Shettima, Where Did Buhari Stop?

 By Sonnie Ekwowusi

It is no longer news that Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s running mate in the 2023 Presidential Election, Kashim Shettima, has recently said that Nigeria needs a new President who would continue from where President Muhammadu Buhari stopped.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) party has woefully failed Nigeria in the last seven years and therefore should be voted out of power in 2023. Out of the abundance of the heart, we have been told, the mouth speaks.

*Shettima

How can Shettima be saying that we need a President who would continue from where President Buhari stopped. Where did Buhari stop, if I may ask Mr. Shettima? In festering corruption? Or, in insecurity? Or, in wooden-headed? Or, in cluelessness? Or, in imposing a corrupt and incompetent ex-Chief Justice of Nigeria on the country?
 
The most significant achievement of the Buhari government in the last seven years is to drag Nigeria into the membership of failed States.

Imagine the most populous and most richly endowed African country joining insignificant countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Myanmar as a full-fledged failed State. 

The old image of Nigeria as a citadel of a cultural and moral renaissance seems blurred. Amid the country’s abundant human and natural resources, there is insecurity, poverty, fear, suspicion, disorderliness, hatred and chaos everywhere. On social media, in the pulpit, lecture rooms, market places, stadia and other fora, Nigerians soberly ask the following question: What do the future hold for us and our children?

Amid the complete collapse of state machinery for the protection of lives and property, anarchy has been let loose upon Nigeria. The Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all) characterized by barbaric abductions, assassinations, arsons, bloodletting, communal bloody feud, kidnaps, banditries, gun running and so forth now reigns supreme in different parts of Nigeria including, for the first time, the hitherto peaceful Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Amid the reign of mayhem in different parts of Nigeria, aggrieved ordinary citizens masquerading as “unknown gunmen” are now laying siege to different corners of the town and murdering their perceived victims. We now live in a country bereft of the rule of law. No law. No Justice. No peace either in men’s hearts because peace grows in the crannies of justice.

While President Buhari is cluelessly junketing from one country to another, uncertainty, confusion, fear and apprehension rule our lives in Nigeria today. We now live in a free-for-all country where nobody seems to be in charge of anything or anybody. Imagine terrorists being allowed to blow open the Kuje Prison for their fellow terrorists detained therein to flee.

In Nigeria, we go to bed and wake up itching to hear the sad news of another abduction or murder. If the abductors are not on the prowl trying to abduct their victims, the bandits are lurking in the corner to capture their next victims and kill them.

What hasn’t this Buhari government done to undermine integrity in public life in Nigeria? This Buhari government could be considered for inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records as the worst government on earth. 

No man, no woman of good conscience listening to Shettima or reading Shettima can be at ease. Equally, no Street, no Broadway, no Village path in Nigeria can remain silent amid the stillness of death lying everywhere in different parts of Nigeria.

With torn and bleeding hearts we may be smiling but we may not know peace until Nigeria is rescued from the iron grips of the evil politicians. At the moment Nigeria is being challenged on all fronts-politically, socially, culturally, intellectually and morally.

The estrangement from pristine values finds dramatic expression in bullion-vehicle corruption, buying of votes, inordinate ambition to get rich quick at all cost, cheating, nepotism and flagrant violation of human rights and dignity.  

In the last seven years, we have been building a country with materially-rich political office occupiers who lack character. Many of our political office leaders have scandalously failed to live up to expectations in the last seven years. 

As I have constantly argued, we must restore the power of moral indignation in Nigeria. We must restore public shame in public offices in Nigeria. And the appropriate time to do that is in the 2023 Presidential Election.

Before now our country had had some scoundrels in public office but never before had a great number of scoundrels been in public office as in the last seven years. And the end of the vicious cycle is not in sight.

* Sonnie Ekwowusi is a commentator on public issues