New Telegraph

See Buhari’s Nigeria: Na wah for Baba o

Iwoke up this morning enveloped in a feeling of despondency. The country has been going through several impasse and the system collapse looks very compelling. Nothing positive seems to be working. No sector of the Nigerian state seems to be working.

The infrastructural decay is massive. The rot in the system is palpable. Economic deprivations dominate the facial expressions of the citizenry. Insecurity has become the national anthem of a system that shows visible signs of a failed state. From one economic conundrum to another economic doldrums, the country is floating in different directions, with no discernible destination.

Just yesterday, President Buhari was condemning Goodluck Jonathan, boasting as if he had the magic wand, asking President Jonathan to resign if he was not able to provide the solutions to Nigeria’s myriad of problems. Just yesterday, el-Rufai, the now Kaduna State Governor, also lampooned President Jonathan to give up if he was unable to chart a roadmap.

 

He took the Jonathan administration to the cleaners, accusing it of insensitivity and incompetence to provide the right leadership. In 2015, the cookies crumbled and President Buhari climbed the rostrum. All those who ran their Jonathan commentaries with abysmal condemnation, have since eaten the humble pie. Nigeria has been worse off under their leadership. President Buhari has been a monumental failure.

 

The first step he took was a colossal misstep. He waited for six months before he could announce his cabinet. By this time, investors were unable to predict the direction of the new government and in an atmosphere of uncertainty, they were pulling out their investments.

 

The administration crept into its first recession which took sometime to abate, but by that time, the economy had received its first slap. From then on, the economy has been entering one form of recession after another, dislocating the economic fabric of a country that was already in shock. Nigeria has been dithering from one pitfall to another; the government looking more and more confused by the day.

 

The positive impact of governmental policies is hardly felt. Unemployment has become the normative order. Job losses on the increase. Poverty, hunger, deprivations and economic dislocations have taken the centre-stage in our national discourse. Internally displaced persons dominate our landscape as we drift from one deadend to another searching for our national compass.

The presidency hovers around uncertainty over policy issues. They speak to us in conquered tones, unveiling the capitulation of a general that has been conquered by terrorists. Such manifest incompetence has never been so visible in our leadership emanations. It is not in doubt that President Buhari’s approach to governance has been one of taciturnity and snail-pace.

He hasn’t shown the gravitas that he so eloquently boasted of during his campaign for president pre-2015. He’s obviously overwhelmed by the enormity of our developmental challenges. All our national indices of growth have been on the reverse.

Growth rate, unemployment rate, the rate of insecurity and our economic wellbeing have all become untenable realities that perpetually stiffen our progression.

The presidency is confused. Government appointees are confused and generously unable to connect the dots in a season of national anomie. The other day, Minister Rotimi Amaechi voiced his frustrations when he visited the crash site of the Kaduna-bound train that was attacked. He indicted his own administration over its refusal to fix surveillance facilities along the rail routes.

 

The following day, a memo that exposed the rotten underbelly of a rent seeking government surfaced, detailing the rationale for rejecting Amaechi’s memo. Corruption confronting corruption, dubious intentions confronting dubious outcomes, presenting a company that was less than two years old to handle multi-billion naira project with the contract sum to be paid up front.

But for that train attack, Nigerians would not have known this round-tripping exercise.

Insecurity has become our national anthem; no thanks to the President’s style and incompetence. He seems visibly overwhelmed by the dominating realities of one attack too many. All those promises he made when he was campaigning for election, exuding confidence as if he had the magic wand, have all diminished.

We are struggling as a nation to remain afloat under a system that is dubiously dysfunctional. From one cesspool of corruption to another, the nation is eating away its future, replacing pen and writing papers with bullets and guns. University Lecturers are on strike for several months without solution in sight.

Our tertiary education sector is in tatters while the secondary and primary sectors have been on forced vacation because insecurity won’t let them be. When you kill your education sector, what you get in return is the bullet and gun sector. Banditry, kidnapping, terrorism and other associated criminal gangs taking over the space in arrogant showmanship.

They dictate the flow of national discourse. They speak with guns and bullets. They collect ransom and deliver blood. Listen to the frustrations of Ahmed el-Rufai, you will see the failure and contradiction of a government he was part of birthing.

All noise that gathers no moss. Bandits have taken over his mental presence; audacious acts that easily expose the faultlines. Who do we blame? The president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Commanderin- Chief of the Armed Forces.

 

That’s where the bulk stops. I am wondering what goes on in the mind of the president each time his incompetence comes to the fore. Where is that claim of integrity? Where is the anti-corruption fight which has become mere sloganeering? Where are the impacts of super-tucano jets that were being vigorously awaited? Where is Mr. President’s so-called gallantry prior to his victory at the polls? Incompetence is walking the talk in the Villa, while nepotism is talking the walk.

Tokenism and cronyism are competing for space in an atmosphere of selective amnesia. The psyche of the citizenry has been badly broken. National conversation is nil, in a polarised polity with broken tongues and tribes. Agitations rent the air, while dislocations perpetuate the landscape.

Nigerians are now asking; shouldn’t president Buhari return Nigeria to its 2015 status when a bag of rice sold for N8,000, when a bag of cement sold for N1,500? Shouldn’t we ask for our 2015 status?

A tuber of yam sold for N200 as opposed to N1,000 under President Buhari’s Accumulated Poverty Construction initiatives; APC. Such a tactless political initiative that is more attuned to its pecuniary, selfish and greedy interest than any other consideration. Nigeria has slipped away from the grip of Mr. President leaving a citizenry that is utterly disillusioned and massively flustered.

For daring to speak truth to power, the Chief Imam of Apo Parliament mosque was suspended in what underscores hypocrisy of the system. How do you suspend a cleric who was speaking truth in his sermon? He was only repeating what we already know about the failure in the system. Do we expect him to speak falsehood to massage the ego of the oligarchs?

Will that please the God he serves? It is a fact that Nigeria is at a crossroads. It is a harvest of killings and blood every now and then. Is this the same Nigeria General Buhari inherited in 2015?

Take a look at his party and the dubious consensus that was consummated. In a new world order, the president giving directive of what he wanted and not what members of the party wanted. Is that democracy or dictatorship?

Those who were the “demolition officers” by way of corrupt practices have assumed the leadership rostrum of the APC, yet you expect to see a functional democratic institution with corrupt minds dominating its apparachik? We are in perilous times. Our governance structure is faulty; our politics structure is also faulty.

 

Those who are supposed to resonate hope and reinvent the will, are busy in their game of crass acquisition. The president has given them a clean bill of health, saying they have repented. How then do we use culprits to serve as detriment to would-be culprits?

 

A country of dog eats dog, everyone hustling to get a piece of the National cake. Baba Buhari, is this the Nigeria you promised us in 2015? Isn’t this shameful for your legacy? Is it too much to ask that you quit through resignation or how else do you intend to arrest this drift?

Read Previous

EU donates N2.3bn boats to Nigeria, others to fight maritime crime

Read Next

El-Rufai’s threat to use mercenaries to combat terrorists bad – Afenifere

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *