By Charles Onunaiju
For
more than a decade of his political odyssey in the struggle for Nigeria’s
presidency, people of various political background stayed the course, not so
much for his famed integrity but in the belief that President Muhammadu Buhari
has the political will and grit to fundamentally shake up the country’s
outlook, liberate it from conventional thinking and decisively transform the
dominant mindset, which has sustained a precarious and unproductive
trajectories of our post-colonial history.
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| *Buhari |
However,
given the inertia that has trapped the president Buhari government currently in
near atrophy especially in the economic and social fronts, it is easy to forget
his breakthrough in a core area of national emergency, especially in
substantially degrading the nihilist and extremist insurgents that have for
years ravaged the North East and existentially threatened the rest of the
country.
Critics
claimed that president Buhari has only recalled his attack dogs, which he has
used to undermine the regime of former president Goodluck Jonathan. However, if
any one person or group of persons could orchestrate such deadly insurgency and
then walk about freely, then, the government under whose watch, it happened
does not deserve a day longer in office. However, while the end of Boko Haram
insurgency or its considerable degradation cannot amount to the end of Nigeria
But
relinquishing the lives saved from the atavistic Boko Haram and almost at the
same time, surrendering it to the pangs and ravages of hunger, poverty and
destitution through policy timidity on economic and social fronts by a
government that seemed to be mortally afraid to rigorously exert itself on new
ideas stands logic on its head. The ideological fudge and denials which has
characterised successive Nigerian governments have constantly denied them
the grasp of the fundamental disconnect and the prospect of objectively and
scientifically comprehending the contradictions in the country and arriving at
the relevant policy instruments to address them.
President
Buhari who at earlier times appeared to have, had the political will and
strength of character to break from the routine, is now boxed in, to the
inertia engendered by the customary gridlock of elite trade-offs, wedded to the
well travelled path of regimented neo-liberalism and the consequent
unimaginative policy alternatives. While president Buhari personally indulge
himself in the moral outrage of the failures, corruption and inadequacies of
the previous governments, his patriotic vision of a resurgent nation is
hampered by a compelling deficit of analytical insight to the objective
condition of the Nigerian situation and the poverty of scientific and
intellectual rigour to define alternative road map.
