By Adekunle Adekoya
Time flies! And very fast too. In this space on September 24, 2021, the column carried a piece with the headline: “The attenuation of integrity.” Those who read between the lines would have discerned that it was a commentary directed at the nation’s head honcho at the time, a retired general known to the rest of us as Muhammadu Buhari.
Buhari was sold to us in 2014-2015 as the very personification of integrity, which meant he was a man of his words who would do exactly as he said. During the electioneering whose main objective, as we can now see, was not to make life and living better and easier for me and you but to oust Dr Goodluck Jonathan and his PDP cohorts from power, Buhari was sold to us as the next best thing to happen to humanity in Nigeria outside the scriptures.
Hook, line, and sinker, the masses of Nigeria bought into the sales hype
and swallowed the fake mantra of change that was promised. Eight years of two
presidential terms after, Nigerians now know better, but are gnashing their
teeth in that knowledge. What happened to integrity?
We will probably spend the rest
of each of our lives trying to fathom just what happened. Why couldn’t a man
keep his words? Why would someone promise during electioneering that refineries
will be revamped and new ones built but failed or refused to do both and
instead continued the injurious and larcenous subsidy system?
How can a man of integrity
railroad the Central Bank into furnishing his government with nearly N30
trillion of ways and means? Where is the integrity, knowing fully well that
this was far over and above the legally prescribed five per cent limit?
Apart from that, what became of the $US 3.4 billion COVID facility? Was it not under this man’s administration that an accountant-general made the sum of N180 billion grow wings from government coffers to destinations that government knows nothing about? Under this same man, a minister told the whole world that she spent more than N500 million to feed schoolchildren during the COVID-19 lock-down.
In addition, the
sum of nearly N600 million was allegedly spent to train less than 100 youths on
how to repair smartphones. Yet another minister spent about N5 billion on
conjuring a national carrier for us from the rarefied Ethiopian air. Still
more, another minister, one of the few he fired in his moments of sobriety had
to answer questions from the anti-graft agency over some N22 billion sleaze.
Watching the way things were
going between 2015 and 2023, it became clear that by the time the story of
looting during those years see the light of day, those we thought were
kleptomaniacs, like the late General Abacha, would be looking like saints. Are
they not, now?
Ahead of the 2015 elections, I
shouted myself hoarse, albeit to deaf ears everywhere that we’re headed for a
one chance bus if this man got elected. The ayes had the day, he was elected,
and we’re all now gnashing our teeth.
For me, the personal integrity
of one man who headed a government, but which integrity could not impact
members of his cabinet is already wiped out.
The problem for me are the latter-day saints in the ruling APC, including the party’s former national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole. Now that the carcass of the nation’s economy is in full public display, these latter-day saints are trying to wash their hands off the mess.
The question is: Where were they and what were they doing while the economy was being fed to the dogs through crass economic illiteracy? If, as they all say time and again, they are in politics to make life better for the masses, why did they keep quiet and allowed one man to ruin the aspirations of more than 200 million people? It is annoying to read Oshiomhole saying that Buhari’s disastrous policies landed us where we are now. It could have been avoided if these people really love Nigeria as a country and her peoples.
In same vein, former Emir of Kano, HRH Muhammad Sanusi absolved
the present administration of blame in the morass in which we are mired. I will
remind him of Edmund Burke, who said that the only thing necessary for the
triumph of evil is for good men to say and do nothing. That goes for the
present administration. They are all APC. Now the evil days are here, and the
poor, hapless people of Nigeria are being asked to absorb pains inflicted by
the insouciance of the faction of the power elite in government. How bileous!!!
It is a disservice to all of us for these men to have kept quiet. They
kept on rationalising the locust’s activities by avoiding an implosion of their
prized party
Everyday the average Nigerian
wakes up, he has to manage issues he didn’t see before going to bed. On a daily
basis, prices of good and services are rising while incomes remain stagnant.
I really hope Nigerians have
learnt their lesson, though I retain my doubts. Between 2015 and 2023, our
government was one of the most incompetent, insouciant, and unconscionable in
our history. Ali Baba and his 40 thieves are smelling better. Right now, we are
all looking for ways out of the economic cul-de-sac we have found ourselves
with subsidy removal and naira flotatiy. I hope our torchlights’ batteries
don’t lose power in the process. That is one attenuation we can’t afford.
*Adekoya
is a commentator on public issues
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