By Ahmed Usman Sanusi
MUCH of the prods generated by Mrs Aisha Buhari’s interview with the BBC centred on inappropriateness rather than correctness. Having read and listened to several responses by ‘analysts’, I have sparingly found a denial about the focal point of Mrs Buhari’s argument – that her husband’s government had been hijacked by those who neither sweated at campaign venues, nor kept vigil during nocturnal party strategic meetings, nor oiled the wheels of electioneering with their shekels. In this case, silence is a loud form of agreement.
Interestingly, the public did not need the president’s wife’s outcry to easily conclude that the president does not belong to everybody but a few people who are taking the semantics of the word “cabal” to a whole new apogee. And it is the constitution of the presidential group of plotters – not its existence – that surprised many.
Those who thought key ‘investors’ in the Buhari Project, such as Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Rotimi Amaechi and others, ought to be the imperative constituent elements of President Muhammadu Buhari’s kitchen cabinet have expressed displeasure at the president’s choice of inner chamber of eggheads.
In fact, political investors themselves have had reasons to “wail” every now and then – Tinubu, Atiku, and Senate President Bukola Saraki have, at one time or the other, sent out distress signals concerning those who sowed nothing pre-May 29, 2015, but were now eminent members of the Buhari government.
But, how come they didn’t see it coming? In fairness, that some politicians were willing to collaborate and wrestle power from the then ruling party epitomized awareness of Nigeria’s teetering on the brink of collapse. And, we do not have to totally rely on the “strange bedfellows” premise to antagonize a seemingly noble reaction to our country’s crumbling.
However, there were too many members of the opposition whose individualism in conducting public affairs was well-documented. In fact, critics had reasons to conclude that many of the then opposition elements moving for consolidation were driven by hunger for power than the desire for a better Nigeria.
The argument then that there were too many captains in the merger ship might create a bigger problem after all said and done. As we know, too many captains rock the ship. All it takes is an internal rancour and the ship would be left to the mercy of the wind. It is happening already.
Those who posited that people who hurriedly converged to chase the “evil” away do not know what to do next, because the scope had been narrowed to “chasing the evil away” from the outset, should not be discountenanced.
Because marriages of convenience have the shortest of lifespans, the question we should ask is: had the leaders who threw their weight behind the president not committed their political clout and resources into his election, would Buhari’s new men, who were pessimistic about his chances, enjoy the exclusivism of his government?
What about the 15 million+ electorate who voted for President Buhari; the main stakeholders on whose behalf Mrs Aisha Buhari was disappointed and vowed not to support her husband unless things change?
No matter how well-intentioned our aspirations are, neither these 15 million voters nor the over 167 million of us could all become local government councillors, chairmen, commissioners, state and federal lawmakers, governors, ministers and the president.
However, our only shot at pushing for the greatness of this country is to, according to Robert Browning, “…rise to the completer life of one…” who shares our good intentions and is poised to put things right, no matter the obstacles. Those building walls around the president can’t be said to represent this category of people. They are rather opportunists who, despite not sowing where they are reaping, still have the effrontery to scheme out those who sowed and are not reaping.
In the lifespan of this democratic dispensation, we’ve seen leaders who rose to the occasion and distinguished themselves in service to their country. Though few and far between, we’ve watched courageous men and women make ferocious enemies for greasing our common wheel of progress and removing the clog set to it by their assailants.
According to a Nigerian proverb, marrying more than once affords one an opportunity to ascertain which spouse is better than the other.
It is common knowledge that there is a plot to undermine the sacrifices of those who engineered President Buhari’s journey to Aso Rock by a section of hijackers who didn’t see his presidency coming. However, such plotters could not have emerged in the first place if the president did not undermine his core supporters in the first place by drawing the cabal close to him and according them the powers they do not deserve.
Let’s hope that this conflict of interest is resolved soonest “the other room”.
Sanusi writes from Abuja