The year 2006 must go down in recent history as Nigeria�s year of extreme excesses, the year in which all absurd things took the centre stage. It was a year in which tragedy masqueraded as comedy, the one year that simultaneously brought tears and laughter to the faces of many Nigerians. It is true that no year is without its own share of the good as well as the bad, without discounting the downright laughable. But the preceding year topped the bill in recent times. Many events combined to make 2006 what it was but, as usual in Nigeria and not surprisingly, politics predominated for 2007 is another election year. And on the political score, the score sheet is at once tragic, comic and foolish. The year started on a very sour note, a note that was to define all that happened thereafter. In the second week of that year, precisely on the 12th, the Executive Governor of Oyo State, Rashid Adewolu Ladoja was impeached from office in circumstances that only went to demonstrate our politicians� disregard of democratic procedures.
Eighteen members of the state�s legislature, with the active backing of Lamidi Adedibu, the self-confessed political jobber and paper tiger that has been elevated to the level of political juggernaut, to borrow the words of Mbonu Ojike- these lawmakers decided to remove the Governor from office without the required number of legislators necessary for that most sacred of legislative responsibilities. The Presidency and, perhaps, the President himself sanctioned this daylight heist of the people�s will. And Ladoja remained a political outcast until, eleven months later, he was returned to office by a judgment of the Supreme Court. The Ladoja case proved a mere dress rehearsal to and was soon upstaged by the struggle to elongate the President�s own tenure beyond the two terms constitutionally allowed. This battle moved into the National Assembly under the guise of a Constitutional Amendment plan. But soon the gambit could not be sustained as the National Assembly threw out the agenda and an angry President Obasanjo took on his Deputy, Atiku Abubakar, who had led the team opposed to tenure elongation. Now the Vice President�s office has been declared vacant, like the position of an office cleaner, I guess it�s clear where the refusal to oblige the President a second term has led us all?
The highest number of removals/impeachments of political officers in Nigeria, particularly governors, happened in 2006. Following the case of Ladoja , Chris Ngige had the stool rudely taken from under him by the Supreme Court when his position as governor of Anambra was declared a nullity. In practical terms he was declared a usurper and asked to vacate the position he had been occupying for three years for the rightful person, Peter Obi. Less than seven months in office, Obi himself was upstaged by legislators whose capacity for evil and impunity can only be measured by the extent they had to go to effect his removal: they met before dawn in a neighbouring state. After Obi came Joshua Dariye of Plateau. Declared a fugitive by both local and international law for financial crime, Dariye managed to escape the law until the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission cornered his legislators and through them, the Governor himself (but Dariye was beaten to the record of being removed for Financial crimes by the former Bayelsa�s State Governor, Deprieye Alameiseigha who was removed only months before Ladoja).
Ayo Fayose, the loudmouth of Ekiti politics, immediately followed Dariye into the dustbin of history, chased by the same EFCC. Now in the very last days of the year and only three months to a new administration, Peter Obi has been returned to the office by a High Court�s judgment. Would the judgment stay or are Nigerians in for more comedy of the absurd? 2006 was not only about impeachments or removals from office. It was a year of gruesome political murders, with two standing out for their macabre execution: that of Ayo Daramola and, particularly, Funso Williams� whose widow�s victory to become PDP gubernatorial candidate was annulled only hours after she was declared winner by her party! But that�s not all about 2006.
It was the year of unprecedented accidents in the aviation industry, the year that hundred of both highly placed and ordinary Nigerians, uniformed or civilians, were sent to their graves by failures in the system. It was a year in which buildings collapsed with the rapidity of cards. The year in which Nigerians spent their end of year holidays in darkness and without transport following fuel scarcity. It was a year in which hundreds, perhaps thousands drawn to desperation while scooping fuel, lost their lives in a man-made hell called broken fuel pipeline explosion. Yet nobody can deny these were all needless and avoidable deaths. Now 2006 is gone Nigerians must be waiting to exhale, to enter a happy 2007. Happy New Year!