Agwa ka nma na eke turu. The foregoing is Igbo. It will take an effort, real one, to find the English language equivalent. So, I will not even try. What it conveys is that bad behaviour is better, tolerable and more acceptable if it comes from particular individuals and groups. When the favoured people are involved, bad behaviour becomes fashionable and worthy of emulation.
For seven years, by May 2022, Nigerians would have been compelled to sit back and watch in full colour rolling horror movies. And the leading actors in these movies are the high and mighty in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
The not too high have also joined the parade in regaling Nigerians with their celluloid skills. The orchestra, which serves as the background music for these long-running movies is being conducted by the REAL national leader of the APC, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari. There is yet another who bears this same title of national leader of the same political party. But many Nigerians know that that other one had been allowed to parade the title for its comical value and for humour. However, it’s on record that some impatient APC honchos, especially of the northern extraction and who are in government, have had occasions to publicly and angrily dismiss the other national leader as a joke. But crunch days are here with the first day of reckoning being February 26, 2022. For those who are minded to forget, February 26 is the proposed day for the APC national convention. In all likelihood, that day would confirm who calls the shots in the APC. That day could also mark the unravelling of the ruling party. In Nigeria, history tells us that the only thing that destroys a ruling party is success. APC may yet turn history on its head after February, though unfolding events appear to indicate that history is set to repeat itself. In spite of the recent inauguration of the state leaderships of the party sans two or three state chapters, disquiet is still loud in the APC.
The regime of Buhari and APC was founded on lies, deception and propaganda in 2014 and 2015. And this helped it to defeat the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). And for almost seven years, the regime had governed on the basis of lies, deception, propaganda and denial. Soon after he assumed office as President in 2015, Gen. Buhari repudiated all the major and minor promises, which the APC made to Nigerians. He said he was not aware of APC’s written contract with Nigerians. The party did not push back, which can be interpreted to mean that either the party did not carry its presidential candidate along in the formulation of the contract or the document was a forgery. Either of this leaves APC indicted. To their credit, APC and the candidate it sponsored to the presidency showed Nigerians their hand very early in what has turned out, predictably, to be a horror movie.
Now, let us roll the reels of the APC movies that have left Nigerians dazed and horrified. Ahead of the 2015 elections, serial contender, Buhari was deftly but dubiously packaged and presented to Nigerians as a ‘born again’ democrat. He had been a coup-plotter and an usurper of the presidency.
He was the military ruler that midwifed the notorious Decree 4, which criminalized the publication of the truth by the press if a public officer was embarrassed. Under him, also, three young Nigerians, Bernard Ogedegbe, 29 years, Bartholomew Owoh, 26, and Lawal Ojuolape, 30 years, were executed for dealing in drugs under a decree that was granted retroactive powers. Ahead of his second coming, he was clothed in strange robes. He was presented as tech-savvy with pictures of him fiddling with an iPad. He was fitted out in a designer’s suit that enhanced his sartorial elegance the much it could. In Igboland, he wore isi agu dress, after he had been named Okechukwu. But in his maiden and only media chat (a live television programme), the telling sentence that came from his mouth was, What do the Igbo want? Soon after, in the United States of America, he said the Igbo should not expect to be treated equitably in his infamous 97% versus 5% declaration.
Years later, he described the same Igbo nation as an insignificant dot in the Nigerian space. Unless I have not been paying attention, I have not heard Buhari describe any other nation in Nigeria in such a derogatory and unflattery and dismissive and condemnatory manner. But, no matter.
Candidate Buhari promised to rehabilitate Nigeria’s four refineries and build new ones. On both counts he failed.
What he succeeded in doing was to superintend the wasting of N100 billion in 2021 to repair refineries that did not add even one litre of fuel, kero, petrol or diesel, to national consumption. Under Buhari, Nigeria is projected to spend N3 trillion in the so-called petrol subsidy in 2022. It’s a horror movie with Buhari as the star.
Just as in his first incarnation, the nation’s economy twice slipped into recession in as many years in Buhari’s second coming. Buhari, the exponent of trade by barter in 1983-1985, returned 30 years later with similar weird economics.
He went after those who maintained domiciliary or foreign currency accounts in banks. The practice was virtually criminalized and that action triggered capital flight and heightened anxiety. He backed down. In October 2016, this regime authorized its secret police to raid the homes of judges, including Supreme Court justices, in the dead of the night, in a phony sting operation. The judges were roused from their sleep and marched to detention centres in their pajamas on allegations of corruption. Nigerians watched in horror at an orchestrated and deliberate scheme to intimidate the judiciary. And capture it. Some of the arrested judges were never charged to court and those who were arraigned had their cases thrown out for lack of merit. In fact, one Justice Ademola made a no case submission, and he won. But the regime won the ultimate prize, the ouster of Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen, on a different occasion on the eve of the 2019 elections.
The APC government of Buhari prepared its first full-year budget in 2016. And it was headlined by the word ‘Padding.’ And since then padding has been a byword every budget cycle. Thousands of projects worth hundreds of billions of naira are brazenly smuggled into budgets every year, since 2016. And virtually nothing happens. The high point of the film show was the display last month of alleged one million tonnes of rice paddy in 13 pyramids in Abuja. The regime made a song and dance of the spectacle. Buhari claimed that he has achieved a feat of moving rice production in Nigeria from under four million tonnes to over seven million tonnes. The expectation is that the price of a bag of rice will crash when the rice paddy returns from the rice mills. Let’s cross our fingers.
Meanwhile Vice President Yemi Osinbajo will headline the reels when they roll next week but not before we address what The Economist newspaper of London described as a “crime scene in the heart of Africa.”