President Buhari’s regime has about a year to hit its expiration point. Perhaps, the only thing that still retains the capacity to squeeze out some smiles on a couple of faces today is the faint hope that the president might fulfill his pledge to firmly resist the deadly attraction of that poisoned fruit called “tenure elongation.” Indeed, many Nigerians are willing to take the risk of entertaining some optimism about this.
Despite the blizzard of outrageous claims
roughly thrown at Nigerians every other day, it has become just impossible to
muster any bit of expectation that the Buhari regime might still be able to
shock Nigerians with any edifying impact on their lives before it
exits.
Perhaps, the only reassuring feeling out there emanates from the palpable wish that the days and months might develop wings and fly away so fast so that with brightened faces and deep relief, Nigerians can happily embrace and congratulate one another that, eventually, the nightmare is over.
The relief alone will be highly therapeutic, in fact, capable of increasing many lifespans.
Interestingly, this is one regime for which
quite a number of Nigerians and non-Nigerians had staked their well-cultivated
reputations to saddle with a salvaging mission, without, however, pausing to
determine whether the loud power cravers had, at least, a simple direction or
the capacity to comprehend the most basic issues in governance, or even just a
sincerity of purpose.
In fact, Barack Obama must be wondering how
his administration got itself so easily seduced with drab propaganda that it
had to naively advertise undue partisanship in Nigerian
politics to aid the emergence of a regime under which everything a nation
should hold dear and sacred has been so incredibly devalued, in fact, far below
what anyone could have imagined was possible in a country with a constituted
authority.
In their favour, Candidate Buhari and his party were quite unable to disguise the obvious fact that they were too absorbed with capturing power to bother about what to do with it, but, sadly, their intoxicated supporters were too infatuated and mesmerized to notice all the red flags.
And so, when the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC) surprised the APC with the news that they have captured the presidency,
for over six months, Nigerians could only watch a piteously dazed gaggle of
power seekers still stuck in a campaign mood, dissipating excess energy
attacking the former regime and looking bewildered like kids that just received
a complicated toy from Daddy.
And till today, the APC regime is yet to
demonstrate that it possesses the capacity to fix the most basic problems
plaguing the country. It still seeks refuge in infantile propagandas aimed at
stampeding Nigerians into the false belief, against the glaring evidence on the
ground, that a failed country is up, working and flourishing. But what is clear
to everyone is: if some bit of edifying adjustment has occurred in the country
in the past seven years, we would not require any statements, often couched in
very clumsy phrases, from Abuja to know!
If the APC regime had laboured, at least, to
sustain the condition they met Nigeria in 2015, that in itself would have, in
fact, amounted to a “monumental achievement!” At least, many
families would still be able to purchase bags of rice and other food items at
affordable prices, instead of being callously tantalized with a distasteful
celebration of “Rice Pyramids” which
has not translated to a lower price of the commodity.
Also, the naira would not be gasping for
breath each time it made contact with other currencies, some of which held it
in high esteem only a few years ago. Yes, several new, direct investments would
have been welcomed in the country to boost the economy and provide employment
to the teeming number of jobless youths.
At least, the National Grid would not have
contracted the “falling sickness” (to quote Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius
Caesar), which regularly plunges the country into deeper darkness each
time it collapses, killing industries by hiking the cost of
production and joining hands with worsening insecurity to drive away foreign
establishments to even less endowed African countries.
Was it not shameful that the other day, the
federal government was complaining that Ghana and other African countries were
persuading foreign investors to avoid Nigeria and come to their own countries?
If Nigeria was conducive for business, would any investor need any persuasion
to take his investment elsewhere? Who wants to put his hard-earned funds in a
country plagued by boundless insecurity and perennial darkness, where bandits,
violent herdsmen and terrorists are treated with kid gloves instead of
confronting them headlong and containing their menace?
Life has become so worthless in Nigeria. People
are slaughtered, maimed or kidnapped every other day;
communities are razed and sacked; women and girls are brutally violated with
chilling regularity. The federal government is still content with the banal
condemnations it issues each time these tragedies occur, the dry condolence
messages it throws at the families of the victims and the perfunctory assurance
that “everything will be done to bring
the perpetrators to book.”
By the way, how many weeks did it take our
smaller neighbour, Chad, under Idriss Deby, to flush out Boko Haram from her
territory and even recover some Nigerian communities captured and annexed by
the terrorists? Nigeria must by now be earning almost zero revenue
from tourism. Is it not also a huge shame that Nigeria retains the star prize
as the country with the worst electricity supply in the entire continent?
To compound matters, Buhari has borrowed the
country into dreadful financial enslavement. Yet, there
is almost nothing on ground to justify such humongous indebtedness that can
only keep the country perpetually stuck in the sticky mud of retrogression.
Only recently, Gen Ibrahim Babangida, once
reputed to have supervised over the worst corrupt regime in Nigeria, boasted
that given the dizzying reports of massive corruption emerging with revolting
regularity from the APC regime, his, then, was a regime of saints!
Should it then be shocking that anybody that
is able to put some sentences together today wants to be Nigeria’s president?
The argument out there is: if Nigerians can endure the Buhari Kindergarten Show
for eight years, then the presidency has simply become an all comers affair. In
fact, the entry qualification has been lowered to zero!
And so, Nigerians are insulted and scared each
day by presidential aspirants assuring them that if elected, they will continue
from where Buhari stopped. Indeed, it is only in a country like Nigeria that
anyone can make such a dreadful threat and people outside a lunatic asylum
would still suspend their ability to reason and cast their votes for
him.
How long will Nigerians suffer before they
tell themselves the liberating truth, namely, that apart from the deceitful,
ephemeral satiation that might come from the realization that the president,
governor or lawmaker is their “brother” or “sister,” what else do they reap if
not unmitigated disaster like everyone else if the person is
clueless? Buhari is from Katsina yet at some point, people from the state were
reportedly relocating to Niger Republic to escape worsening insecurity.
Even, now that there is an overwhelming insistence that a South Easterner should become Nigeria's president, it is already very clear that huge following commanded by the frontline candidate from the South East, Peter Obi, is not because of his place of origin, but because of his proven record of competence, accomplishments, transparency and honest service as a state Governor. That is what it should be.
It is time for Nigerians to wake up, look at the track record of people seeking their votes and put them in office because of what they are very sure they can offer.
Enough of allowing yourself to be driven by infantile sentiments and crude lust for contaminated crumbs to put remorseless undertakers in office who will only further steal the treasury pale and dead to enrich themselves, families and cronies. Will a people be dumb and blind forever?
Have Nigerians not suffered enough from corrupt and inept leaders to cause them to pull off the scales covering their eyes and use their brain for their own good for once?
Indeed, if the Nigerian
masses allow themselves to be deluded once again, they will all be
here to suffer the consequences of their tragic decision. They are already
crying because of the pepper rubbed on their eyes with the worsening hardship
of last several years. Voting wrongly again can only mean the perpetuation of
the unimaginable suffering they are currently writhing under, which they are
hoping could be lifted with the coming of a new, patriotic and competent administration.
How can a people be so pigheadedly eating and drinking poison and yet wanting to live?
When will Nigerians rise as a unified force and commence the
reclamation of their country? When will it dawn on them that their country
is too young to die?
*Ugochukwu
Ejinkeonye is a journalist and writer. His book, Nigeria: Why Looting May Not
Stop, is available on Amazon.com (scruples2006@yahoo.com; Twitter: @ugowrite)
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