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OF CANT AND FAIRY TALES: ERNEST SHONEKAN SINGS By It is very galling to read self-serving accounts by some of the most disreputable actors who played such utterly contemptible roles in the sad and sordid events of our recent past. It is all the more nauseating when there is a brazen attempt to justify and rationalize what is patently irredeemably immoral and glaringly offensive to the public good. Ernest Shonekan, the shameless toad that was procured from the British neo-colonial sewage to offend the sensibilities of Nigerians by Ibrahim Babangida gave an interview in ThisDay [September 9th 2001].
In the interview, he used words and phrases like ‘justice’, ‘equity’, ‘national duty’, ‘averting danger’, ‘avoiding danger’, ‘opportunity to serve’, ‘to save my country’, ‘the country needed me.’, I had no alternative but to accept’, ‘I was asked to come and do my national duty’ etc etc, to characterize his misadventure on the Nigerian political space. This man of odium also blasphemously invoked the name of God, ‘Thank God for the opportunity which he game me’, ‘Thank God that throughout my career’ [of eighty two days!!!], ‘Thank God that God has used me in different ways in this country’. He also not surprisingly told some bare-faced lies, ‘…it was during my tenure [if you recall my budget speech] that we started talking about transparency, accountability and fighting corruption,’, ‘I don’t know what transpired when the election was annulled . I didn’t take part in the annulment’, ‘…there were many positive things which I did’. And one of ‘these positive things’ is that ‘God’ [again!] gave him ‘an opportunity of declaring Ondo state an oil-producing state’!!! That truly must be one of God’s mercies on Babangida’s man Friday.
According to Shonekan, it was not Ibrahim Babangida who appointed him the chairman of the Transitional Council, ‘I must say that when I was chosen as the chairman of the Transitional Council, it was a unanimous vote by my other members. I didn’t campaign for it at all, they just decided that there must something in me. I was almost the youngest of the lot. So,when people say that Babangida was the one who appointed me, ‘I say no it was not Babangida but a unanimous vote of all the members who decided that I should be the one to lead them’. Talk about being disingenuous, Shonekan of course was silent on who appointed him and all the so-called others members in the first place, to this council of traducers.. If Babangida had not established the Transitional Council in the first place, appointed him as well as his co-travellers in travesty, how would he have become chair of the council? Was this man so delusional that he actually believed that there was something autonomous about his appointment or that he was not merely acting as a convenient civilian front for his handlers in the Nigerian military. He was allowed to carry this self-delusion long enough to parade himself as Nigeria’s head of state at the Commonwealth conference in Cyprus as well as the United Nations conference in New York.
Shonekan did volunteer one truth about himself though, ‘when I was running the United African Company [UAC], people always referred to me as the ugly face of capitalism, but again I went through that stage where I was called all sorts of names…..’ Evidently, Shonekan has yet to find out that he has outgrown that appellation to take on the new one as ‘the ugly face of the Nigerian political economy’ Ernest Shonekan was inflicted on Nigerian political space by Ibrahim Babangida through the instrumentality of Aliyu Mohammed Gusau of the Nigerian military intelligence, who was then his National Security Adviser. Incidentally, Gusau also holds the same office in the current dispensation. Prior to his romance with Babangida, Shonekan spent his professional life in defence of the British economic interests in Nigeria and rose to become the chairman of the UAC. He was in place to replace Augustus Aikhomu as Babangida’s vice-president or prime minister before the Transitional position was found for him. He made himself available to Babangida to buy himself time to leave the seat of government safely, frustrate the Nigerian people’s desire to build a democratic society and played a crucial role as a member of the anti-democratic forces that annulled the presidential election of 1993.
His claim in the interview referenced above, that ‘ I didn’t know what transpired when the election was annulled. I didn’t take part in the annulment.’ is false. It is known that Shonekan was issued fraudulent payment vouchers, by the Babangida regime which he [Shonekan] gleefully displayed to members of the diplomatic corps in Nigeria, as ‘evidence’ of the attempt by the winner of the 1993 presidential election, to compromise the integrity of the chairman of electoral commission. After being eased out of office by Sani Abacha, Shonekan continued his ‘national service’ by becoming the chairman of the Vision 2010 committee, well into the Abubakar regime. It is a manifestation of how low public service has sunk in Nigeria, that a man like Shonekan who attracts such indignation and opprobrium, would be a member of the National Council of States. His continued membership is an affront to public morality and decency. December 2001
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