By Paul Onomuakpokpo
Nigerians are legendarily
associated with patience. But it is troubling when the distinction between this
virtue and the propensity to brook the excesses of our political leaders is
blurred. The danger of the conflation of this virtue and the vice of acquiescence
is often signalled by our political leaders’ exploitation of our famed patience
to turn public office to an opportunity for self-valourisation as manifested by
regular heists in government.
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| *Osinbajo |
Our leaders strive to over-stretch
this patience. They do not expect us to interrogate their excesses. So,
whenever the citizens occasionally lose their patience, show signs of alertness
and query why their government has become their affliction, our leaders fume
with rage.
Just on Monday, the presidency
demonstrated this. It was furious that the citizens could be aware of the fact
that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has become an ogre rather
than a means of succour as it ought to be. Bristling with rage, the Special
Adviser to the President on Political Affairs, Babafemi Ojodu, wondered why
Nigerians dared to review the now almost two years of the administration of
Buhari and declare that it has been a period of an unspeakable ordeal. The presidency,
as articulated by Ojodu, did not expect the citizens to know that they have
been suffering. The presidency is enraged that the citizens have realised that
it is possible for a president to make a difference despite the recession, the
crash of the price of oil and the so-much lampooned looting of the common
patrimony by the previous government.
The presidency was reacting to a people who have been subjected to so much
suffering and depression in the past 20 months and more and who now saw a
reason to be hopeful in Osinbajo and they expressed this. Does this require the
flagellation of the citizens by the presidency? If the presidency really felt
that it must correct some wrong impressions, it should simply have said that
Osinbajo is executing the agenda of Buhari and stopped there. But Ojodu
committed the same blunder that he accused the citizens of – launching into a
campaign of a Manichean categorisation of Buhari and Osinbajo.
But if Osinbajo is only executing
the agenda of Buhari as Ojodu would like us to believe, why did Buhari fail to
execute this agenda in the past 20 months while he was in charge? What the
citizens can see is that Osinbajo has some ideas of governance he is pursuing
that were not known to them until now.
