By Ebere Wabara
I have
a strong conviction that President Muhammadu Buhari is overwhelmed by the
challenges he met on assumption of office and the novelty of fresh missteps by
his administration. The country is just faltering and floundering like a ship
without a compass. Its analogical equivalence is driving a vehicle with the
driver’s eyes blindfolded. One thing is certain, if the veil is not swiftly
removed, there is a very high certitude that the vehicle will crash and its
occupants involved in ghastliness and fatalism!
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| *Jonathan and Buhari |
Issuing from the above and
other deteriorations which I will explicate shortly, it would be justifiably
correct to declare that President Buhari is irrefutably more clueless than his
predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ)!
This government is spending
precious time battling people who are not our immediate problems at all. If it
is not Dasuki, the leadership of the National Assembly comes to the fore in a
serial spectacle that offers comical relief. The vogue of course is Femi
Fani-Kayode, the former Aviation Minister and media campaign arrowhead of GEJ
in the last presidential election, and lately Dr. Reuben Abati, spokesman for
ex-President GEJ. In all of their cases and other tangential ones, the stream
had been obviously witch-hunt. All the justificatory rationalizations are like
a mirage that you cannot behold in what is plainly a circus show that may
serially run for the next two years.
Concerned Nigerians have also
consistently expressed worry why the anti-corruption crusade should primarily,
preferably exclusively, be targeted at only members of the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP). Again, the usual perfunctory elucidation by government
functionaries is that it will soon get to the turn of the ruling party, the all
Progressives Congress (APC). The whole thing looks like a charade.
Amid all these, the cost of living is not just spiraling but has gone out of
description even by lexicographers and etymologists. It has never been so bad
for my fellow countrymen. Not even in the choking days of the Structural
Adjustment Programme and other belt-tightening measures of the past. What is
going on now is like official strangulation of citizens! And because we are so
timid, docile and indifferent to our environment and all matters that get
thrown up in this part of the world, our so-called leaders (better still,
rulers) capitalize on this citizenship weakness and drive roughshod with us.
All of us keep hands akimbo and hope that there would be divine intervention
soonest—even without helping ourselves!
The festering hardship and
obnoxious cost of living are such that prices of basic items change virtually
by the hour these days. You buy an essential product in the morning at a price
that would have changed by noon and it goes on like that interminably. There
are no official explanations, management of the bursting prices, cushioning
programmes or anticipatory interventionist initiatives. Everyone is just
carrying on as if we were in the time of King Pharoah a la to your tents oh
Nigerians.
