Power is indeed seductive. Ask Muhammadu Buhari. He knows it is not necessarily just and kind. It is rarely patronising. Power is ravishing no doubt. But also a tad capricious and infinitely cruel. Power nurtures distaste for morality. Thus when a moral man like Buhari assumes power, he becomes incidental the moment he hearkens to the wisdom of political expediencies. This minute, every heady swill he takes of power, becomes a fog that muddles his morals, leaving him stupefied.
Morality is never enough to occupy the seat of power, expedient morality to be precise. It is never a sturdy rampart against the storm of vanities incited by a nation of over 250 ethnicities and religious perversions.
We think Buhari is a magician and expect him to save Nigeria. We expect him to rid us of corruption. But even Buhari deserves salvation, likewise his All Progressives Congress (APC). I do not say Mr. Buhari is corrupt but how does one make sense of his dalliance with the corrupt? This minute, Buhari wades deeper into murky waters; he burrows out of the morality ‘jailhouse’ he constructed for himself even as he collapses in moral dystrophia. Buharists will term this ‘political sagacity’ or ‘political expediency’ if you like. But I would call it ‘pitiful hara-kiri.’ At the backdrop of this calamity, Buhari’s ‘change’ gets tempered into a corny lie he had to tell, to earn electoral votes and a shot at Aso Villa.
Yet I believe Buhari didn’t lie about his mission to ‘change’ Nigeria for better. He simply overestimated his abilities. Now that he is Mr. President, he looks back on his past condemnation of his predecessors and exaggerated moral crusade to heal Nigeria, as the tantrums of a child who swore to become everything but his father, only to grow up and become everything like his father. There is no gainsaying Buhari’s ‘change’ agenda has been hijacked and weaponised by his super ‘change’ team into a monstrosity of sort. Yet Buhari watches with disinterest, the happenstances that will eventually rid him of his stature as a moralist and positive ‘change’ agent, all for the love of power.
In the wake of glaring misdemeanour and machinations by elements within his team to rob Nigeria silly via suspicious budgetary allocations, Buhari remains discomfortingly quiet. Equally disappointing is his silence over the persistent murder of peaceful citizenry across the country by rampaging herdsmen from the north. Buhari does not see anything wrong with a situation whereby gangs of herdsmen swoop on rural communities to maim, kill and rob the natives, in bid to claim their victims’ land as grazing patch for their cows.
Buhari will not lift a finger in defense of the poor, helpless peasants brutally hacked to death by kinsmen from the north but he got jittery and instantly swung to action immediately Enoch Adeboye, General Overseer (GO) of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), urged his congregation to get more involved in politics in the tenor of civilised revolt, come 2019.
Soon after he was forced to step down as RCCG overseer courtesy a new legal requirement by the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN) that leaders of all religious organizations observe a maximum leadership of their organisations for 20 years, Adeboye told his congregation: “Some people believe that RCCG is becoming too influential and we’re going to be more influential. When you get home, tell members to join a political party. Join a party and become a card-carrying member of any party. Just join any party. We shall decide issues right from the ward level.”
Buhari considered Adeboye’s utterances as a veiled threat and admonition to Christians to vote against his 2019 ambition, thus he sacked Jim Obazee, the FRCN officer allegedly responsible for the enforcement of the law. He didn’t stop at that, he reconstituted the agency’s board and suspended the controversial law.
This aspect of Buhari’s personality is no doubt enlightening to closet dissenters of Buharism even as it enriches the arsenal of the anti-Buhari and anti-change movement. Predictably, comical Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, among others, has ridiculed Buhari for his apparent cowardice in the face of Adeboye-led RCCG antagonism. He said, “Obviously, their attention is more on 2019, not on justice and any love for the sustenance of Christianity in Nigeria. Mind you, they have only suspended the implementation of the regulation, they did not abrogate it. It is obvious that they have an agenda. And if you look at the president’s pattern of life, he is a sectional leader, whose appointments reflect sectionalism and nepotism.”
Governor Fayose’s drivel no doubt exemplifies the tenor of outrage and mockery of Buhari’s intriguingly swift and decisive action in respect of the FRCN/Adeboye drama. And in desperate bid to be considered a man of his words, Buhari and his ‘change’ agents claim they have begun the implementation of his N5, 000 lifeboat or stipend if you like, to Nigeria’s most impoverished. This no doubt deserves applause, according to zombie-Buharists.
Agreed. But how did Buhari come by the database by which he determines folk deserving of the stipend? How were the beneficiaries mapped out? How did Buhari arrive at a figure of the actual number of recipients of his anti-poverty lifeboat? How has he ensured that the initiative is not hijacked and diverted to the villainous schemes of corrupt elements within his ‘change’ team and APC? Not by the spurious and pathetic explanation given by his spokesperson, I believe.
Lest we forget his shameful reluctance to reprimand his close cronies among APC governors for gross acts of incompetence, insolence to the electorate and god complex; Buhari probably considers the rot in various states as manifestations of APC’s gospel of ‘change.’
Buhari’s government has become food for maggots and carrion for familiar scavengers but all hope is not lost. There is still room for Mr. Buhari to right his wrongs and reclaim his honour. He could still actualise his romanticised fiction as the odd one out among Nigeria’s predatory ruling class.
Buhari should simply stand like a man. His current stoop and sway to the rage and wile of tempestuous and corrupt beings contradicts every value he used to symbolise. Buhari and his automatons would recall that at the beginning of his administration, this writer lamented that he had peopled his cabinet with the shady and inept; and that in 2017, he would have cause to sack these characters and unburden his cabinet of their excess garbage. Well, Buhari is at the verge of sacking the shady and inept among his ministers. He is simply too embarrassed to acknowledge so.
I would rather he sacked every member of his kitchen cabinet and start afresh with a more competent team but folk will say: “That’s rash and suicidal.” What manner of leadership did he think he would provide working with a team that lacks character?
There is no super remedy or almighty formula he could adopt in order to become the leader of our dreams. Buhari should simply man up and determinedly appoint the men and women truly capable of manning Nigeria’s crucial public offices. Given his incapacities and shortcomings as a leader, he should seek established professionals and technocrats to man his team. His 2017 budget is an eyesore, he should investigate and prosecute the duplicitous characters involved in ‘padding’ the budget.
Buhari should allocate greater resources to education and manpower development. He should reduce salaries and perks enjoyed by public officers by 40 per cent to reflect the ongoing recession. He should revivify the nation’s vocational education culture. Buhari should rid Aso Rock of familiar bogeys masquerading as lobbyists and friends of his government. He should quit distorting his character to fulfill dubious expediencies and political correctness. Buhari should quit doing the ‘done-thing’ building bridges and cementing relationships with the filthy rich and influential in the spirit of expediencies.
He should quit the rat race for re-election in 2019. If he is able to resolve Nigeria’s gravest systemic and infrastructure woes, he would have no cause to engage in such desperate, shameful quest for re-election before the end of his first term.
