Scholar and critic, Professor Pius Adesanmi, has come down hard on President Goodluck Jonathan over yesterday night’s postponement of the February 14 presidential election till March 28. Though the poll shift was announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Adesanmi accused the Nigerian military and security chiefs of intimidating and blackmailing the electoral commission into taking the decision.

In a swift reaction through an article titled ‘The good of bad’, Adesanmi however predicted that the postponement would not save President Jonathan from imminent defeat in the hands of his main challenger, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari.

The Canada-based Adesanmi wrote in the article published on his Facebook wall: “When I heard of the great evil (of the postponement of the election) that Goodluck Jonathan had visited on our country today, my mind went to this thesis. I was despondent and discouraged. My heart palpitated. I very nearly drove to the Residence of the Nigerian High Commissioner to drop my passport with Ojo Maduekwe and be done once and for all with a nation-space that has found permanent employment for my tear ducts. I don’t need this, I tell myself. That one wicked, evil man could scheme to reverse every gain we have made on our journey as a people since June 12, 1993 was just too much for me to bear.”

Adesanmi called the pushing forward of the polls a ‘pre-annulment’ of an election in which, he says, the president was going to suffer a humiliating defeat.

Also, in the passionate piece, Professor Adesanmi described the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate Muhammadu Buhari as a transcendental sign of the mass movement of Nigerians towards integrity.

“Reuben Abati (President Jonathan’s spokesman), for instance, has read too many books not to understand that what is happening now is a mass movement for integrity in which Buhari has become a transcendental sign. Buhari is now a sign and a movement has coalesced around that sign. When that happens, no force is powerful enough to stop the movement of such a tide. Even Buhari is powerless to stop what is blowing across Nigeria now and has adopted him as arrowhead irrespective of his human strengths and weaknesses. This tide has become so much

bigger than Buhari now – big enough for a Nobel laureate to sense it and carefully arrange himself,” Adesanmi wrote.

The scholar concludes the fiery denunciation of President Jonathan, saying: “The people who rose up en masse today to condemn Goodluck Jonathan’s evil were going to do just one thing on February 14: punish him for failure and send him packing to Otuoke. Now, he has annoyed many more people than were going to sack him. He has merely strengthened the tide and the movement. The Nigerians who were going to sack him for only one reason in February must now sack Goodluck Jonathan for two reasons in March: (1) Failure; (2) Treason.”

•Photo shows Adesanmi.

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