Buhari: Before This Hope Turns Into Hopelessness

By Martin-Hassan E. Eze

At a time like this that Nigerians are hungry and angry, saying ‘I am sorry’ may be the best escape route that some of us who championed the sai Buhari crusade and were his ardent supporters in his ANPP and CPC days in the political wilderness of failed political ambition can offer to Nigerians who wish to drag us into the shooting range or send us to Golgotha after the magical wand of the Daura sheriff had failed to perform the needed magic after one year in office.

*Tinubu and Buhari 

Wallahi, I actually believed the APC and Buhari will herald a paradigm shift from the messy stories of the past. I was also convinced that before a year in office, the APC led FG could have proven to majority of my Ibo brothers who seem not to approve of Buhari and the other 12 million Nigerians that rejected him at the last presidential polls that he was a better candidate than GEJ- the incompetent shoeless fisher man from Otuoke and the ‘boo’ of Biafrans. But, some of us are beginning to lose our voices in shame if not regret.

These days I don't worship at my Cathedral where I am a popular face and even sneak in and out of some streets like Nicodemus to avoid confronting citizens who will insist I explain why Buhari has denied every single phantom promise he made during the campaigns or have done exactly the opposite of what he said he will do as if I share the same sitting room with the old man. Biko kwa, I don't know Aso villa and I am not in any way related to Lai Mohammed the megaphone of APC and the FG.

My greatest disappointment with the APC and her greatest undoing is(was) her inability to properly manage her success and adorn the party with a nationalist babariga bearing in mind the ethnic and religious division that greeted the election. I was expecting to see Buhari at the Saint Theresa’s Cathedral in Nsukka sharing smiles and handshake with Most Rt Prof Godfrey Onah, the Catholic Bishop of Nsukka or drinking Sapele water with our Ijaw and Urobo brothers in Effurun. The APC and PMB lost the game the moment they failed to realise that after election, partisanship and party politics is sent to the morgue as governance and nation-building take the centre stage. I actually wept when the President started exhibiting the same sectional mentality that robbed him of a nation-wide support that Abiola enjoyed in 1993 in his political appointments. I was expecting a system of appointment that will be so wazobian in nature that all haters and bigots currently dominating and polluting the social space will be relieved of their jobs but the old man just disappointed me. The winner take all school of thought was not what a New Nigeria we were expecting from Buhari needed judging from the religious, ethnic and regional tension the last Presidential election generated. Extending an olive branch to some sections of the country that don’t love his face was a political master stroke and common sense that could have scored some goals for national unity and integration but Buhari and his handlers have so far proven that sense is not common as some of us think.