Recently, I read an advertorial in Guardian Newspaper with the caption "The Guardian's Faux Pas: Apologia To Ahmadu Ali" by one Usman Jonah. With simmering curiosity, I paid punctilious attention to peruse through this advertorial but its import and the hubris of the writer have compelled me to come up with this rejoinder. After parsing through the logic and the intended impulse of Usman Jonah, which was to justify the conferment of the Nigeria National honour of CON on Ahmadi Ali, I can only, summarily, describe that treatise as PRIMITIVE NONSENSE. No other description will satiate this writer. His puny propaganda was a sheer attempt to deceive inactive minds about Ahmadu Alli but his incoherence and lack of intellectual depth woefully betrayed him.

Apart from the grammatical incoherence, intellectual sterility, superficiality and logical naïveté of this advertorial, Usman Jonah committed an abominable sacrilege by foolishly bringing the hallowed name of Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, under the same heading with Ahmadi Alli. I believe that must rank as a low water mark in his career correspondence. This narcissistic bêtise, among other things, got me distended to come up with this rejoinder. Now, regarding the burden of this advertorial, we shall now take a critical look at the life of Ahmadu Alli.

Just like typical maestros of casuistry and intellectual knaves, Usman Jonah glibly used Ahmadu Alli's Medical profession and rank of Colonel as diversionary gambit to obfuscate the crux of his argument and swindle some idle minds but his lack of intellectual sophistication badly impaired the kernel of his sycophantic propaganda. Since many variables are responsible for the selection of recipients of Nigeria National Honor, Usman Jonah would probably have made sense if he had confined his propaganda within the ambit of Alli's Medical profession alone but he landed himself in the labyrinth of obtuse argumentation by using his positional and political occupation to score some cheap points.

And conversely, in regards to his positional and political career as a leader in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which is the main thrust of this discourse, Ahmadu Alli's name is synonymous to ignominy and wretchedness. First of all, during his misfortunate and inauspicious stint as the Education Minister in 1976, the sloganeering mantra of "Alli must go" sung by Nigerian students in those days is an eloquent index of his chutzpah. His inglorious ascension to the helm of education ministry was preludial to the gradual annihilation of our Nigerian educational standard. Records abound of how the promising lives of innocent Nigerian students were callously terminated by blood-thirsty and murderous policemen at the behest and instigation of Ahmadu Alli. The era of glorious days in our tertiary institutions, where the meals of students in higher Institutions of learning were subsidized, was mindlessly curtailed by Ahmadu Alli. The highlight of his tenure as the education minister, which Usman Jonah doltishly regards as "REFORMS", was the REDUCTION OF FEEDING SUBSIDY which the then Government graciously accorded Nigeria students. In spite of this vacuity of Ahmadu Alli as the Education Minister in the 70s, Usman Jonah characterizes the baneful and inimical proclivities which Alli exhibited with unbridled ferocity as "REFORMS" in his treatise. My mouth was gagged with bemusement when I read that hogwash. I have asked myself this rhetorical question: "Is Usman Jonah undergoing a mind-bending therapy to refer to stark terrorism as REFORMS"??? Afterwards, I pulled myself together and I graciously said a fervent prayer for Usman Jonah: "If all that happened during those days in 70s were REFORMS as peddled by Usman Jonah, may such REFORMS never end in Usman Jonah's lineage! May the progeny of Usman Jonah, just like he wishes for Nigeria, continue to enjoy the REFORMS of Ahmadu Alli till eternality!" Amen.

The idiocy of Usman Jonah didn't stop at the ignominious juncture of attempting to bend the ugly realities of Ahmadu Alli's monstrosity into his own hypocritical parallax; he went further by articulating these asinine and nauseating remarks:

By the way, we are at pains to understand what the paper's perspectives on political party reforms, really. For one, even his implacable enemies would credit Dr Alli with restoring the principles of discipline and party supremacy in the PDP after his predecessors has left the party in tatters…PDP is not just a Political party of Nigeria variety. It is false to call it a disintegrating party. The party is democratic in its internal workings, robust and open to new ideas and perspectives and has always reached out to make peace with itself, whenever splinter tendencies refuse to abide by institutional rules. What the party under Ali would not condone is the tendency of some of its members no matter how highly placed, to worship God and mammon at the same time.

This statement by Usman Jonah is loaded with complexities and opacities. First of all, I found the usage of the phrase "discipline" quite bewildering and esoteric in that statement and I was rammed to consult my lexicon to review its meaning. From the concise Wordweb dictionary on my personal computer, discipline has these following meanings:

i.The trait of being well behaved

ii.Training to improve strength or self-control

iii.The act of punishing

Let us now take these foregoing and apply them with the conduct of PDP so far and see whether Usman Jonah's brain is not disconnected from his mouth.

Audu Ogbeh is Ahmadu Alli's immediate predecessor. Some allegations of financial improprieties and misconduct were levied against him as subterfuge of justifying his removal. Meanwhile, prior to these allegations and his eventual removal, Audu Ogbeh addressed a cautionary and prophylactic letter to President Obasanjo urging him to moderate his acquiescence and condonation to the act of criminality and bestiality being exercised by Chris Uba in Anambra State. Audu Ogbeh further signaled some warnings to President Obasanjo about the way Nigeria's participatory politics was relapsing into recidivism which, in reminiscence, almost drifted the ship of our Nation unto Iceberg before the Military take-over as it were. Audu Ogbeh's advocacy for the elevation of PDP from the morass of venality, thuggery and corruption, especially the blatant acts of terrorism being perpetuated by Chris Uba in Anambra, was neither initiatory nor customary to Audu Ogbeh alone – he merely reenacted what the Alukos, Soyinkas, Nwabuezes, Achebes, Abatis and Ndibes of this World have been decrying over the years. But lo and behold, Audu Ogbeh was beleaguered for daring to critically address our dictatorial President openly and, therefore, accused of misconduct and consequently fired as the Chairman of the party in a shameful manner.

After the removal of Audu Ogbeh, Ahmadu Alli was imposed on PDP by President Obasanjo. One of his first set of exploits was the re-admission of Chris Uba, the man who had been previously expelled from the PDP for the abduction of Governor Chris Ngige and other gross misconducts, back into the party. This re-admission was quite beyond the ordinary: He was promoted to PDP Board of Trustee! Shortly after Uba's re-admission into the party, the imbroglio between Lagos State Government and Federal Government over the legitimacy of the newly created local government councils ensued and the case was taken to Supreme Court for legal redress. At the end of the day, the Supreme Court presided over by Justice Niky Tobi made an indubitable pronouncement that Federal Government of Nigeria should release Lagos State's funds unconditionally but, alas, the PDP and the Presidency deliberately misrepresented, perverted and flouted the ruling of the Supreme Court just because of PDP was unable to rig itself into power in Lagos State. This flouting of Supreme Court ruling marked the first time in the history of Nigeria, be it under the Military or Civilian, where there has been a siege on the rule of law.

All these disgustingly dishonorable acts of monumental shamelessness and ignominy happened under the Chairmanship of Ahmadu Alli. Therefore, with the foregoing, has Usman Jonah not lost his mind to avow that Ahmadu Alli has restored "the principles of discipline and party supremacy in the PDP"?

Apart from that lawlessness, Ahmadu Alli's tenure as the Chairman of the PDP was solely and wholly instrumental in the conception and incubation of the most cynical, antisocial, detrimental, predatory, selfish and prejudicial agenda in the history of Nigeria – the THIRD TERM AGENDA (TTA). Not only was Ahmadu Alli instrumental towards the conception of the TTA, he was actively and implacably integral in the process of its actualization and realization. I personally watched Alli on National Television where he was urging Nigerians to support the continuance of Obasanjo's blundering interregnum. But at the end of the day, we all know the judgement of history over that rapacious ambition.

Alli's past is a tale of wretchedness whilst his present is an epitome of ignominy. However, history teaches us that the only permanent and constant effect in the kingdom of nature is change; but the only change in Ahmadu Alli over the years is his level of desperation and imperviousness to ignominy. His ignominy is exemplified in the impetus he has given to the ongoing topsy-turvydom rocking the Presidency between our President and his Vice. Even though men with eye behind their eyes can see that the attrition in the Presidency was primarily ignited by the insatiable avarice for power by this duo and the failure of the TTA, Ahmadu Alli has been actively appurtenant to this muckraking whilst hypocritically castigating Atiku of corruption – whereas both Atiku and OBJ are birds of the same feather.

One of the successes of Ahmadu Alli's tenure as the Chairman of PDP is that loyalty has been re-defined as acquiescence, connivance, conspiracy and hypocrisy to one's political godfather or cohort. Under Alli's leadership, failure to condone larceny of public funds is harbinger of being branded as disloyal. Let us briefly use Oyo-State as a case study and read what a stalwart of the PDP and Alli's personal friend, Lamidi Adedibu, shamelessly babbled in public glare sometime ago about his fracas the erstwhile Governor of Oyo State, Rasheed Ladoja:

"Ladoja is too greedy. He was collecting N65million as security vote every month. You know Governors don't account for security vote. He was to give me N15million of that every month. He reneged. Later it was reduced to N10million, yet he did not give me".

To this Ladoja responded accordingly: "we did not reach any agreement about sharing money. When he asked me about his own share, I asked him under which account I should put it… The understanding of both of us of what governance is supposed to be differs. This difference is that I see governance as service while he sees it as business…after we had our quarrel in 1994 and we wanted to make up in 2002, he came to see me and said Rasheed what do you want and I said I want to be Governor and he said then let us work together…he said three things: One, he asked me, do you know how to abuse people? And I said no. Then he asked can you take away your clothes in the public and fight? I said no. Thirdly, he asked can you tell lies against somebody and swear on the Quran and again call witnesses and I said impossible. Then he said those are the things we always used in politics."

I was chagrined and hit with a powerful vertigo when I read this altercation in Guardian Newspaper. The godfather of Oyo-State politics, Lamidi Adedibu, didn't make any pretense that he orchestrated the illegal Impeachment of Governor Rasheed Ladoja because the latter didn't share the money in question with him. This was exactly what happened in Anambra State where the Governor was kidnapped and narrowly escaped being killed. For these nefarious conducts by this vicious duo, whilst Ahmadu Alli rewarded the godfather of Anambra State politics, Chris Uba, with a promotion into PDP Board of Trustee, the godfather of Oyo State politics, Lamidi Adedidu, was graciously accorded with an unprecedented and knightly accolade – "The Commander of military garrison of Ibadan politics"! It is quite mortifying to watch this high degree of contemptuousness and shamelessness by this cog of venomous tarantulas known as PDP led by Ahmadu Alli.

By the way, recently when I visited some areas in Ibadan, I saw gleeful posters of some PDP aspirants where the smiling face of Lamidi Adedibu was superimposed on their campaign posters with the inscription "Alhaji Chief Lamidi Adedibu – the Strongman and the Garrison Commander of Oyo-State politics." Seeing these political advertising posters, I shook my head in disbelief and giggled in utter bewilderment of what Nigeria has become. A wretched and scurrilous twerp like Lamidi Adedibu, just like Chris Uba, has become a governmental celebrity and political god that Nigeria politicians worship if they must thrive politically – all under the leadership and auspices of Ahmadu Alli as the PDP Chairman. Yet the dunderhead who calls himself "Usman Jonah" characterizes this demented leadership as "disciplined and peaceful".

It is a height of crassitude for organizers of the National award in Nigeria to vacuously consider bestowing a National Honor on this horribly horrific man known as Ahmadu Alli whilst men and women who actively and sedulously worked towards the emancipation and liberation of our Country are superciliously discounted. The Statesmen, who, despite being daunted by danger and risk of personal safety, stolidly battled the trammels and clutches of military intimidation; men and women who were bludgeoned into submission for their involvement in the sustenance and preservation of civil liberty are now treated with utter contempt by Obasanjo's administration. During the dark days of Abacha, some of them were exiled, harassed out of employment and, of course, abducted in plain daylight. But these men and women are not honored – all they get is vilification. I vividly remember the obstreperous orchid known as Fani-Kayode blaring discordantly that Professor Wole Soyinka has got enough presidential attention. It was this same Fani-Kayode that told Professor Achebe to go to hell and that Nigeria would not lose any sleep because of the latter's rejection of the conferment of Honor given to him by the epileptic administration of Obasanjo. And to make matters worse, Fani-Kayode is now a minister in Nigeria. Even though Fani-Kayode can be indulged and excused for his acerbity and impertinence in the public glare because of his psychiatric history, but the question that begs for answer is this: "why is it that it is the wretched of the earth that captains the ship of Nigeria???" I recall seeing the ugly face of National Secretary of PDP, Ojo Madueke, on AIT urging Nigerians to support the TTA. It is quite disgusting to excogitate that it was this same loathsome skunk called "Ojo Madueke" and other members of current PDP executives that led the charade of some delirious unpatriotic Nigerians to advocate for life Presidency of General Sanni Abacha. Hence, Ahmadu Alli is the leader of these repellant molecules and beastly species of humanity who are replete in the hierarchy of PDP that are calling the shots in Nigeria. Also, in talking about jiggery-pokery and thievery in Federal Republic of Nigeria, we cannot possibly fail to mention Tony Anenih, aka "Mr Fix it", the man who, during his Ministerial stint, made bogus claims to have spent over N300billion on the construction of imaginary roads that have responsible for sending thousands of innocent Nigerian souls into untimely graves, who is the Chairman of PDP board of Trustee!

Even though I trust that good people of Nigeria will positively use their inalienable franchise to flush out Ahmadu Alli and his bevy of opprobrious army called "PDP" out of office in 2007 polls, we have been able to demonstrate in this dialectic treatise beyond any doubt that, although, Colonel Ahmadu Alli may be a loyal friend to his chosen inner circle of friends in the oligarchy who have played the card of nepotism by sacrilegiously decorating him with National HONOR but to the dreams and aspirations of millions of Nigerians, he is an enemy – a man of National DISHONOR, TERROR AND HOROR.