By Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku
In less than 60 days, what has become one of the greatest mistakes that Nigerians made in the election of Muhammadu Buhari as president will come to an end – hopefully. To say that Nigerians have endured the most mortifying and exhausting a time as the epoch of this lean-framed individual is to say the least.
When I remember and cast my mind back to 2014 during the debate as to whether or not to elect this individual, two things come to mind. One is the insults and name-calling that his supporters, especially one individual known as Dayo and his ilk heaped on me after I warned them that Buhari was coming with suffering, leanness and scarcity.
As
a child, I had seen first-hand what Muhammadu Buhari brought to the table as
head of state – austerity measures, forced discipline and international
braggadocio. Our parents were queuing for rice, salt and sugar; and most of the
queues we are seeing today – at the banks, and filling stations – originated
from his primitive, antediluvian and draconian methods of whipping Nigerians in
line, together with the ill-fated plan to change currencies at that time.
The other thing which quickly comes to mind is the story of the
lean years in Egypt which Joseph had predicted. In Joseph’s dream, the time of
famine he predicted for Egypt, seven years, is no different from the seven
years of the Muhammadu Buhari nightmare for Nigerians.
But before we go ahead to say something about these seven years of
drought that Muhammadu Buhari inflicted Nigerians with, it will be of benefit
to know where we were before he took over. It is true that there were issues of
security during the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan. Money was flying about
like no man’s business, something which made Nigerians a bit lazy and inclined
to being spendthrifts. It was also one of the best years of our lives – as we
have seen lately.
Cast your mind back to 2014 and before it – you could buy a bag of
rice for N8,000, pure water was N50 per bag, and the biggest loaf of bread for
many Nigerian commoners was just N350. The petrol pump price had not hit the
roof as it has today. Nigeria became Africa’s largest economy from a rebasing
which was carried out in 2014 or thereabouts. At no time did we hear that our
president was travelling abroad to treat senescent ailments like ears and
nostrils. If you insulted the president, he would smile and wave at you.
That was where we were before this harbinger of drought showed up.
We will not be doing an item-by-item analysis of what has become the recurring
decimals of this sordid administration. Doing that will amount to writing a
horror story.
As
we speak, a gang of liars within the Buhari administration has been unleashed
on us to twist the sordid narrative of the awful failure of the past seven and
half years. The other day, Garba Shehu said that after he leaves
office, Nigerians will yearn for President Buhari the way Nigerians began
to yearn for Goodluck Jonathan after he left power as president.
Together with a group of pseudo-intellectuals that swarm over the
carcass of the Buhari administration, and especially that Bayelsa man who
forces an American accent, have begun to twist the story of our sordid
experience of the Buhari years of drought pain and hunger. But we say God
forbid bad thing, that anyone would be yearning for locusts to swarm on and eat
us up inch by inch the way this fellow in Aso Rock, Muhammadu Buhari, did.
But we must put it on record that it was during these years of the
locusts in Muhammadu Buhari that Nigeria became the poverty capital of the
world. It was during this semi-decade of the locust that young Nigerians were
shot at and mowed down mercilessly just because they expressed their mistake of
electing Buhari.
It was during this year of the locusts that staple foods like
bread and fish and rice became foods for the rich. People were jumping in the
rivers in Lagos and committing suicide. We suddenly found ourselves in an epoch
where the universities were shut nearly indefinitely, and where the incidence
of brain drain from Nigeria assumed its highest propensity since World War I.
We have a president who, in spite of being the petroleum minister,
was unable to revamp the refineries in Nigeria. At the end of seven years,
Nigeria still grapples with epileptic power supply in a Nigeria known to have
been the largest economy in Africa. We have had such a dim fellow
who did not realize, that all through the trips that he undertook to treat his
ears and nostrils in the UK, he was actually a security threat to Nigeria. By
going on those medical trips, little did he realise that he served notice of
his cluelessness and inability to develop his own healthcare systems.
He even recently presided over one of the worst elections ever
conducted in Nigeria’s nascent history. Seven years under the Buhari
administration was a monumental failure, misadventure and underdevelopment of
Nigeria. It was as if he took us back 23 years.
And now with this nunc limits of the Buhari fiasco, we serve
notice to new leaders coming in to serve to giddy up, tie their loins and
serve. We make this command and demand service, otherwise, we would come for
you with everything we have. We will come for you, and that’s because as
Nigerians, in seven years and under this Buhari presidency, Nigerians have
passed through one of the most harrowing of experiences a people can ever be
made to pass through.
*Etemiku is
Editor-in-Chief of WADONOR, cultural voice of Nigeria.
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