Buhari And 'The 24 Disciples'

By Iyoha John Darlington
We are doubtless caught in an agonising web of untold hardship, ruthlessness, frustration, totalitarianism, violence, and bloodshed - a period that could be characterised as anything but horrors orchestrated by a fascist Nazi front.

On May 29, 2015, a government was sworn in in Africa's most populous nation headed by a dictator cum born-again 'democrat' at the Eagle Square, Abuja, Nigeria. The cloud reeking of blood and violence that ominously hung over Nigeria dispersed; with the apostles of violence and not propagators of ideas but crusaders of lies and deceit now in charge.

President Buhari and two ministers: Amaechi and Fashola

Nigerians with a slim margin of two million votes or thereabouts we were told opted and voted for a change which spoke volumes for the historic gathering at Eagle Square where power eventually changed hands. And how well has this change actually impacted on their lives? The firebrand Septuagenarian amid a sense of impatience and repulsion in some quarters like a cow with a mouthful of cud held a nation patiently and anxiously for over half a year before his cabinet of ''efficient ministers' was unveiled as the ministries were pruned down to 25 headed by recycled politicians.

Curiosity, upon my soul , hung in the air, in fact , it got the better of everyone! In the event of power outage prior to his inauguration, we had enough fuel to run our engines, electricity generators inclusive, that, of course, kept Nigerians in business. With the stride recorded in the agricultural sector , Nigeria was something near a food exporting nation. This , in no small measure , encouraged Nigerians in the Diaspora to start girding up their loins probably for a hejira to their homeland.

Today Nigerians are neck deep in a ding-dong battle for survival under a power acquired through violence and intimidation as it is being misused to thwart the rule of law and this today has triggered off a very sad situation via a resurgence in crime particularly violent ones, economic collapse, brutality by security agents, lawlessness , terrorism and anarchy have taken deep roots as Nigerians now live at the mercy of nomadic herdsmen across the country.

Only yesterday reports emerged that nomadic herdsmen numbering 10 led an armed invasion of Dr Olu Falae's farm had the guard abducted who days later was found lifeless in a pool of water while Ugwuleshi and Agatu communities in Benue and Enugu States have also been attacked by these same band of invading marauders!

Nigeria like other nations under the sun was supposedly created for an economic welfare of its people and improvement in human resource development and not for the welfare of an elite cadre or group that it has degenerated to. There is no gainsaying the fact that moral bankruptcy has plagued our paid civil cum uniformed bureaucracy, judiciary, law enforcement and elected executive under the self-styled Mr. Integrity in fallacious pursuit of a credible system of accountability, prosecution, and punishment.

Buhari: The Lying Overlord

By Iyoha John Darlington 

 I have always made plain my aversion to lies and falsehood and I dislike it as it constitutes a deliberate affront to my intelligence. As I navigate through life and encounter one who lies to me, which I honestly do not anticipate, I would be morally bound to lose my bearing thereby making it impossible for me to calculate my true position. This, I dare say, hurts my soul!

 

*President Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade is equally a war against lies in high places from which millions of our hard earned money was allegedly ‘siphoned’ from the national treasury. If the lies never existed no money would have exited the treasury. In a similar vein, in the run up to the 2015 general elections, one of the reasons given by  the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the ongoing insurgency was  youth unemployment. When people are unemployed they become potentially vulnerable to manipulations and this was exactly what they fell prey to when they were recruited and took up arms against the country in the hope of actualizing a sovereign  Islamic state.

Lying is tantamount to theft. When you tell me something which I take to be true and, as a result, I invest my time, or my money, or even my care, you have stolen these things from me because you obtained them under false pretence. That was how they shot themselves to power after false promises that they  only possess the magic wand to reconstruct the country – a country that  never stood  in dire need of their services after all!

APC with Buhari as the flag-bearer, we have it on good authority, promised  a N5000 monthly state stipend which was a welcome development considering the exchange rate at the time. I, too, in my ignorance applauded the initiative since that would put us on a par with the welfarist scheme here in the Old World where citizens enjoy unemployment benefits and the introduction of that package in my country of nativity would be a right step in the right direction, I opined.

Buhari, some people have often said, is a man of integrity and transparent honesty which of course is none other than a terminological inexactitude. His party’s partisans and diehard apologists often deify him as a Homer that never nods. But today he leads a government that shot its way to power by deceit, monstrous and hydra-headed lies; I have never known anyone who wants to be so deceived. For you to have campaigned and promised a monthly stipend to the unemployed to get their support and later reneged on the promise is nothing but a massive fraud!

The historic merger that gave birth to the ruling All Progressives Congress, I wrote in one of my pieces, was a massive fraud designed to bamboozle Nigerians by self-styled grandees who are bent on personal aggrandizement. The product of that merger is nothing short of a party founded on lies and deception – I had earlier written before now.

A fraud is a lie where the damage to me is quantifiable in money. Even those lies which the law does not define as fraud tend to fit the same definition: a knowing false utterance which the mark is intended to rely on to its harm. The only differences are of degree, for example, when we cannot assess the loss in money.

The Tyrant In Abuja

By Iyoha John Darlington
The world has lived through great civilizations and civilization itself has had its worst enemies. Man driven by lust for power and personal aggrandizement plays god to others and we have encountered with so many of them through the ages. The historic tripartite pact of 1936 saw a fusion of power blocs. Benito Mussolini ruled by caprice in fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler allied with Emperor Hirohito of Japan in a bid to bestride the world like a colossus.

*Buhari 

Other outposts of tyranny include Jordan under King Abdullah, Libya under Ghaddafi, Cuba under Fidel Castrol, the rogue regimes of North Korea and Iran, Iraq under Saddam, Uganda under Amin the late despot and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe who has ruled the country for nearly four decades.These were cold-blooded brutes who hid under a cause to unleash fury on their subjects and silenced dissenting voices in their political domains.

A lot of lives were lost and the world and most regions experienced unprecedentedly abysmal demographic change calling to mind the attempted extermination of the Jewish race out of which six million Jews gassed to death where they were held in death camps and other million of lives that were lost in World War11. Thousands of unarmed civilians mainly Kurds were killed in Halabja poison gas attack by the regime in Baghdad under Saddam Hussein, Iron-fisted Benito Mussolini clamped down on his own people while he ruled over Italy.

Back home in Africa, the State Research Bureau, Amin's secret agents killed many Ugandans some of whose flesh he fed on like a cannibal. These were all dark moments in human history. As luck would have it they all methodically took their unceremonious exits from the earth under unfortunate circumstances.