The Vice Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress – APC; Professor Yemi Osinbajo was in Washington DC and Maryland recently as a special guest at a Town hall meeting organized in his honor. Highlights from the event as composed by Emmanuel Ogebe’s social page and who was in attendance quoted Prof. Osinbajo deconstructing the ruling PDP party while stating the following;
– in one opposition state, the government provides a meal a day to all school kids. The minister of Petroleum spent 10 billion on private jets which would feed all the school kids for 4 years.
– the asset company of Nigeria spent 5 trillion to write off bad debts for wealthy debtors. The cost of a social security stipend to 25 million poor people is just 1 trillion.
– The US is population 300 million and 2.2 mil are in prison. NIGERIA is half the U.S. size but only 11,000 are in prison. If you include those awaiting trial, it’s 55,000. “We must be the most well behaved people”
“After hearing Professor Osinbajo speak yesterday, I was almost persuaded. I have been and remain an undecided. He reeled off statistics on infant mortality rates (Nigeria is amongs the worst 3 in the world for kids 0-5 years) an issue which has agitated my mind for years.” Here is where the professor lost me. His first question was on Islamization of Nigeria. He said Section 9(2) of the constitution would be very difficult to amend to Islamize Nigeria. The problem though is that 12 states in Northern Nigeria have imposed Sharia law on their states in violation of the constitution for the past 15 years. Therefore, that argument doesn’t hold water in view of the current reality.
The learned law professor then said if their election victory was stolen from them, the APC would form a “parallell government.” This completely demolished his earlier argument. A parallel government is unconstitutional. If you say the country can’t be Islamized by Buhari because its had to change the constitution but then you say you plan to create a parallel government that is not constitutional, you have effectively said that you can do anything you want regardless of the constitution. If you can create a parallel government, you can also create a sharia government like Boko Haram and ISIS created a Caliphate.
Based on this conceptual blunder and logical inconsistency, I am not fully convinced anymore. The ideas are right but the approach is wrong. I am for a third option!
On a personal level, the good professor compared well with his law professor colleague president Obama who is able to articulate well what he is saying. Your do learn stuff about government. Osinbajo is better than all the other candidates in the field. (Emmanuel Ogebe is a USA based Legal Consultant)
Photo Credit: theoriimages
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