PMB'S 366 DAYS

It must be stated that times are really tough in Nigeria at the moment with constant power outages, water shortage and increase in the cost of certain goods. The current struggles have not surprised me because I know that Nigerians did not vote in Harry Potter on March 28^th 2015 to preside over our affairs.

I chose not to join in what I call ‘eye service’ criticism of Mr President simply because of the need to appear objective. The problem with this brand of criticism is that it ended up becoming a fellowship with eternal pessimists who thereby secured a license to continue bashing the incumbent administration perhaps to soothe the pain of their hero’s loss at the last election. It was amazing to see people who spoke ill of the president in the build up to the elections constantly talking about promises made and how imbalanced the president’s appointments were. Some claimed they voted for the president when they in fact did no such thing while most simply overdosed on their poisoned bile which made them to constantly spew hate towards the man and his crew.

Not to be misconstrued, there were indeed some healthy criticisms especially with respect to the delay in ministerial appointments and some cases of insufficient communication of government policies to the people. Many times, the government actually had information out in the open but I guess the cynics expected to have loud speakers blaring propaganda when they awoke in the mornings to get enlightened. The government could and should have done better with the management of information; this frequent lapses and inconsistencies gave room for speculation and outright manipulation by certain vested interests from time to time.

I do not think there is a way to properly evaluate President Muhammadu Buhari’s 366 days in office without reflecting on what the last administration did and did not do. I do not think it will be fair to measure PMB’s performance on the economy for example without addressing the heists carried out by certain elements of the last administration currently under investigation or being prosecuted. I will state that the president was practically compromised even before assuming office by those who felt the former president deserved a soft landing and protection from scrutiny of his activities as president. Every move by the president has been either tagged a witch hunt or a ploy to annihilate the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Many supposedly educated individuals have suspended all common sense in analyzing these cases of corruption and have instead adopted ethnic synapses to condemn the president and the investigative agencies. For those who ask why ‘only’ PDP members are facing charges ; I will only ask them if they expected that All progressives congress members would get bundled into ‘black marias’ for collecting money from Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd) to campaign for the PDP or for raiding the central bank vaults to claim money returned as part of Abacha’s loot.

What are the things which have happened in the past one year of president Buhari’s reign? Some see too much water in Nigeria’s ‘garri’ but many like me see the garri rising; we only need to add sugar and groundnut to the mixture. It is commonplace to see on social media that Buhari has achieved next to nothing and has only spent the time oscillating from place to place and did not even afford his deputy such privileges. Such individuals who propagate this brand of crudeness always attempt to make Nigerians view national issues through ethnic or religious prisms. They want Yorubas to be offended by how they imagine a ‘Hausa-Fulani’ president maltreats his abundantly educated Yoruba deputy; they quite succeed with their agenda by starting off near daily civil wars on several social media platforms. President Buhari has been called an ethnic or religious bigot only interested in  the Islamization of Nigeria. He has been perpetually called an illiterate even by those who cannot compose a simple sentence without flaws. The economy has not picked up yet neither has the power sector. The appropriation bill issue seems to have had 'messy' written all over it but I think it is better to focus on the positives of that process and expect that future bills would be better processed and equally scrutinized.

Did the president actually waste resources travelling? I really do not think so. I think it would have been foolish for our leaders not to step into the limelight earmarked for Africa and to ignore opportunities to meet up with and engage the leaders of leading nations on the globe. There were a couple of security meetings with neighboring nations and their chief backers. These in my honest opinion have contributed greatly to the apparent decline in the previously ravaging insurgency in the Northeast of Nigeria. It appears new life has been restored to the affected states in the sub region and that for me is a major plus for this administration. The previously battered military have regained their composure and respect on many levels and the major global players have severally endorsed the actions of the current leaders on corruption and security which the former leaders did not get.

A protracted fuel crisis was handed by the Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to the current president which the former coordinating minister of the economy Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala described then as sabotage by the industry players. It was so bad then that diesel and jet fuel supplies were also affected; many have definitely forgotten that some radio stations advertised early termination of their programming due to inability to procure diesel to power their generators. Nigerians forget way too easily so when the fuel shortages returned a few months ago, many were convinced that things had never been worse. The minister of petroleum in two short video clips gave sensible explanations on the cause of the shortages but many Nigerians failed to comprehend perhaps because we are too sophisticated to spend time reading beyond headlines or watching a man speak simple English to explain an issue. The next move was to compare the subsidy protests following Jonathan’s increase of the pump price of petrol in January 2012 (from 65-141naira/L) to Buhari’s increase from 87 to 135-145naira/ L. They completely ignored the variables which existed then with respect to a massive fuel subsidy scam, relatively higher crude oil prices per barrel and a much more favorable exchange rate and availability of foreign exchange. These very learned individuals cheered on when a faction of the Nigerian Labour Congress declared a strike and a reenactment of the January 2012 subsidy protests which came arguably close to stirring a revolution in the land. They definitely forgot that the people shut down the country in 2012 and not the Labour congress; the people were not with the congress this time around and the strike action fizzled out like gas from a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Ese Oruru happened in February 2016 and many saw this as a good opportunity to insult the Emir of Kano and an entire ethnic group unfortunately. They claimed she must have been assaulted and violated repeatedly while in Kano. The young girl thankfully gave birth on the 26th of May and if we go back 40 weeks or so while assuming that the baby was born healthy and at term, that will put the conception of the child at sometime in August 2015 when she was taken to Kano by Yinusa. We do not still know what happened between the young man and the minor in Bayelsa but this unfortunate situation was not a justifiable tool to spite an entire race with. There are those who belong to the school of thought that Chibok did not happen despite their hero acknowledging same on live television in April 2014. The recovery of two girls alongside numerous other captives has not been sufficient to disabuse their minds; the president and his supporters still get accused of sponsoring the kidnap and to a larger extent the crisis in the Northeast which in fact makes absolutely no sense. The issues with the herdsmen happened but I believe there is nothing that cannot be solved by honest communication and determination to achieve peace if all parties are interested. Those responsible for deadly violence should however be identified and prosecuted according to the laws of the land.

Mr. Nnamdi Kanu of the Radio Biafra infamy breezed one day into the country and was taken for an excursion. The con artist no doubt succeeded in birthing animosity and rage in the hearts of many of his kinsmen; I actually suspect this action may have contributed to the intolerance of herdsmen who dwell in the Southeastern zone but I may indeed be very wrong. There have been protests in some parts of  the Southeast, South-South and the North central zones mainly related to struggles for emancipation or skirmishes with herdsmen who many have accused the president of protecting. A lot of the protests have been unfair to the president; many of those protesting or currently destroying government economic installations would not have moved a finger if the former president with favorable religious and ethnic configurations had been returned at the elections. One thing the last one year has exposed is how easy it is to manipulate Nigerians especially on social media. Catchy headlines and graphic images or videos culled from any part of the globe and tagged as Nigerian based backyards are enough to stir the people to revolt; a simple cross checking of these materials would have deflated these evil plots but the religious fundamentalists and ethnic supremacists which many Nigerians are ran with these stories without questioning. It is sad that even folks with advanced qualifications and foreign bagged degrees remain rigid in their ways even when confronted with evidence of their folly. There are also those who claim to be objective in their assessment of the president but rely on material produced by active participants of the last administration to inform them. These people would readily rejoice at the sight of governor Fayose of Ekiti cutting hide obtained from cattle reared by the Fulani herdsmen they despise and jump for joy when they hear that pipelines get bombed or vandalized all to spite the president.

Talking about Fayose, he has become the conscience of the PDP which can only mean that Nigeria is endangered. It is important that a new alliance not hostile to the incumbent administration arise from the ashes of the PDP to provide quality opposition to the incumbent and a potentially viable alternative in the next 4 years or so. The PDP is dead and cremated; the fact that the party has been cut off from a seemingly endless supply of nutrient for less than a year says a lot about what the party stood for. The ease with which active participants of that government develop body ailments and sudden paralysis is alarming. Sixteen years of the PDP and no thought to build one refinery or wean Nigeria off crude oil; I do not think Bola Tinubu could have been so abysmal if he had the reigns of Nigeria for 8 years even with his kind of reputation. The soldiers involved in the Ekiti state election issue have since faced the music; I expect the beat which Fayose will dance to in the coming months is still undergoing some remixing.

Dasuki-gate, Badeh-gate, Allison-Madueke-gate, NIMASA-gate, Fidelity-gate and many other gates should be enough to convince Nigerians to trust this administration but many only see this important fight against corruption as distractions. Many in this administration can definitely not be trusted but it is important that we back the lead man to help set the example and keep us focused on the end game despite the current hash climate. The government needs all the help and support it can get; criticism should be fair and well timed. Those who see themselves as citizens of other territories should repent and throw their weight behind making things work for Nigeria. Who knows, Nigeria can still advance to the point of being sophisticated enough to practice true federalism in just a few years where every aggrieved ethnic group would be able to live as free men in any part of the nation they desire.

The government will definitely make more mistakes with the economy and security amongst other sectors. The Shi’ite situation is currently unresolved but I will suggest that we trust our military and government despite the apparent injustices and heavy-handedness until everything gets resolved at the right time. Those who have become specialist in generating and propagating false information to stir up schisms in the land need to either repent or see a shrink to help manage this deficit. No one benefits if the nation is allowed to burn to the ground.

I am a fan of the football club Manchester United. I am an open critic of the man Jose Mourinho and could have bet every kobo of my savings that his dream of coaching Manchester club would not materialize. His methods do not appeal to me like it does to many of his fans but he has been appointed as the coach nonetheless. Does it mean that I now like him? Absolutely not! Should it translate to me not wishing that he fails so that the club administrators realize that their recently adopted culture of sacking coaches is wrong? Absolutely not! I will be watching Manchester United play in the coming season and will back the coach to succeed and win trophies because as far as I see it; the club wins and not necessarily the manager. He will leave the club one day and I will most likely be glad but the club will remain. Which is greater, the manager or the club? Which is greater, the president or Nigeria? Those who have become arsonists should become fire fighters and help set this nation right.

Let us agree that President Buhari has not done well in 366 days but let us agree also that we are better off than where we were headed under Jonathan. One year is too short to discard this president; he did not stockpile stupendous wealth and oil blocs when he was 40yrs old and in the limelight of Nigeria’s public service; I do not think it is at 74yrs of age that such a lifestyle will begin. He is blunt and direct like that and may be deemed undiplomatic at times but what I know is that we are on the right path as a nation. It can only get better from this point and only those who are qualified and prepared would be able to lead us after Buhari is done.

This image of Amina Ali Nkeki  breks my heart but it should give us hope as a nation. (culled from the Vanguard) 

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.