In the final minutes of Thursday April 2, 2020 Deji Adeyanju (forget the comrade title he bestowed on himself) tweeted “The problems we had in 2015 are worse now. Our economy is worse. Our currency is more hopeless. Insecurity is worse. Corruption is worse. So why was changing PDP necessary?” Adeyanju described himself in his Twitter profile as “Activist. Prisoner of Conscience. Anti-Government, Pro-people. Convener, @ConcernedNIG” which largely ignored his most important role, designation and conviction: anarchist.
Prior to his arrest and being held in custody while on trial for murder, Adeyanju had always shown that mean streak of caring more about himself than about the collective. To him, the people he leads into protests are nothing but props, disposables that serve his purpose especially if they are stupid enough to get arrested or harmed in any violence ensuing from the protests he gathers them for. So, it is not plausible to adduce his incarceration, several rounds of incarcerations, for traumatizing him to becoming the monster he is today; his case is not the chicken and egg conundrum but rather he went into custody on several times for being patently evil.
The beating he received at the hands of the protesters he hired to swell the crowd at the free Omoyele Sowore riots was not responsible for his porting to the dark side. He had always been the dark one. His brand of evil is so dark that he was able to mislead the public into thinking that he was lynched by a random gang of hoodlums when in reality he got the beating of his life for failing to pay the hired protesters that he organized to demonize the government. He even knew their names and addresses, which implied he had been in touch with them before they beat him up.
Adeyanju is of course no stranger to staged protests or coordinated violent riots. He is a major consultant to the terrorists group, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), whose violent protests were initially without arson and murder until they signed Adeyanju up as a consultant. Once he joined their ranks, he showed them the path to the worst violence against the state, and they have since learnt that it is a slippery slope from which there is no climb back. The taste for violence and killing that this so-called activist has taught to them is not one they can give up easily.
Rather than speed up the release of their leader, Ibraheem el-Zakzaky, who is standing trial for allegations of sundry crimes, the strategy introduced to IMN by Adeyanju as their consultant has led to the earning of the label of a terrorist organization while further diminishing whatever sympathies Nigerians hitherto felt for the sect. On top of that the joke is on the IMN leaders that hired Adeyanju because as a crisis entrepreneur, he stands to make more money and more incidents that he can use to market himself as an activist – IMN’s loss has always been Adeyanju’s gain.
It is therefore no surprise that at a time that the world is focused on slowing the spread of the COVID-19 virus, IMN is not trending for Adeyanju; the potential revenue from that group has dwindled as it became evident that its leader has a case to answer before the court. The virus is also not trending for the pseudo-activist. What is trending for this activist-for-hire is to furiously retweet the attacks emanating from PDP, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) against the government in power. His Twitter timeline is an aggregator that has produced one collage of hate as expressed by his followers and associates in the bash the government competition.
Knowing Adeyanju’s antecedent as an activist who gravitates towards where the funding is coming from, the emergency love for promoting PDP has little to do with being partisan, which he should not be if he were truly an activist that is interested in the improvement of Nigeria. His support for PDP has more to do with the cache of money that the party had reportedly committed to destabilizing the government of the day after its bitter loss at the 2019 General Elections, which the likes of Adeyanju failed to swing for it in spite of a long running campaign of calumny against President Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC).
It is noteworthy that at the height of the electioneering for 2019, the PDP reportedly had plan A, B and C. Plan A was to fraudulently win the vote through a combination of propaganda, fake news and compromising the process through rigging and violence – that included hiring terrorists and foreign mercenaries to create the impression that the country was not safe enough to have the elections. Plan B was to precipitate anarchy when PDP loses the election such that the military will be forced to step in and at some points return power to the opposition party. Plan A and B failed spectacularly of course and now the implementation of Plan C is ongoing with Adeyanju as one of the strategic executors.
He has been in touch with the other team members that executed the failed plan A and B since the PDP is stuck with their circuit as no other right-thinking Nigerian will sign up to execute a plan that will effectively make the country into a graveyard. Like their “comrade” they have also been retweeting contents that advance the poison that the PDP is concocting for the public mind as it pushes for the execution of another phase of it moribund bid to unseat the government.
This time, Plan C is to repeatedly discredit the government with anything the opposition and paid activists like Adeyanju can lay their hands upon. The intention is to blame the government for everything from the economy to the spread of Corona Virus such that citizens will get angry to the point where they will take to the streets and sack the government. This is why they are making comparison between now and the period when PDP was in power.
They are also making efforts to whip up ethno-sectarian sentiments in the military and security sector with the intention of creating factions in the military that they can use to hack their attempt of “Masses Uprising” overthrowing the government. This was why they cast the recent redeployments in the army in ethnic light in the hope that they can create and deepen disaffection within the ranks. The military will have to be at alert as this syndicate will execute even more sinister plots aimed at undermining the system for them to have their way.
But like the bungled assignment Adeyanju handled for Iran in introducing murder and arson to IMN violent protests, like the failed implementation of the Plan A and B of the PDP’s forceful takeover bid, Plan C with an Adeyanju as part of the implementing team is again set to fail. The basis of their argument is flawed, and the average right-thinking person can easily see through the disinformation they are attempting. The world over, economies are taking severe beating from COVID-19 to the extent that the global economic concept and practice will be redrawn when the virus is done so what point are the PDP and Adeyanju trying to make about the Nigerian economy and currency being worse off when everything has melted down globally.
As for insecurity, the logical thing is for Adeyanju and his client, the PDP to start by assisting the country by asking their terrorists and mercenaries to stand down so that the military and security agencies can deal with whatever is left that is not politically motivated terrorism that is sponsored to make points. Only the cessation of these distractions and sponsored violence will allow Nigeria to be peaceful to the point where it can become prosperous and the citizens at peace.
But again, being a crisis entrepreneur, how will Deji Adeyanju feed if Nigeria is at peace and everything resets to normal?