… HE SHOULD RESIGN NOW -MELAYE

Melaye
Former Chairman, House Committee on Information, Dino Melaye, is a firebrand activist, social commentator and political analyst. Melaye, at a media parley in Lagos chronicled President Goodluck Jonathan's 'sins' in office and asked him to quit office honourably if he discovers he cannot govern this country.

'So we expect the president, if he feels he is incapacitated to govern this country because he cannot solve the problem of insecurity in the country, he should do the honourable thing. He should resign,' Melaye asserted.

RAZAQ BAMIDELE, who was at the parley, brings the excerpts:

On electricity tariff increase
The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has further inflicted pain and injury on the masses of this country by saying emphatically that the hike in the tariff of electricity is not negotiable.  He said by June, they must increase the tariff on electricity. And this will automatically present Mr. President as an insensitive, as president that has no direction, that   has no feelings for the people of this country.

We are yet to recover from the effect of the increase of the PMS price in January. I do not know any sensitive Nigerian, anybody in his right thinking would be thinking of increasing the tariff of electricity, especially when, as a former member of the national Assembly, I am aware that about 13.2 billion dollars had been expended on power in Nigeria. And this 23.2 billion dollars had been stolen. Because the money did not in any way translate to even 10 megawatts of electricity in this country.

So, if 13.2 billion  dollars had been stolen by criminals in this country, and as I explained to you, nobody has been arrested , nobody has been prosecuted, nobody has been detained, nobody has been put to jail and we are even yet to get indictment  on this through the NIPP project, and through many other projects. $13.2 billion gone down the drain and is the President now saying that the masses of this country would be the ones now serving the profligacy of the elites and buguais in this country?

How do you increase the price of a commodity that is not effective, that is not in supply, that is not available? It shows completely that the President has no focus. It is means this country is not only sick but equally suffering from terrible continental abnormality. It shows that Nigeria is being driven by a drunken driver.

Protest
And I want to say emphatically that I am going to lead the Nigerian youths to vehemently resist the increase of the tariff of electricity in this country. The service is epileptic, the supply is in shortage. There is even labour crisis in that industry. Why then would anybody want to increase the tariff of a commodity that is not available, that is in short supply, that is sick?  We are going to do everything humanly possible within the confines of the law to rescue Nigerians from this economic cankerworm and scavengers. It is going to be a battle of no retreat and no surrender. We will do everything humanly possible to resist vehemently, within the confines of the law. We are going to make this country ungovernable within the confines of the law until the President listens to the voice of reason.

And this would bring to the conclusion that the President has no intention, of leaving a legacy in this country. A president who responds to stimulus would not be allowed to inflict injury on the masses of this country. We will support an increase in tariff when we have an uninterrupted electricity supply. We will support increase in tariff if say by December you are giving us 10000 megawatts of electricity in this country. We want to know what we are to pay for. We cannot service the prolificacy of common and compounded criminals.

Prosecution
The question we are asking Mr. President is, we want to see those who spent 13.2 billion dollars of tax payers' money on the power that did not have any positive effect on power generation. We want to see them, we want to see them prosecuted, we want to see them jailed and seize the stolen resources and plundered them back to the treasury. So, Mr. President is daydreaming, and the truth of the matter is that the battle is that of no retreat, no surrender because in an unjust society, silence is crime.

We are going to be resolute. I am going to mobilize Nigerian youths from every facet of our life to retreat this deadly and satanic pronouncement of Mr. President that he would increase electricity tariff.

Betrayal
Secondly, the President also said that the governors betrayed him during the subsidy crisis. I want to assure him that in is going to see a greater betrayal on this issue of tariff.  Not only the governors would betray him. Every member of his family would betray him. I want to assure Mr. President that he was the first man to betray Nigerians and his party. The constitution of his party is clear about rotation of power and he killed rotation in the counstitution of the PDP. He said Nigeria's constitution is superior to PDP constitution. So the President was the first person to betray Nigerians by hijacking the power that is zoned to the north by his political party.

So, the interpretation of betrayal of the governors is that, he is the Chief betrayer. He claimed that Nigerians voted for him, and if democracy is the government of the people by the people and for the people, and the people are saying we want this, and you are not doing it, that is no more democracy. This government is government of the greedy, by the greedy and for the greedy. And those he has nominated for ministerial appointment also show that we are just transferring corruption from Wadata House to the Executive Council. We have also seen that the President has betrayed Nigerian.

The President that addressed a national press conference to tell Nigerians that there is going to be reduction of over-head. But I want to tell you right now that the over-head in the presidency now hase moved from N24.2bn to N26.5bn. then the budget for Vice President office for newspapers is N40m. the implication is that the Vice President will have to read 547 newspapers daily to justify that amount of money. Who is deceiving who? and also, it is pathetic to say that the domestic debt since Jonathan became the President of this country has risen from $2.32 trillion in 2009 to now over $6 trillion as at April 1 this year.

Who is deceiving who?
Merging of anti-grafts agencies
The truth of the matter is that if there is sincerity of purpose on the side of the anti-graft agencies, there is no problem. The first thing Mr. President should do is that those indicted, it is there in the Public Service Acts that all those indicted should be immediately suspended by the executive until investigation is concluded. We have seen Ministers being suspended in this country because their names are mentioned. A former Minister of Health and his Minister of State, were suspended because their names were mentioned even before the investigations were concluded.

So we expect the President to do same and if he feels he is incapacitated to govern this country because he cannot solve the problem of insecurity in the country, he should do the honourable thing. He should resign. As I am talking to you, the President has not visisted Kano, Borno and Yobe States. And he is Commander-in-Chief. In addition, he has shown that he is not capable of ruling this country especially when he celebrated Independence Day in the Villa as a result of threat of the booko haram. I want to say it is a shame because even during the civil war in 1967 to 1970, October 1 was still celebrated at Tafawa balewa Square, (TBS), Lagos and not in Dordan Barracks.

Resignation
I appeal to him to take the path of honour and the path of honour for him is just to resign. The President knows what to do if he means business. It is not the scrapping of those agencies that is the problem but management of the agencies that is the problem. For them to function effectively, the power to appoint their chairmen should be removed from the President and given to National Judicial Council (NJC). if the NJC is to make recommendation odf who is to be Chairmen of the EFCC, ICPC and CCB, then you will have a semblance of transparency and pure prosecution. But as far as Mr. President is to appoint the Chairmen, you cannot have the Chairman that would look at the face of Mr. President who gave him that job and fight him and fight his cronies.