“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”
– Thomas Jefferson, former American president
Almost a year into his democratic
administration which was heralded with much hope and expectations last May,
President Muhammadu Buhari, more than any other Nigerian President, is
gradually unfolding himself as the most deceitful leader to have been voted
into Aso Rock especially on the basis of the campaign promises made. Looking at
the performance and character of his administration so far, it can be confidently
declared today, and with all sense of responsibility, that Buhari and his party,
the All Progressives Congress (APC), have successfully hoodwinked Nigerians
into believing they have solutions to the problems confronting our country.
Alas, the truth is they don’t!
Yet they carry on with pretence, giving the country false
hope about their capacity and capability to deliver. My dear friends, brothers
and sisters, and fellow Nigerians, I am sad to inform you that we have been
swindled. Sincerely, I think we have been sold a fake for an original!
One governor you know, whose guts a lot of people hate,
consistently says we have been “419ed” and that Nigeria has entered “one
chance” with this APC government. While the governor’s open theatrics sometimes
make no sense and ridicule the high office he holds, I wholeheartedly believe
his words make sense. And this is the sad reality whether we want to admit it
or not.
And why do I think so? For many reasons!
Now, a little personal explanation. I’m someone who often
wants to give people the benefit of the doubt before making my conclusions on
them. And while I have had cause to criticise President Buhari in the past, I
had done so mildly. But daily, the President is confirming with his words and
actions, that dispassionate Nigerians can no longer trust him or give his
government the benefit of the doubt.
But first, I want to enjoin the President’s die-hard
supporters and his party’s apologists to cool their tempers and patiently hear
the hard truths before they start the name-calling like many of them are ever
ready to do whenever the Buhari government is being constructively criticised
by those who have no other interests but the overall interest of Nigeria at
heart.
To start with, the administration was slow in taking off.
Sorry, very slow in taking off. Yet, its party told us they were going to hit
the ground running. Unfortunately, we are all witnesses to what happened. That
was clear evidence they were ill-prepared. It was a very dangerous signal sent
out by the government. But I’m not sure if we caught it. Well maybe we were
trying to be patient and give the government opportunity to settle down. Some
of its officials even told us it was going to take time to clear the mess that
the previous PDP governments created in the last 16 years. We decided we would
give them the benefit of the doubt hoping things would change for the better.
Almost 10 months after coming to power, we are still waiting for the positive
change. They failed to seize the moment and didn’t realise the fierce urgency
of the job at hand.
Like my Pastor, Dr. James Akanbi, often says, “preparation
is preparation.” A student or teacher or leader or preacher who
fails to prepare and plan has already set him or herself up for failure. Such
fellow cannot deliver when opportunity comes, or shine and manifest for his
generation. I think this is the case with this government. I put it to the
Buhari government and its agents that they clearly didn’t plan well become
coming to power. Nigerians gave them a job to do but they didn’t give the job
the utmost preparation, attention and sincere commitment it deserves.
Honestly, I will confess that it is with a very heavy
heart that I write this article today. I am sad. I am angry. In fact, I weep
for my country. As I type these words, time is 12:30am. But I can’t sleep. Why?
It’s about the latest news from the government, another evidence of the fact
that we have a deceitful government in place. Why, for God’s sake, does the
Buhari government just take pleasure in telling lies? Just why?
You are asking what again? President Buhari, in an
interview he granted Aljazeera which was aired over the weekend, made it known
that Nigeria has joined the Saudi Arabia-led coalition of 34 largely-Muslim
countries to fight terrorism. Other members of the coalition, if you don’t
already know, include Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Bahrain,
Bangladesh, Benin, Turkey, Chad, Togo, Tunisia, Djibouti, Senegal, Sudan,
Sierra Leone, Somalia, Gabon, Guinea, the Palestinians, Comoros, Qatar, Cote
d’Ivoire, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Maldives, Mali, Malaysia, Egypt, Morocco,
Mauritania, Niger, and Yemen. It is that group which President Buhari has now
committed Nigeria to.
Yet, this is the same government that barely two weeks ago
informed the nation through the President’s Senior Special Adviser (Media and
Publicity), Garba Shehu, that Buhari had turned down the invitation to be part
of the coalition during his recent trip to Saudi Arabia. Within two
weeks, the President made a U-turn and a volte-face; sadly there was no
courtesy of duly engaging Nigerians on the matter and carrying them along. How
low can a government fall? How disrespectful can a government be? How more
disdainful and contemptuous can a President take his citizens?
Why on earth would the President not consider the issue
more seriously and even carry out wider consultations before committing Nigeria
as a member of the coalition more so in a pluralistic country as ours with
strong ethnic and religious sentiments that we are yet to overcome? Does the
President realise this portends danger to the peace and security of the
country?
Sincerely, when some Nigerians insist President Buhari is
pursuing a hidden agenda of the North to Islamise the country, an action like
this give their allegations some weight to any independent-minded observer. By
saying something today and saying another thing tomorrow, the Buhari government
may yet get the award for the most-lying administration ever in Nigeria’s
history with its propaganda machine being run by Lai Mohammed, Minister for
Information.
Yet, the signs were very clear abinitiobut
we chose to ignore them. Before coming to power, Buhari condemned the number of
aircraft in the Presidential fleet promising Nigerians he would reduce the
number if voted into office. Till now, Nigerians are still waiting for him to
fulfil the promise even though this was something he could have sorted out
within the first three months of his Presidency if not even in the first month.
He said his ministers would have to declare their assets publicly. Have they
done this? Even his own, didn’t we just gloss over it with the several
questions handing around it for a man who told us he took a loan to buy his
form to contest the APC Presidential primaries?
And the hopes of some youths who voted Buhari trusting his
government would give them N5, 000 monthly handouts have also just been dashed
irrespective of how some of the spokesmen in the Presidency want to spin it!
The various scandals around the 2016 budget has so far
brought monumental embarrassment to Nigeria and effectively showed that this is
not a government truly serious at reducing the wastage of our national wealth
going on in Abuja at this time of dwindled oil revenue and economic downturn.
Again, the President hardly takes responsibility for errors of his government.
Rather than admit the buck stops at his table, he keeps passing on the blame to
others. Meanwhile, the Buhari government still wants to spend more money on the
State House Clinic far above all the teaching hospitals in Nigeria combined.
Now, what is that?
For me and my household, we have been lied enough to by
this government. We have been deceived and bamboozled enough. No more.
Ha, God Almighty, our heavenly father, why do we have
leaders who raise our hopes and expectations to high heavens in Nigeria but
eventually dash them to the ground without any shame or remorse? Oh Lord our
God, what are you teaching us in Nigeria that we still haven’t learnt to
comprehend for so long thus hindering the true change we all want to see in our
fatherland?
Moreover, critical matters affecting the nation are also
often left unaddressed for days until they are almost spiralling out of
control. The fuel queues have returned; for how many days now? Or have they
disappeared in your neighbourhood?
And despite the seriousness and the gravity of the Ese
Oruru case, for instance, the President, as the father of the nation, didn’t
even feel such abduction and the debasement of the girl-child in our country
deserves his attention and condemnation. Or is such very serious issue with
diverse implications for the unity of Nigeria not deserving of his Presidential
comment? However, if you ask me, I think the President was only being himself.
When Interior Minister, Dambazzau was involved in a public shoe-shining
controversy earlier in the year, any comment or reprimand from the President at
all? None. Absolutely none. He saw nothing wrong with Dambazzau’s conduct even
though his party, the APC, promised us change; a change Nigerians expected
would also include how ministers and government officials conduct themselves in
public.
This is also a President who takes delight in announcing
major policies of his government outside the country as if this is the
appropriate and sensible thing to do or foreigners are more important than
Nigerians he is leading. This is a President who carries on as if he is
all-knowing and all-wise. This is a President that de-markets his own country
and calls his fellow citizens criminals. Our hospitals can be transformed to
world-class, and Nigerians would no longer need to travel overseas for the best
medical care but we have a President who believes there’s no need to show
personal example and there’s nothing wrong for him going overseas to see his
foreign doctor for treatment.
The Buhari Presidency isn’t even up to one
year yet but I have a gut feeling its scorecard at the end of the day is
already being written now. In his “My Covenant with Nigerians,” what
items therein can President Buhari and the APC confidently say have been
delivered almost one year into their Presidency?
Yes, monies are being recovered from looters. But who says
these same funds are not in some ways being looted by his own people in
government even now? Yes, Nigerians already know that a good part of the funds
spent by the PDP for its 2015 Presidential campaigns came from places it ought
not to have come from and our national wealth were wickedly transferred to
private accounts in the most terrible greed that could ever be exhibited by
leaders anywhere in the world and visited upon their people. However, has
Buhari dared to probe the sources of the funds for his own party’s campaigns?
Or the funds APC used for its own Presidential campaign didn’t also come from
allocations from states controlled by the party? He who comes to equity must
always come with clean hands. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. President has so far
not done this.
That is why, henceforth, I want us to be clear and settled
on the character of this government. It’s a government that promised Nigerians
change but changed its promises. It’s a lying government. It’s an unreliable
government. It’s an unpredictable government. It’s a confused government. It’s
a disrespectful government. It’s a duplicitous government. It’s a government
that believes it needs no rigorous dialogue and engagement with Nigerians. If
you ask me what I think, I think Buhari is the real Maradona President. I feel
we concluded too early on the gap-toothed one at the hilltop mansion in Minna.
Now, I agree it’s morning yet for this administration but
I think the morning also sometimes shows how the day would be.
However, despite the lamentations, for the sake of our
country, for our sakes and the sake of our children and children’s children, we
shouldn’t give up hope. True, the PDP betrayed our trust and the APC as a party
has also already started doing so. But as we wait and look out for the real
patriots and agents of change beyond those currently pretending to be so, I
believe this government can still be helped to achieve something concrete for
the 3 years and two months that yet remain in its mandate. But this again is
only if it wants to be helped and is willing to find a way to reach out to
those it believes can help it deliver.
If the
government wants to keep groping in the dark, I don’t think we should allow it.
As Nigerians, we mustn’t keep quiet. We must continue offering our advice and
suggestions. We must keep putting them on their toes. Eternal vigilance, like
Thomas Jefferson famously said, is the price of liberty. I will add that it’s
also the price for good governance. We must keep goading them towards living up
to the promises they made when they begged us to vote out the PDP and vote in
their APC. We must all help this government; every one of us, individuals,
businesses and organisations, professional unions and bodies, religious groups,
civil society organisations, and indeed, every strata of the Nigerian society.
By doing this, we not only help ourselves but also our beloved country. I want
to rest my case here this week. God bless Nigeria.
👤By
O'Femi Kolawole - Copyright 2016 TheCable.
Comments
Post a Comment