This indeed is not the best of time for Nigeria. The country is in deep turmoil. The drumbeats of war are getting too close for comfort. The security apparatus of government has collapsed to the extent that security agents can neither protect themselves nor the citizens. We all live by the day, not sure of who the next victim will be.
The voices of those that believe in one Nigeria are thinning out. It’s increasingly becoming unpopular to profess support for one Nigeria. It’s sad we are on the verge of losing our democracy and our once great nation, all in one go. The possibility of a military coup is now discussed, no longer in hushed tones but in the open. My opinion is that those harbouring such fancy thoughts should perish them. Military incursion in politics cannot resolve our current challenges and therefore not a choice, no matter how disillusioned we are of our democracy and the state of the nation.
The 1999 Constitution provided inbuilt mechanism to remove an incompetent President from office. A President who failed in his duties can be censured and he can be impeached and removed from office or can be voted out of office. Those are legally allowed democratic processes. And the only institution saddled with the responsibility to censure or impeach the President is the legislature, not the military. We cannot destroy our democracy when on expiry of a regime we can vote out bad leaders as is permissible in democracy. Nigeria is a great country blessed with all the resources God can give to any nation. But we have the problem of fairness. Our leaders are not fair to the people. If President Buhari had been fair, the country wouldn’t be on fire. It would have known peace under his leadership. But he is unfair. Because he is unfair, his policies are unfair, members of his cabinet are unfair, the lawmakers are unfair, the judges are unfair and the entire system stinks with unfairness. The unfairness trickles down to the individuals, hence we are unfair to each other.
The 2015 marketing of President Buhari as a would-be fair, upright and better leader to Goodluck Jonathan was completely wrong. That brand was sprinkled throughout his campaign and inaugural speech where he promised to belong to everyone but to no body. That he would be fair, that he would unite the country and restore law and order were lies sold to Nigerians. Every hope of him uniting and securing Nigeria was betrayed. As soon as he was sworn in, he realised there were those that gave him five per cent of votes who must be excluded and severely punished.
With that ill-conceived notion, he became everything but fair. He literally appointed strictly Fulanis in all positions of trust in a heterogeneous country like Nigeria, to the exclusion of other parts. The agenda to isolate the South East in particular was the worst misadventure undertaken by any government since after the civil war. Late Maitama Sule, who led Northern Elders to visit him as early as 2015 saw through his mind-set when he admonished the new president to see all parts of Nigeria as his own. Former President Obasanjo in one of his famous letters cautioned on the dangers of isolating any part of the federation on the account of how they might have voted. Retired Col Umar, himself a Fulani, penned his concerns on the way the government was progressing in one dangerous direction. All the wise counsels were jettisoned. And here we are because one man was deaf to all advice.
Thus far, the promises made by Buhari before his election and the reality are two different things. There is no unity or fairness in the way he has governed the country. The truth he denies, which the privileged elite are also denying, is that you cannot exclude any part of the country, treat them as sub citizens and expect them to be loyal members of the federation. It’s either all are treated fairly as equal citizens or let them go their separate ways. The promise of President Buhari to restore law and order was supposed to be his ability to defeat insurgency in the North East. But under his leadership, insurgency has spread to all corners of the country. Bandits and unknown gunmen are kidnapping and killing people around the country. The bandits that are kidnapping school children are doing so because the government is paying ransom. Despite the trillions of naira invested in the fight against insurgency, we still hear about our military not being well equipped. The news making the round is that the insurgents are advancing into the capital to attack our symbol of democracy, the National Assembly and possibly the Seat of Power.
The bandits who seem to have conquered the President, we were told, are foreigners from Mali, Sudan or wherever. The question is, why is the government protective of them? Why is the government rewarding the bandits with ransom instead of putting them down? What else is treason if not aiding and abetting foreigners to levy war against one’s country? Why will the government take away our arms, dispossess us of our guns while foreign Fulani bandits move about with AK 47 and RPG guns? Between us and these foreign invaders, who should be disarmed? Some things are not adding up. Yes, something is fishy. No one with his head in the right place, who love his life, will accept the current turn of events. It is better to die fighting as free men than be killed as slaves in one’s country.
This is not the Nigeria of our founding fathers. This is not the Nigeria we fought to keep as one. This is not the Nigeria of our dream and most definitely not the Nigeria we want for our children and grandchildren. The policies of President Buhari, the inconsistency in his promises and his incompetence in managing the affairs of the nation must come as a surprise to those who voted to elect him as President. Apart from borrowing money, he has shown no pretence in understanding the economic hell we are going through due to his wrong-headed policies. The hardship and pain of his wrong economic policies is undeserving and is one of the reasons the country is in turmoil.
President Buhari has come to represent the extreme wing of the Fulani hegemony. He had exceeded the expectations of past Fulani leaders like Balewa, Ahmadu Bello and Uthman Dan Fodio. The anticipated president for all Nigeria ended up having more sympathy for foreign Fulani than for any other ethnic group in Nigeria. He ended up developing infrastructure in the Republic of Niger at our expense: He built a modern railway from Nigeria to Maradi in order to integrate the economy of his kinsmen in the Sahel. He built a refinery in his hometown where there is no single barrel of crude oil. He commissioned the Baro Seaport for the North. His inability to stem the criminal atrocities of Fulani bandits kidnapping and killing Nigerians shows he is a weak leader, through whom extremists could push their unpopular agenda like tribal conquest and domination, Ruga, cattle colony and politics of exclusion. Thus far, these are the prize fruits of the Buhari administration. We are more polarized than we ever were. We are not safer than we were in 2015 and we are no more economically secure than we were in 2015. Buhari has objectively failed the nation. Set aside the immovable positions of political elites at either extremes of our partisan divide and just consider the common man in the middle whose hopes were high at his election. For them, the Buhari brand is a lie, a scam and an abject failure.
To get Nigeria right back on track, we must restructure. We must do away with the scam called the 1999 Constitution. We must sit down as a people to fashion out a new constitution. Those holding undue advantage over others must accept a new Nigeria that will be fair to all. Without justice, without equality and without fairness, our quest for peace may remain a mirage.