By Paul Onomuakpokpo
With the seemingly irreversible
flight of a pan-Nigerian vision from the government of President Muhammadu
Buhari, he continues to flail about in a bid to give the impression to the less
discerning among us that he is committed to the unity of the nation. He emotes
about the censure of hate speech that threatens the oneness of the country that
was cobbled together by some foreign invaders and that has remained so for over
a century. He fumes at the citizens’ obliviousness of not only his visions but
projects that have overwhelmed the landscape, all aimed at improving their lot
that has been negated by years of neglect and misrule of past state helmsmen.
 |
| *President Buhari |
Yet, what the citizens see beyond
this veneer of Buhari’s self-confessed love for his country is the urgent need
for him to preserve the nation not by being obsessed with the hunt for some
elusive enemies of their collective wellbeing who spew hate. Rather, he must
consider himself as the enemy of the nation whose actions have worsened the
fissures which his utterances have inflicted.
In the past two years since Buhari
emerged as the nation’s president, he has translated into reality his
apocalyptic prediction conveyed in the mathematical absurdity of consigning
those who gave him five per cent of his votes to immiseration while sparing
those who gave him 97 per cent. This bifurcation of the citizenry for the
purpose of punishing some and rewarding others has clearly stoked mutual
suspicion.
