It is acceptable wisdom across political and social circuits that the most virulent critic poses no threat to the devious and corrupt public officer. Thus no matter how brilliantly the critic articulates censure of a crooked official’s savage, mediocre performance, he poses no threat to the office and grotesqueness that the officer symbolises.
Indeed, the harshest critiques have been known to bounce off the hide of the Nigerian politician as bed bugs fall off the tresses of the poodle’s medicated hair. This no doubt manifests as another malady in the Nigerian scheme of things. It is the ultimate malady.
Very few people are genuinely interested in eliminating corruption and improving the quality of life in the country. Since the era when large segments of the citizenry, bludgeoned to acquiescence by corrupt leadership, swallowed dissent to hide behind the ‘Yabis’ of unrepentant government critics like late Fela Kuti, Nigeria has suffered freefall down the steep crag of institutionalised corruption.
Very few Nigerians would dare the dangerous activism of self-appointed government critics like late Afrobeat maestro, Fela and human rights activist, Gani Fawehinmi. The duo were two of Nigeria’s most vocal critics even in the face of brutal backlash from the government and its apologists.
Today, we suffer the absence of Fela Kuti and Fawehinmi among others. What we have left are pathetic impostors pretending to defend the citizenry’s rights. Despite the posthumous honours accorded Fela and Fawehinmi, few mothers would want their children to engage in such dangerous agitation in the interest of the collective. ‘Were dun wo, ko se bi lomo,’ meaning: While it is fun to behold the antics of a lunatic, it is anathema to sire one.
Late Fela and Fawehinmi are no lunatics, but they are the figurative madmen by whose tireless activism and exploits, Nigeria’s critical mob attained a semblance uprightness and political awareness. Despite their activism, the citizenry whose rights they aspired to protect towed the path unabashed spinelessness. This emphasises the role of the critic.
There is no gainsaying that since the advent of Nigeria’s democratic experiment, the nation elevates corruption as its cultural essence. At President Goodluck Jonathan’s emergence, state-sponsored corruption mutated into the Nigerian persona: bigotry, decadence, terrorism and official looting were weaponised by public officers and their cronies in pursuit of selfish political and economic interests.
The Nigerian decadence, ingenious in pleasures and cruelties, became the politically-correct personae, an acceptable profanation of morality and rape of ancestral norms. Thus in Jonathan’s era, corruption’s chthonian reverence assumed the imagery and dimensions of politicised orgy. Morality became un-Nigerian as the immediate past administration evolved a program and formula for looting the country silly.
Enter President Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC); Buhari was expected to clean Jonathan’s mess and rid the polity of corruption and administrative ineptitude wrought on the nation by successive military and democratic tyranny. Having sacked Jonathan and his People’s Democratic Party (PDP) with remarkable ease at the March 28, 2015 general elections, Nigerians believed he would rid the country of deviously orchestrated misdemeanours characteristic of Jonathan’s PDP.
But like a recalcitrant bug that will not go away, mismanagement, corruption and a legion of more carefully orchestrated misdemeanours have resurfaced in the nation’s corridors of power, on Buhari’s watch.
However, this writer would be committing duplicity similar to that which the incumbent government inflicts on Nigerians even as you read, if he fails to acknowledge the flashes of competence betrayed by Buhari and his bumbling team. Buhari’s initiative at establishing one purse for the Nigerian government is worthy of commendation. Mr. President’s military campaign against the dreaded Boko Haram is commendable too.
Although, he has failed woefully at keeping his promise to rescue Chibok girls and exterminate the terrorist sect within his professed timeline, the military has succeeded considerably, at containing the terrorists’ activities.
Skyrocketing inflation, rising debt profile and a weakened Naira, resurgence of Biafran clamour and other secessionist tumult, to mention a few, crept on the country in the wake of Buhari’s leadership. There are the usual hardships too, like unstable electricity, corruption in the oil and gas sector, politicised anti-corruption fight and cutthroat intraparty squabbles afflicting Buhari’s ruling party.
Suddenly, the hero mutates into a villain in the estimation of an impatient electorate. The latter, split by ethnic and political bigotry since the March 28, 2015 presidential elections, yielded to greater animosity, political and tribal divisions as Buhari’s reticence about northern herdsmen’s murderous quests across eastern and southern farmlands resonate uglier narratives about his presidency.
Then Buhari falls sick. However, in a manner reminiscent of late President Musa Yar’Adua’s ill advised circumstances, the presidency, allegedly held by the jugular, by a mythical cabal, fails to satisfactorily explain the actual nature of Buhari’s ailment thus substantiating dreadful conjectures by the electorate. Despite devoting public fund to Mr. President’s medical tourism abroad, Buhari’s ‘handlers’ and facetious media team have suddenly lost their voice alongside their wits.
Now, we have Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in the saddle as Nigeria’s Acting President. Since he assumed office by constitutional dictates and at Buhari’s behest, Osinbajo, a presumably ‘quiet giant’ and ‘unflinching enforcer,’ has attracted flak from the mythical northern cabal. He attracts remarkable plaudits too, which is scary.
Nigerians should be wary of heaping praise on Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, lest he falls victim to hubris. We do not need him to be more ‘likable,’ ‘chaste,’ ‘humble’ or cut like a paper ‘intellectual.’ Nigeria needs Osinbajo to be more efficient. He should man up and clear some of the mess left by his boss, if he is indeed man enough for the job.
Acting President (AP) Osinbajo recorded no extraordinary achievement as Nigeria’s Vice President. And he is yet to achieve any remarkable feat as Acting President. Except his closet and raucous sycophants consider his emergence as VP or AP his extraordinary achievement.
No one expects Osinbajo to become an overnight success. No one expects him to magically resolve Nigeria’s institutionalised corruption and administrative ineptitude. After all, corruption remains a remarkable feature of his APC platform despite the party’s initial posturing otherwise. A cursory glance at the party’s current and estimated membership will convince you.
No doubt, Osinbajo is incapable of ridding his party of corrupt but despite this sad reality and the hideous politics pitted against him, Nigeria expects him to perform creditably. He could begin by actually attempting to serve the interests of the impoverished and presumed dispensable divide.
Unless Nigeria experiences ‘Change’ that reflects positively in the lives of the citizenry, Acting President Osinbajo will be dismissible as just another ‘ceremonial minder’ holding forte for an incapacitated President.
Perhaps Osinbajo will evolve as everything but another disease of governance and civilisation. Let him remember that Buhari started out as a man devoted to wiping out corruption. He sought to do that while conveniently turning a blind eye to his inadequacies and self-imposed handicaps, or compromises, if you like.
He forgot that nature and history only cares to identify individuals as intrinsic part of species and never as a lone genus. Will Osinbajo fare better?
