr. Vice President - Yemi Osinbajo. He was overtly overzealous and outlandishly overambitious. He wanted the seat of his master but for opportunity.

Again in terms of loyalty, was Prof. Yemi Osinbajo loyal to the Nigerian people? He was openly not. He was both loyal and dedicated to his selfish and utterly nihilistic whims. Osinbajo was just focused on the possibility of eventualities that can brighten his chances of taking over power from Mr President and nothing else. Indeed, he was loyal and dedicated but that was just to himself and none other. Such a smart man who was awaken from deep dead sleep and decorated with the second citizen's apparels and ranks but had begun the race to illicitly succeed his masters even before the gung was sounded. Of course, all that could go for being loyal and dedicated but the question is; to who? Do not worry to scamper for the answer, I will help you in quickest fine time; Prof. Yemi Osinbajo was just loyal and dedicated to himself all alone. He indeed must have read too much from the political mafioso Niccolo Machiavelli as to have cleverly won the dual guise of the fox and sheep.

What about the billions of Naira accusations against him within that minutest moment? The guy man professor and Vice President once shouted all awake at the national market square when he was accused of massive corruption by one Mr. Jackson Ude who challenged him. Did this disloyal and none dedicated Vice President Osinbajo not declare to the country that he was instituting a lawsuit against the @jackpon? Whither the case file and what is her fate? Is Mr. Vice President therefore loyal and dedicated to the course of Mr. President in the war against corruption with such uncleared dent sticking on his body? 

If only we have any man who is deserving of such qualities of loyalty and dedication as to enjoy the benevolence of Mr. President to graciously hand over power, if at all such term or idea is appropriately applicable to democratic practice, such a man should be Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu. This man has shown the strength of character deserving the sobriquets of loyalty and dedication. He can be said to have surpassed such qualities and now operates at the elevated character class of trustworthiness and reliability. Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu willingly submitted his hard won presidential ticket of the more situated national party, the APP in 1999, to the frail and sectional AD ensuring the consummation of the all-Southwest presidential contest in the renascent democracy. He gifted that precious acquisition to the brother of the Vice President. Prof. Yemi Osinbajo cannot claim ignorance of that great favour to the Southwest and the entire Nigeria by that loyal, dedicated, humble, persevering, meek, lowly, respectful and respectable, trustworthy and reliable man - Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu. He saved the country chaos and crises. 

Even if we decide to journey to the realms of the boisterous political class, one will even assert that both Sen. Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu and HE Dr. Umahi are more loyal and dedicated to Mr. President and Nigerians than Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo. Sen. Orji Uzor Kalu has remained steadfast and loyal to Mr. President Muhammadu Buhari without any grudges about his detention and subsequent unlawful imprisonment. Despite having helped to positively launder the image of President Muhammadu Buhari and sponsoring a reconciliation festival between Buhari and most of his traducers in the past, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu never faltered and never betrayed President Buhari in all his travails. What is loyalty? What is dedication? What is trust and trustworthiness? What does it mean to be reliable please? 

Again, can any good man or woman in this world still count Prof. Yemi Osinbajo as morally loyal and dedicated to the peace and unity of Nigeria if he decides to contest for the post of Nigerian Presidency in 2023 after the Southwest have taken their turns as President and Vice President respectively? Where is his moral mind? What does he see as fairness and justice even as a professor of Law?

In the main, it is too obvious and clear in matter and form that Mr. Vice President is both disloyal and not dedicated in all its ramifications except to his selfish being. And in well considered juxtaposition, it is beyond fact and openly proven that the duo of Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu and Sen. Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu are the real owners of the character of loyalty and dedication wrongly and mistakenly imposed on Prof. Yemi Osinbajo. And to this end, if succession of President Muhammadu Buhari must be written on the fair and upright desks of loyalty and dedication, the name of Prof. Yemi Osinbajo must be worth its absence with a grand adequate replacement by the outstanding name of Sen. Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu. But if we must drive further into the courts of the blessed concepts of being "trustworthy and reliable", we must present the saintly personality of Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu who, beyond loyalty and dedication, is not only humble but trustworthy and reliable to the bone marrows and crux.