Please, read this piece, and see if i have been
proved wrong.
Iloh Friday Okechukwu
March 10, 2015
ยท
FALSEHOOD, SOPHISM AND THE 2015 GENERAL ELECTION
More than any election i know of in this country, the impending election of 2015 has generated more heat. My post yesterday, '' NIGERIA GENERAL ELECTION 2015 : MY TAKE '' elicited some responses that made me shudder. The quanitity of delibrate falsehood and sinister sophism wrought by supporters, admirers, friends of candidates are legion and uncanny. I am going to dwell on just two of such.
A colleague and a classmate at the university, in defence of my attack on the candidature of Buhari, made some statements that got me peeved. After painting the Buhari regime the golden age, he said Buhari's law on drug trafficking never executed Nigerians retroactively. The question i ask, needlessly though, is why do lie? Is it all because of this much awaited election? Na wa o. My learned friend, Buhari did, if actually you said this in good faith, then, check the archives; don't twist history. With regards to this election, or anything, i wouldn't lie. And to be fair to Buhari, he has not denied this, he merely justified it. gold evening dresses
My friend said Buhari regime built the four refineries. Haba! This is cheap and impotent falsehood of vast and immeasurable dimension. In Buhari's eighteen months's regime, he built four refineries? My dear, he built none, go back to history, if indeed, you are talking in good faith.
Again, he raised justification for the Buhari's coup of 1983, that the Shagari regime was corrupt, the economy slidding into hades. Indeed, the Shagari's regime occasioned the economy injury, no doubt. But, talking legally and fairly, should that be a basis for sacking a democratic government, contrary to the law? I shudder. I recall a justice of the Nigerian Court of Appeal, Ademola Adenekan, who was more autocratic than the military despots, justifying military decree, demanded of lawyers to blow muted trumpet.
Military rule, implicitly, my colleague argued is the panacea for the rot in democratic government. At any rate, he failed or neglected to ask himself whether the pre-civil war coup and counter coup solved the alleged rot of the Balewa government of the first republic. Sophism cannot launder Buhari's image : that coup is his achilles's heel, period, all these lies and window dressing will only bring the significance to the fore.
Let me say this, this present regime, unlike Caesar's wife, is not above board. For instance, the supply of electricity has not been encouraging; the pardon granted Alamiseigha is really questionable. My take is that no military marauder-head of state will rule Nigeria, even if he, supposing, caused manna to rain on Nigerians.
Ehn, my other colleague. He accepted my argument, but said it is not relevant to contemporary time; he never told me why. I chuckled. How would past events of monumental size, coup for instance, not be relevant in a nation's political life. Any person amongst the fourteen presidential candidates but Buhari should be president. We shouldn't cut off our nose to spite our face.
History will surely twist those who twist it.