Flash back
To many who had any hope of peace and security in this current administration, judging from what transpired in 2015, where the public overestimated the capacity of the President who had promised to lead from the front, being a former military ruler. PMB had in turn underestimated the nation’s ailments and what ‘change’ was needed to cure them. Today, we shall conclude on the urgent need to change the ‘change.’
The country’s security situation has degenerated most calamitously since Buhari’s emergence. Acts of ineptitude, cronyism, nepotism and insensate clannishness of the administration have synergistically fostered the impunity of violent herdsmen and their blood-thirstiness. We can only now imagine why a retired General armed with precious hindsight, should recklessly cede part of our country to insurgency and banditry of cattle herdsmen. Professor Wole Soyinka once wondered why the federal government could not be stirred by the sheer volume of the massacres and resultant death.
The rate of violence in many parts of the country and government’s sheer ambivalence towards it are inexplicable. It has become so bad that the democratically-elected Governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Abdulaziz Yari, recently called on the federal government to declare a state of emergency in his state. Kashim Shettima, Governor of Borno State, after over three years of pretences and joining PMB to blame GEJ for the continued insurgency in Borno, was finally forced to surprisingly call for an “emergency extraordinary security meeting” in Maiduguri. At the meeting, he conceded that “I simply feel very bad about Borno.”
He called on the federal government to wake up, because his “greatest wish was and still is, not to bequeath Boko Haram challenges and IDP camps to my successor.” Really?
The herdsmen’s massacres have left the Middle Belt prostate. Benue State once mourned and put signposts at sides of mass graves. Now, they bury the dead and mutilated human parts silently and move on.
In the midst of rampant massacres, the federal government has woefully failed to pronounce and protect the sanctity of human life. Human lives are daily wasted in vengeance for cattle’s blood. A cattle is now more valued and celebrated than a human being.
It is fair to say that the Nigerian elite and intelligence community itself is not sure of what groups even comprise “Boko Haram” nor have they addressed the international logistical, ideological, and support aspects contributory to the ongoing viability of the group. The insurgents are growing stronger and the government forces growing weaker and more beset by corruption and moral collapse. Boko Haram insurgents are strengthened with heavy funds in exchange for a few kidnapped victims. The result is the oxymoron where you arm your tormentor with more funds. The 2019 elections are here. There is no better time to assess Buhari’s stewardship than now.
On the protection of the rights of citizens, It is common knowledge that, since the return of democracy in 1999, fundamental human rights have never before been so violated at the ignoble rate we experience today. Fundamental rights are natural and inherent in all human beings, regardless of their nation, location, language, religion, ethnic origin or status. These rights are embedded in our laws and international instruments, to avoid mankind living a barbaric and animalistic way of live, where only the strong survives and the weak is eliminated. Sadly, even lawmakers and officers in the temple of justice have had their fundamental rights trampled upon by various governments and their agencies, especially the police, EFCC, DSS, ICPC, in the current dispensation.
There is a reason we have the judicial sector, where grievances of aggrieved members of society can be addressed in accordance with laid down provisions of several laws of the land. Human rights are being breached with no regard to the law of the land.
It is very sad to note that, several weeks after the High Court of the FCT ordered the immediate release of Deji Adeyanju from illegal custody, he is yet to regain his freedom. I personally handled the matter pro bono. Posterity will judge how a despotic IGP, Ibrahim Idris, who was desperately seeking an illegal extension of his tenure at the time, attempted to silence this well-known activist and government critic, Mr. Deji Adeyanju. In this wicked plot, the police procured a magistrate’s court in Kano, which after declining jurisdiction in the trumped-up charges levelled against Deji Adeyanju, remanded him in prison custody. It was carefully choreographed, since I had already gotten him released on the order of the FCT High Court, Abuja. Till date, Deji Adeyanju, remains in the gulag in Kano prison.
The reading public does not need any economics egghead to understand that this government leads by deceit and propaganda. They sadly preach change. But, in reality, there is none. Nigeria is today an economic catastrophe. The government has impoverished Nigerians, introduced hunger and anger that have culminated in various forms of avoidable violent agitations in many sectors of the country. Recurrent expenditure is still frighteningly higher today than ever before. The country has become the poverty capital of the world. This country needs radical structural adjustment. The budget deficit is alarming. Our earnings go into overheads. We borrow to repair infrastructures. If we are unable to borrow, then capital projects suffer. Many a time, we borrow and spend frivolously, even on recurrent expenditure. The budgets of 2016, 2017 and 2018, after going missing and being retrieved, were filled with capital projects that do not impact the lives of the people. The 2019 budget is not different. Over 40% of items in the 2018 budget were for office furniture, consulting, cutlery, lightings, vehicles, tyres, conferences, etc. Many items are vague and not trackable. Till date, the government that promised ‘change’ has not come clean on exactly how much was released in 2016, 2017 and 2018 for capital projects. The finance ministry and the budget office cannot agree on figures. I have been wondering if Aso Rock cutlery, furniture and vehicles have only one-year life span, such as to bring about the annual ritual of reenacting them in a fresh budget.
Unemployment has hit 19%. Youth unemployment at 33% is particularly frightening. That is indeed a horrible negative ‘change.’ These figures are not compatible with peace in the society. We needed visible change. But Buhari’s government cannot effect this. The principle is “nemodat quod non habet” (one cannot give out what he does not have).
I must warn that government spokespersons must realise they owe the public a sacrosanct duty of conveying facts anchored on truth, rather than bare-faced falsehood. Their earnings and the luxury they enjoy in their comfort zones are paid for by taxpayers.
Surely, any Nigerian that still believes that the Buhari government has the capacity to reverse the country’s present self-imposed economic woes must be a member of its inner circle that feeds fat on corruption, impunity, injustice, nepotism, cronyism, prebendalism and crass clannishness. These have since been established as this government’s fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy.
Nigerians must rethink their choice of Buhari in the next election by seeking an alternative viable, active, pan-Nigerian and cosmopolitan replacement. This must be someone who can independently assess and access information, not just on pragmatic and functional need-to-know basis but indeed on what would work best for a nation in dire need of credible restructuring.
Unfortunately, Buhari’s government has consistently appointed dead people into all stratus of government. He has used flimsy excuses to withhold his assent to the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill passed by the National Assembly. Buhari refused a landmark amendment that would have given the card reader a legal backing and further strengthen the integrity of our electoral system. He picked issues with the drafting of the Bill, but for three years, his administration did not sponsor any perfect Executive Bill to legalise the use of the card reader. Those defending Buhari’s unpatriotic action are not interested in a better Nigeria, but a Nigeria where APC remains in power at all cost, even if all Nigerians die. It is a crying shame!
On the issue of the fight against corruption, there is no doubt anymore that the fight is characterised by rampant selective justice, vindictiveness, arbitrariness, whimsicality, capriciousness and crippling nepotism and favouritism. The President’s ambivalence in the face of serious allegations against many of his appointees has eroded whatever confidence some neutrals ever had in his ability to decimate corruption. But it was through the Mainagate that the President finally lost all credibility on the so-called anti-corruption war; similar scenario has since played out in the Babachir Lawal, Kemi Adeosun, NNPC, NHIS “gates.” The latest is the brazen and barbaric mob-lynch action against CJN Onnoghen, targeted at forcing him out of office, because of the 2019 presidential election.
At no other time since 1999 has there ever been such an urgent need as now to change a lacklustre, non-performing government.
The February election presents an opportunity to effect the much-desired change. The people must be allowed a free, fair, transparent and credible election to determine their fate. The votes of Nigerians must not only be counted; they must count.
Thought for the week
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. (George Bernard Shaw)