The
fog of the 2015 general election is finally clearing up; the falsehoods
sold to the people as change are unravelling at dizzying speeds. Even
some vociferous supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari are deserting
him in droves. Those who have not openly expressed some apprehension
about the path the “messiah” has chosen to lead the country are
grumbling and sniveling. However, a few diehards are still clinging to a
tiny strand of hope that a miracle just might happen and things would
change for the better under his government.
Well, it is going to get old saying I
told you so. I can bet my bottom naira that nothing is going to change,
at least not from what we have seen so far. As I have repeatedly stated
in this column, change cannot come from a man who has not changed one
bit, nor shown the slightest inclination to change contrary to the tales
that were peddled on the campaign train. That will only happen when
it’s proved that a leopard can now change its spots, or a tiger can
change its stripes. His recent actions are a further proof of his
ironclad narrow-minded, and ethnically inclined nature.
Those who collectively misled the people
that Buhari had changed but are now singing a different tune must be
held to account. We were bombarded with all sorts of virtuous and
exemplary conducts of his past, and told his ethno-religious tendencies
were “contrived” to undermine him. We were assured that Buhari would
heal this land and restore hope to a fractured people. That has not
happened; instead he has more than any president in the history of
Nigeria consciously exacerbated the ethnic and religious divisions of
the country by his actions and total display of insensitivity by his
appointments.
They told us that he was the expected
one – the long-awaited messiah who would bring back the glory of the
fatherland and restore the pride of a people that were terribly
famished. That wishful thinking has now clearly exploded in the faces of
the proponents who spent their precious naira burnishing his image with
cosmetics, as the candidate played along to the excitement of many.
In the last one year, the Nigerian
economy has practically collapsed under the great “fixer”; the business
environment has been scorched to the ground. Hunger and starvation have
become daily companions of many people such that parents now exchange
children for food. The change agents told Nigerians the ominous sounds
of the prospect of a Buhari presidency that rang out so loudly during
the electioneering were in fact drumbeats of exhilaration, hope and
renewal.
Today, Nigeria stands challenged in all
spheres, rudderless and floundering like never before. And of course we
have so many astonishingly ridiculous and perverse people making silly
excuses for the man who clearly has no business being at the helm of
affairs of this country. Now it seems so obvious that Buhari and his
party were very good at making promises but only excel spectacularly at
making excuses for not fulfilling them.
The clamour for change can be
categorised into four broad subheads, viz., the genuine change-seekers,
the willfully blinded, those that lost out in the power struggle and had
become spiteful, and the extremely partisan and sneaky activists who
now even look the other way as the rule of law is mocked and torn to
shreds.
It is true that many people yearned for a
more fundamental change and desired it desperately; indeed, they still
do. They constituted the genuine but ignorant, naive, vulnerable and
undiscerning majority. These genuine change-seekers however became
easily susceptible to the illusions called “change” promised by the All
Progressives Congress (APC) and its standard-bearer who walked about
with padded feet, waving and smiling sweetly at everyone to frenzied
applauses from enthusiastic crowds.
Secondly were those who chose to be
willfully blinded to the danger signals that were so glaringly visible
that then Candidate Muhammadu Buhari represents. Thirdly was the
category who embraced change more out of spite and malice than
conviction that Buhari’s presidency would bring the much-needed elixir
and healing to this troubled country. Having lost out in the struggle
for power and control, they wanted to get back at former President
Goodluck Jonathan. And in a clear act of sheer desperation,
progressive-minded people joined forces with ultra-conservatives in an
unholy alliance to get power.
Lastly were members of the
intellectual/activist class who staked their reputations built over many
years to sway support for the general on the extremely naive and
dishonest premise that Buhari had changed. By endorsing Buhari, they
were endorsing a brand of populism rooted on a campaign of half-truths,
“true lies”, ignorance, prejudice, sectional politics and outright
deception driven by a motivation to mislead the people to achieve power.
To this group, the end justified the means.
The intellectual/activist class is
particularly guilty of the situation we find ourselves today. They
vouched for Buhari with such vigour and gusto that left the discerning
dumbfounded. Our own hero and Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka,
stood shoulder above all others on this score. This was how he expressed
his love for him: “It is however just as purblind to insist that he has
not demonstrably striven to become what he most glaringly was not, to
insist that he has not been chastened by intervening experience and –
most critically – by a vastly transformed environment – both the
localised and the global.” This to me was a pure fiction.
There is a saying in the land of my
fathers that the hardest thing in life is vouching for someone,
especially someone you barely know. When you do that, you are indirectly
saying, ‘I’m putting my reputation on the line. I believe this person
is a good person, with good character’, or has changed. This was what
Nigerians were told. Soyinka and co. stood as referees for Buhari when
he applied for the position of the president of Nigeria. They vouched
for a changed Buhari and encouraged the public to employ him for the top
job.
Will Soyinka honestly tell Nigerians
whether this was the change he assured them would come from Buhari? Has
Soyinka seen the lopsided appointments Buhari has been making across all
strata of government? It is a chilling reminder of his past stint in
office, particularly his tenure as the Chairman of the Petroleum Trust
Fund (PTF); a past that was denied by his hysterical supporters in the
run-up to the election.
Professor Pat Utomi was one of those who like our own dear Soyinka
put his reputation on the line to reassure the people that Buhari “will
restore hope” and lead Nigeria out of the woods during the high fever of
electioneering.
You can imagine my profound shock and
disbelief a few months ago when he launched a scalding attack on
President Buhari and his government for the beyond-belief manner he was
managing the national fault lines as well as his poor handling of the
economy. This was what he was reported to have said: “The problem with
Buhari’s administration is his medieval mindset. He excludes rather than
includes. So, he does not get the best idea. He is insular. Because of
their medieval mindset, they have created a country that is more divided
than they met it. And that is a problem for leadership that is marching
towards progress. His ideas go back 30 years and they are irrelevant to
this world.
Open up your mind and listen to people
and you can make progress. To lead is to serve. To lead, you must be
knowledgeable. People don’t follow somebody who doesn’t know where he is
going. Otherwise, you fall into a ditch.” After reading that statement,
I could not but asked myself and anyone who cared to listen, did he
just know this about Buhari? I’m baffled as to how I could have seen it
all and more experienced people like Utomi didn’t.
As if Utomi’s about-face was not
dramatic enough, read what Oby Ezekwesili of Bring Back Our Girls fame
had to say about the administration: “Buhari’s economic policies are
archaic and opaque, reminiscent of his first coming in the 80s. During
that era, inflation spiralled. During that era, jobs were lost. During
that era, the economic growth level dipped. That era wasn’t the best of
eras in economic progress. “What did not work in 1984 cannot possibly be
a solution in a global economy that’s much more integrated.”
She accused Buhari of rehashing the same
“command and control” approach towards economic issues which has left
the country’s economic indices worse off, adding: “We have lost the
single digits inflation status we maintained in past administrations.”
The question we should all ask our
bouncy campaigner is: did she just know this about Buhari? The truth is,
she was one of those who consciously ignored the danger signals that
were all so visible to everyone but which many chose to be willfully
blinded to. The Chibok girls’ plight became a vote-catcher for then
Candidate Buhari who repeatedly played it up and assured the nation it
would top his list of priorities only to quickly relegate it to the
footnote after gaining power. Where is Professor Charles Soludo? Is he
still in this country? If yes, then he must be grumbling quietly by now
about the state of the economy. That is, if his economic theories still
make any sense. But why is he not talking? The change he helped foist on
the people is mutating into a crippling police state.
The economy is in a perilous state – on
the verge of a recession. Is he not aware? To the chagrin of investors
recently, a “changed” Buhari lest we forget, talked down the CBN new
forex policy moments after endorsing it, thereby making many potential
investors to nervously wait and watch from the sidelines. Now, won’t
Soludo tell Nigerians how much the country has lost through the
mismanagement of the economy, lack of policy direction and lost
investment opportunities under one year of Buhari — N10 trillion, N20
trillion, N30 trillion or more? It will be interesting to hear from him,
that is, if he still has the courage of his conviction. It is a crying
shame that a first-class economist of Soludo’s stature was one of those
who just couldn’t see through the facade of lies; maybe he did, but was
driven more by petty revenge and that disease that afflicts only black
people.
It is a double tragedy that he even
aided and abetted the campaign of malicious lies with his allegation of
“missing” or “mismanaged” N30 trillion during the run-up to the
presidential election. It was a season when the walking wounded with
malice in their hearts would come to the public space to spew rubbish
just because they wanted to hug the headlines the next day. It keeps me
up at night knowing that they willfully led this nation back to a replay
of 1984/85, the consequences of which are the debilitating economic and
socio-political crises we have today.
Let Nigerians ask former President
Olusegun Obasanjo whether this is the “Nigeria of our dreams” he so
gleefully told the world Buhari was building some months ago. The same
Obasanjo acknowledged even before the election that Buhari knew next to
nothing about economic management but went on to recommend him for the
top job. Obasanjo who instituted an enquiry into the activities of the
PTF even denied the findings. It was the height of fierce determination
to push through his spiteful “change”. If Buhari was not good on the
economy, he has even proved worse on politics. No one can tell for sure,
maybe, just maybe, this was the change they meant after all.
Shaka Momodu is a columnist with ThisDay where this article was first published. He can be reached by email HERE.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
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