By Mike
Ozekhome
I carefully
listened to and read President Buhari’s Democracy Day Speech. I must confess
that I felt quite hollow after it all. He lost a golden opportunity to engage
Nigerians to buy into his change agenda. The speech did not give the much
needed hope, did not fire up ebbing nationalistic and patriotic embers in
Nigerians, and did not ignite the drooping and sagging dreams of Nigerians for
a better tomorrow, with nerve, verve, éclat, gusto, zest and vivacity. It was
bland, colourless, full of sound and fury.
*Buhari and his wife, Aisha |
By the way, I do
not believe May 29 should be Nigeria ’s
Democracy Day. I’ve argued this over the years. It should be June 12. That was
the day real democracy berthed in Nigeria . For another day.
PMB’s speech, rather than being engaging, pacific, placatory and conciliatory,
from the father of the nation to his hapless children, was bellicose,
belligerent, militant, combative and simply pugnacious. I blame his speech
writer for this, for woefully failing to capture, or mirror the angry and
disillusioned mood of the nation, to Mr President. The speech accordingly
lacked colour, panache, assurance, animation, elan and vitality.
The speech failed
to address the multifanous problems, besetting Nigeria and government’s deliberate
efforts at redressing them. It dwelt too much on damage assessment of the past,
rather than the panacea, the present and the future. It failed Albert
Einstein’s theory that “we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them”. John Burroughs, it was, who said that “a man can
fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody
else”. PMB’s Federal Executive Council is now derisively called “Federal
Excuses Council”. The speech blamed everyone else, but the
government.
I hereby plead most
earnestly with Niger Delta Avengers to drop their arms and come to the
negotiating table with the government. Blowing up pipelines will compound, not
only Nigeria ’s
socio-economic woes, but theirs, as well. You do not cut your nose to spite
your face. But, PMB did not help matters. He threatened and talked tough. He
could easily have demobilised them with assuaging and soothing words. Kind,
persuasive and tranquilising words are deadlier than any armada of military
force. The speech did not create for Nigeria an anti-corruption
template, which seeks to extirpate it from the very root, rather than the
present fight, which is merely superficially predicated on loot recovery alone.
We are treating a dangerous ailment of cancer with drugs meant for skin eczema.
Fighting corruption must have a template, which deals with a total
re-orientation of our debased national psyche and value system from primitive
acquisition, to honour, character and dignity.