There is an epiphany of morality in President Muhammadu Buhari, a vision of hope and romanticised ‘Change’ that the severely exploited and hapless citizenry would die for. Buhari rode to power chanting change and promising a radical, progressive departure from the pilfering that characterised public office before his emergence.
At his assumption of office, this writer thought President Buhari would affirm his touted Spartan discipline by scorning the presidential villa at Aso Rock. It seemed a foregone conclusion that President Buhari would frown at the vulgar luxury and wastage of public fund characterised by the State House and thus set about to institute a new standard of service and leadership by stripping the villa of obscene opulence – he could have simply departed it for more Spartan abode while he redistributed Aso Villa’s insane lavishness to shore up sectors of governance lacking adequate ease and provisions.
Notwithstanding his vanity for Aso Villa’s legendary perks, one can’t help but admire Buhari’s seeming valour and resolve to recoup the country’s looted funds from public officers that served in former President Goodluck Jonathan’s highly corrupt and disgraceful administration.
But like I averred in recent past, President Buhari’s touted anti-corruption fight should only be taken seriously when culprits get sent to jail to serve sentences that befit their crimes. Nigerians should neither accept nor entertain any attempt at granting looters of public fund, the luxury of plea bargain.
If Buhari grants them such right, then he would be legitimising their corrupt acts and he would by default, have supported and applauded the mass murders committed by every public officer and their associates caught with the country’s looted funds. President Buhari ought to realise that looters of public fund are mass murderers.
The deaths of these hapless souls brutally hacked down in their prime by terrorists, bad roads and health sector, are blamable on the men and women that conspired to divert fund initially earmarked to resolve these problems.
There is no gainsaying Nigeria is still afflicted by political profiteers comprising the ruling class and various segments of the poor, struggling masses. In the ensuing degeneracy of politics and cultural ethos, the hero we know today may morph into a dreadful monster. Given that power is the brandy of the turncoat, there is need to persistently scrutinize President Buhari uncompromisingly.
For instance, his touted anti-corruption fight remains noise-making at the moment. When the ‘corrupt’ get prosecuted and sent to jail for their misdemeanor, Nigerians will believe him. And despite his touted reduction of his salary and that of his deputy, President Buhari is not working pro bono. He is being paid for the work he does. And it’s an open secret that his cozy allowances among other frills of being President and living in Aso Rock are the stuff the finest fantasies are made of.
Buhari has been cuddled enough, by the media and his most ardent supporters. Nigeria needs him to work now. And no matter the floweriness and duplicity of spin accorded his performance so far, very little has changed since he became President. It is sad to note that the steadier electricity supply oft cited by his diehard apologists as a dividend of his leadership has since petered out. Electricity supply has become worse and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), under the numb chairmanship of Dr. Sam Amadi is determined to inflict greater hardship on Nigerians by increasing electricity tariff.
Perhaps such increase would be taken in good faith if power supply were indeed steady. But it isn’t and all Amadi could base his planned increment on is a convoluted technical and financial mumbo-jumbo deliberately obscured to confuse and overwhelm poor, hapless citizenry afflicted with the ill-luck of a predatory NERC and private electricity entrepreneurs.
And even though he vowed to crush Boko Haram by December 2015, it is clear that President Buhari won’t achieve any such feat hence he should learn to be more tactful and modest in making future pledges. The military’s recent fiasco with the Shiite Muslim sect elicits greater apprehension among the citizenry – many are worried that President Buhari and his re-invigorated military might have sown the seeds of another bloody, villainous insurgent group masquerading as Muslims.
Like I intoned few weeks ago, Buhari is yet to do anything extraordinary; the ‘steadier’ electricity supply has dropped to an abysmal low and the Ministry of Power and Works is reportedly planning to reintroduce toll gates on the country’s bloody and badly cratered roads. It is in fact amusing that Buhari would permit such unfairness while the citizenry brave untimely death, handicap and stress traveling the country’s perilous road networks.
While we acknowledge that his touted honesty and integrity exerts reasonable pressure on corrupt individuals and institutions to do a cartwheel away from corruption, it need be reiterated that his anti-corruption stance and ‘government with a human face’ propaganda will continually resonate as a desperate, corny lie until the Nigerian State begins to sentence looters of public office to severe jail terms.
Buhari needs to divorce himself from sycophancy, vanities of power and decadent luxury emblematic of Aso Villa if truly he possesses the morality and Spartan discipline frequently ascribed to him. And contrary to claims that he has a great team to work with, he doesn’t. Among his ministers, we have one that allegedly jetted out of the country to celebrate convocation of his ward at an overseas university while his state’s university withered in the stranglehold of strike action and neglect by his government.
We have characters that had been embroiled in scandalous cases of corruption and administrative ineptitude. Nigerians accepted him (Buhari) and his team not because they are the best that we could ever produce but because they represent that excusable part of our cancerous bulk that could pass our body.
The citizenry see the ruling class as a primitive tribe of predators grossly inured in corruption; on the other hand, we love to see Buhari as our saviour. Contemporary boondocks legend paint a portrait of him as a warrior in wolf-skin vest, brandishing a shield of steeled morality and a stone-axe forged to hack down monuments that the corrupt ruling class built to entrench corruption.
There is no gainsaying Nigeria needed Buhari hence the beauty of his emergence as President via the March 28 elections. But has Buhari justified the mandate given him so far? Besides his bid to recoup looted funds from corrupt officers of the last administration, how does he fare as an administrator?
Buhari’s touted morality is ennobled by the citizenry’s admiration and cult worship of him. The danger in the cult worship he currently enjoys however, subsists in the fact that we are setting him up for failure. Certain sections of the press may go easy on him because one or two members of the nation’s fourth estate are in his employ as media aides but the truth need be told to President Buhari from time to time; he is not doing too well at the moment. His performance is below par.
NATION
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