Chief Anthony Anenih, one of the most influential chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party from 1999 to 2016 who was widely-known as “Mr. Fix-It,” died last week, aged 85.
A veteran of various political parties since the early 1980s, President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him Minister for Works in his first term. He subsequently served twice as the chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees, and of the Board of the Nigeria Ports Authority.
His passing was followed by a heavy avalanche of tributes as frontline politicians praised the Edo State-born politician. Among others, President Muhammadu Buhari, former Presidents Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, and PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar called him a “patriot.”
He was a political colossus and a PDP hero and legend. But he was not a patriot by any stretch of the imagination.
But Buhari extolled him as a “frontline figure” in Nigeria’s political history.
Obasanjo called him “…a national icon and authentic role model…a patriot and a nationalist of no mean order…” Jonathan said Anenih’s name “would continue to appear in gold whenever the history of this country is being rewritten.”
As a culture, we do not speak ill of the dead. Well, we ought never to speak blatant falsehood before God either or betray the living through flagrant hypocrisy. Anenih was clearly and particularly a PDP figure. He was a cold-blooded PDP-partisan who saw Nigeria through the eyes of his party; he never saw PDP through the eyes of Nigeria.
A patriot loves, asserts and defends his or her country passionately; Anenih’s passion was the PDP, right or wrong. To pronounce him a patriot insults both the term and Nigeria.
Did Anenih advocate an overriding public vision of Nigeria; if so, when, and what was it? What was his passion concerning uplifting Nigeria? What moved him to tears and what did he do about it?
Whom did he offend publicly in affirming right over wrong, ours over mine, day over night? Did he champion the cause of clean drinking water for every Nigerian…free and fair elections, free education or healthcare? Did he advocate libraries in towns and villages or opportunities for the gifted?
Was his combat in connection with maternal and child deaths nationwide?
More after the break.
