Timeline: 2335 hours, May 28, 2017, City of Ogden, State of Utah, USA. Ensconced in the comfortable cranny of this hotel, Nigeria is on my mind.
In about 24 hours from now, President Mohammadu Buhari would have spent exactly 730 days in office. Yes, two solid years of anomie.
As usual the “Administration” would make efforts to celebrate. The representatives, officials, sympathizers and apologists of this tragedy euphemized as an “Administration” would grasp any type of straw, wrap such in tritely and tasteless stew of tortuous propaganda to convince the rest of us that we have never had it so good!
But what History has taught us is that the success or otherwise of a government, whether in a democracy or not, is measured by the welfare of the ordinary man on the street. And what the evidence says is that the people have never had it so bad! As far as this writer is concerned, that is the only measurement that counts.
However, one would take a look at other interesting areas, lest we forget the tormenting trajectory of the last 730 days.
ECONOMIC WOES:
It doesn’t really matter what someone like me writes on this subject, the taste of the pudding is always in the eating. The ordinary people on the streets of Itire, Mushin, Ijebu Ode, Akure, Benin, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Uyo, Enugu, Owerri, Gboko, Makurdi, Kano, Zaria, Kaduna, Gombe, Ilorin, Jebba and all over the country are the true judges of Buhari’s government in this respect as in many others.
The worsened and still worsening conditions of their daily lives are attestations to the fact that they have been befallen by unfathomable tragedies. Hunger, want, chronic poverty, misery, frustration and desperation are all over the corners and crevices of the country. Buhari and his gang of bandits did not only fail to meet Nigerians’ aspirations, they have destroyed hope and confidence in the country called Nigeria.
In the absence of salaries, prices have skyrocketed. Untimely death caused by hunger is now rampant. Increase in suicide of different natures by different age groups has reached a disturbing level. Buhari still has no answer, two years on.
WAR ON CORRUPTION:
The template on which former President Goodluck Jonathan was roundly rejected by Nigerians who opted for a Candidate they had previously rejected three times is fight against corruption. It turned out that Nigerians made one of the greatest mistakes since 1960 by giving President Buhari a chance.
It also turned out that Nigerians have chased away pickpockets, ordinary street urchins in exchange for organized crime organization akin to a mafia. The Buhari led “administration” turned out to be armed bandits, stealing left right and centre. Using a word such as “impunity” to describe their unrestrained kleptomania is to unwittingly ascribe a different meaning to that disconcerting word.
Buhari who admitted that he came into office, sponsored with stolen money insisted he would not probe his ATM. And we all know who that is!
President Buhari himself, invested with fake integrity, turned out to be odiously untruthful in his dealing with Nigerians. He failed to publicly declare his assets as he promised.The snippets released by his spokesman, Garba Shehu showed that, with due respects, Buhari is a liar. Buhari who was sold to Nigerians as having no landed properties outside Katsina or Daura suddenly have them in Abuja, Kaduna and Port Harcourt!
Buhari had told Nigerians that no one would serve in his government if such would or could not declare their assets. He could not even make a dog in his “administration” declare any bone, not to speak of making his Cabinet members declare their assets as he promised to do. He broke so many promises and even denied making some.
The man, falsely believed by many to have high octane intolerance for corruption, (though many Nigerians such as this writer knew Buhari has always been corrupt from the get-go), became the public defender-in-chief for crooks, thieves and criminals in his government. For someone who told the world that Sanni Abacha never stole a dime of Nigeria’s money, this could not have been a strange behavior.
President Buhari refused to sack those responsible for budget padding and redeployed the culprits to different desks so they could continue their heinous acts. He let his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari be after receiving N500m bribe. But that’s what Nigerians focused on. Mr. Kyari is reportedly engaged in a more egregious acts as an influential Board Member of the NNPC!
Buhari defended Tukur Buratai, his Chief of Army Staff. He vouched for Abdurahman Dambazzau, the man who reportedly took over $450 m while serving GEJ and never accounted for a dime of it. Then, there was
Babachir Lawal, the grass cutter Secretary to the Federal Government. Buhari wrote a 13 page defence of this alleged thief to the Senate!
Up till tomorrow, Buhari, the so-called “man of integrity,” who promised an open government, is yet to tell Nigerians whether he has paid the N25m loan he took to buy his nomination form or not. And if he did, when and with how much interest? If not, what is the status of the loan and how much interest has climbed it? Though, it turned out that he was not as poor as he made the world believed because Shehu Garba told Nigerians that Buhari had tens of millions in the Union Bank!
THE EFCC CHARADE:
President Buhari and his anchor man at Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Magu are now the butts of jokes across the planet wherever you find Nigerians or “friends” of Nigeria discussing the unfolding malady on the Nigerian pedestal of opprobrium.
All Buhari and his EFCC have done so far are media trials of suspected corrupt people. After two years of what appeared to be a fake War on corruption, not a rat has been convicted so far. Magu and his henchmen have demonstrated over and over, their dexterity at losing corruption cases, ingenuity at withdrawing them from courts, and confounding but shameless disinterest in trying many cases at all.
The EFCC has become an instrument of political persecution of those who are not members of his party. Those smart thieves in PDP have begun to decamp to APC to escape persecution and or prosecution. It is now widely agreed that the War on Corruption is the greatest joke ever played on Nigerians.
TYRANNY:
President Buhari, true to his character has been tyrannical in the last two years. He acted above the law several times by engaging in and or encouraging extra judicial acts of killing as in the cases of Kaduna Shiites, IPOB freedom fighters, Southern Kaduna Christians among many others. He flouted Court orders several times on Sambo Dasuki, Nnamdi Kanu and seem comfortable on the invasion of judges’ homes in the name of fake War on Corruption.
He also appears to enjoy the mayhem, murders, maiming, raping and arson being inflicted by his Fulani tribesmen across the country. As this is being written, President Buhari has not deemed it fit to address the Country on these issues that have taken the lives of many Nigerians. He has no sympathy or any modicum of humaneness to show any of the victims, many of those who probably voted for him.
The Yoruba in particular, have never had it so bad on their land. Many Yoruba were burnt alive in Ketu and their properties vandalized without any reprieve. Yoruba were attacked in Ile-Ife, the spiritual home of Yoruba and innocents beheaded in and on our own land as if we are in Iraq or Afghanistan. Chief Olu Falae was kidnapped. His security was murdered in a follow up attack. Farms acro Yoruba land and elsewhere in the East and Middlebelt were destroyed at will.
The Ile-Ife attacks on Yoruba people, on their land, saw only Yoruba youths being arrested with one of our Obas tow, while the Hausa Fulani culprits who fermented and fostered the Ife Massacre were let off the hook. If this is not TYRANNY, please, help me out!
FASHOLA, A MERCHANT OF DARKNESS:
It is a matter or disappointment for millions of Nigerians that their hope of getting stable electricity has receded into Neverland. The incompetence of Buhari could not have been better emblematized by Babatunde Fashola.
Fashola is at pain to explain how 5000mgwts have disappeared. Yet, acting without any let or hindrance, he exuded a disturbing level of coldness, cruelty and crookedness as he championed a conscienceless increase in tariffs for services that are not being delivered.
NEPOTISM:
Buhari does not believe in Nigeria as a country. He sees Nigeria as the inheritance of his Fulani tribesmen. Of the first 35 appointments, 25 of them went to the North. To boot, all the heads of security outfits are Hausa Fulani to further extend their hold on Nigeria and use the power of state to subjugate other Nigerians.
His relatives are the only competent hands he could find in Nigeria. It was, and still is, so bad that some Northern elites called it “the worst in Nigerian History.” The following are the relatives of Buhari in government:
First, the most influential person in the Presidency today is one Mamman Daura whom as you know, is a nephew of the President. His father was Buhari’s elder brother;
Mamman Daura was the one who single handedly brought up Abba Kyari, the current Chief of Staff to the President. In fact, Abba Kyari knows Mamman Daura more than he knows his own father;
The Personal Assistant to Buhari himself is the son of Mamman Daura;
The SCOP, State Chief of Protocol, is also a son-in-law to Mamman Daura because he is married to Mamman Daura’s daughter;
The Minister they unilaterally chose, against the interest of the party and against the wishes of Sokoto people, happens to be the daughter of the younger sister of Mamman Daura’s wife. Both of them are daughters of Sultan Dasuki, who was sacked by General Abacha;
Aisha Abubakar – Minister for Trade, Industry and Investment. Her mother is Buhari’s sister.”
The Aide De Camp to Buhari himself, Colonel Abubakar is Buhari’s nephew – in- law. He is married to the granddaughter of one of Buhari’s elder sisters.
The woman who represents Kaduna in the Federal Executive Council, she is a cousin to Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai. It is well known that el-Rufai is one of the closest governors to Muhammadu Buhari;
The Minister for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) is the man called Musa Bello, who used to be the Managing Director of the Northern Nigeria Development Corporation, which used to be the biggest holding company that belonged to all the northern states. His only qualification to be FCT minister is the fact that his father has been Buhari’s friend over the years;
There is a young man called Sabiu Yusuf, nicknamed Tunde – probably because of late General Tunde Idiagbon. He is another PA to President Buhari. He is also a grandson of another sister of Buhari;
Hadi Sirika is the Federal Minister of Aviation. He is the son of Buhari’s elder sister.
Hadi Sirika has an elder sister – a niece of President Buhari. Her name is Amina Zakari. Amina Zakari, was and still a national commissioner in the Independent National Electoral Commission representing the entire seven states in the North-West. It is being claimed that Buhari knows nothing about her appointment (before he became President), it is a lie. When President Goodluck Jonathan was re-organising the INEC and he was bringing in Prof. Attahiru Jega, he reached out to Buhari and asked Buhari to nominate somebody from the North-West so that that person would be a national commissioner. Of all the people in the North-West, Buhari decided to nominate his own niece, the daughter of his elder sister- Amina Zakari. She has been there; when Jega left, Buhari was determined to make her chairman, it was because of the massive backlash that he dropped the idea like hot potatoes.
“Today, that woman is a national commissioner which means she is one of the principal election umpires. …… I have never heard of any dictator or any tyrant under any system of government whether totalitarian or fascist, appointing his own niece to conduct elections in which he was either a party or going to be a party to; Buhari has done that,” Dr. Junaid Mohamed complained,
The immediate younger brother to Amina Zakari is currently the Minister for Water Resources representing Jigawa State in the same Buhari government.
The eldest sister of both of them is now the Commissioner for Education in the All Progressives Congress government in Jigawa State.
The Security appointments under the Buhari led APC government is nothing but corrupt. According to the PUNCH newspaper the following are self evident:
Army – North
NSA – North
EFCC – North
Defence – North
Airforce – North
Police – North
SCDC – North
DSS – North
NIS – North
NIP – North
FRSC – North
Fire Service – North
NEMA – North
Customs – North
Defence Staff – North
NIA – South
Navy – South and, if by any chance, you consider the Ports Administration as important to Security of the country – North.
BETRAYAL OF BOLA TINUBU:
This is one of the noxious feats attained by Buhari in the last two years. His divide and rule tactics have been deployed to castrate Tinubu politically.
One detests Tinubuism as a political idea and this is public knowledge. But one’s heart still goes out to Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu in commiseration for the current challenges he is facing. It could be very saddening and depressing to work so hard and be denied the fruits of your labour. But the unfolding tragedy is not unanticipated. He and his group were warned of the possible outcome of the gamble and the gambit deployed in producing the Buhari Presidency. He was so blinded by the pursuit of power that he failed to take cognisance of the lessons of history and take caution.
In the mercantilist environment that Tinubuism fosters, unhealthy competition is normally the order of the day. Backbiting, subversion, treachery, undermining, lies, deception, greed, avarice, covetousness, morbid and inordinate ambitions often rule the day. It is an “every man for himself and God for us all” kind of environment. There is no enduring loyalty. There is no perseverance and commitment. There is no sacrifice. There is no principle. Or if there is any principle at all, it is “what is in it for me?” This is why it is easier for his beneficiaries to break away from him without possible consequences as we are presently witnessing.
All this made it possible for Buhari to be ungrateful to Tinubu without any remorse. The cabal put together by Buhari has lined up “disciplinary measures” for Bola Tinubu, if he should show any “unwanted hand.”
CONCLUSION:
On the whole, the last two years witnessed an uncoordinated demystification of the man called Buhari. All the tapestry of scintillating tissues of lies have been torn to tatters. The deodorized drapes of deception, duplicity and dubiousness have been drawn off the dizzying gazes of many gullible Nigerians.
Buhari’s fake integrity, his duplicitous anti corruption stance, his condensed incompetence, contused (not confused) tribalism, the vacuity of his intellect and his glowing ignorance; all permeated with and by his unfettered but lacerating cruelty, coldness as well as meanness, generously sprinkled with odious and nauseating arrogance, conjoined with and or to catalytic contumacious sense of entitlement, have all combined to inflict untold misery and decapitating tragedy on Nigeria and it’s peoples.
Nigerians are now divided more than ever. The future of the country has become more uncertain. There is mental and emotional agony on the streets. Apprehension pervades the entire atmosphere. Unless one is a party hack and or a direct or indirect beneficiary of the social, economic, religious and political anarchy that Buhari has engendered, there are causes for serious concern.
“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.”
– John F. Kennedy, in his Inaugural Address January 20, 1961
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