THERE is a Yoruba adage that says that the bird does not, by happenstance, perch on the rooftop if not to listen to the rhythm coming from within the house. Put succinctly, the perching of the bird in any setting is not always an ordinary adventure; it could be something deeper than what the common mind can fathom. Therefore, the Knucklehead bird perches on President Muhammadu Buhari’s Aso Rock rooftop, to observe not only his body language but also to decode the words coming forth. In these hard times, common sense compels one to weigh every action and inaction of those in corridors of power in order to aggregate the exact direction of the ship of state.
In a society where government officials randomly deploy cheap propaganda to shield the gaping truth about the terribly sickly state of the economy, it behoves one to sieve through the panoply of cacophonous voices coming out of the presidential grove. Sometimes you are tempted to believe that President Buhari is on the same page with the masses. At other times, you can feel the palpable disconnect in such outrageous dimensions that you begin to question the veracity of the change mantra. We may not know the kind of drumbeats the President has been listening to in the last few months neither do we know the sources of those sounds. What we do know is that the rhythm, tenor and tone of those drumbeats are miles away from the grieving dirge of anguish that has gripped our land. If Pa Buhari could, for a moment, shift his eardrums from the sonorous voices of those who are adept at telling him what he wants to hear, perhaps he would have a firm understanding of why his promised mandate of hope is ebbing and a thick plume of doubt now fills the void.
If he could lend us his ears, he would come to the painful reality that his yeoman’s efforts in the last one year have only bred a new generation of disgruntled, disenchanted and alienated citizenry because all they see is motion without movement – the same malaise of cluelessness that plagued previous administrations before him. If change is not the absence of pain but the presence of hope, then we need to interrogate the Buhari change and its implication for the country. In a recent speech, the President, while pleading for patience and understanding, waxed lyrical about how deeply he was concerned about the unmitigated pains being felt in the land.
He spoke of reaping the gains of suffering that was, at best, temporal. Listen to him: “As a government that was propelled into office by the power of the people, we cannot but feel the pains of our compatriots, and we deeply empathise with them. We are working round the clock to ease the pains of Nigerians, and the efforts of the government have started yielding fruits as we seek to make the petroleum products available nationwide, restore gas supply to the power generating firms, reflate the economy and put Nigerians back to work. We understand that Nigerians have started questioning whether this indeed is the CHANGE they voted for, while some have even gone as far as saying that by voting for our party, Nigerians have entered one chance. Well, I can tell Nigerians that our CHANGE AGENDA is real, and that indeed, they will get the change they voted for. Nigerians have not entered One Chance, because the One Chance drivers and their conductors have been driven out of town”.
Unfortunately, Mr. President, these fine sophistries are no longer tenable excuses for hope deferred. The pains people go through daily out there on the streets cannot be mitigated by a President’s poetry of a future imagined. As the government bumbles through its policy initiatives, thousands lose jobs daily; government workers are owed salaries running into months while the list of the unemployed grows in leaps and bounds. There is frustration in the land as it is becoming increasingly difficult for breadwinners to meet their obligations. Add that to the fact that this government has not implemented any of its job-creation policies beyond its idealistic hue and you would understand why a big question mark hangs over this change mantra.
It is as if the President heads a band of somnambulists, who have simply failed to appreciate the enormity of the crises on their hands! When the President declared that ‘one chancers’ have been driven out of town, what exactly was he talking about? Has the President noticed that some of his ministers are not better than those he claimed to have driven out? Or what better one-chance strategy can be compared to the one being relayed by the Minister of Labour, Dr. Chris Ngige, who vowed to deal with banks and communication firms for daring to sack workers they had willingly engaged when the economic barometer was on a positive swing? It is, to say the least, delusional that a former governor and senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria would vomit such outrageous rant at an international labour forum.
When this government was busy thumping its chest about the trillions of naira it repatriated into the treasury of the Central Bank of Nigeria through the Treasury Single Account, was it not aware that it would have grave effect on the fortunes of the commercial banks with subsequent job losses and, possibly,bankruptcy? By the way, what laws of the land empowers the Federal Government, which hires, punishes and fires its workers, to intervene on how a duly registered private entity decides to keep itself afloat the sinking margin of a troubled economy? Will Mr. President lend me his ears and call Ngige to order? In this democratic journey, it should be given that there should be a limit to ministerial rascality. C’mon! By the way, is the President aware that the people are incensed at the seeming lack of openness in the Presidency’s interface with the populace? These days, you hardly know what to believe. Somehow, the Presidency seems not to be feeling the pulse of the people again. It is becoming estranged and alienated from the real people. It is becoming reactionary instead of being proactive. This is very disturbing because it is telling on its approval rating. The signs are there for everyone to see.
For example, a crowd of religious bigots in Kano murdered an old lady over a simple disagreement on where to or not to perform a religious rite and it took the Presidency more than 48 hours to issue a terse statement, condemning the barbaric act with a cloudy reference to religion and religiosity. TheN, the President, like all mortals, was having a health-related ailment and the Presidency lived in denial until an online medium broke the news.
Even when it was finally agreed that the President would be indisposed for ten days to enable him receive adequate medical attention for an ear infection in the United Kingdom, his media minders still insist that the President is hale and hearty! How? Didn’t the President do the right thing by writing to the National Assembly that his deputy would take over as Acting President? Did he not tell reporters that he was sick just like every other mortal was bound to fall ill occasionally? So, why shroud a known fact with the pouch of open secrecy? Then, there is that question as to whether it makes sense for the President to add to the billions of dollars being wasted on medical tourism by Nigeria’s select group of elite. If the medical facilities that are in this country, including that of the prestigious National Hospital, cannot handle a President’s ear infection, what it means is that nothing has changed.
With three other ministers officially confirmed to be on sick bed as at Wednesday, how is anyone sure that these ones are not also somewhere in Europe or America undergoing treatment for back pain or recuperating after surgery or any other ailment for that matter! If all the eggs that come out of this change basket remain the same as it was in the past, why should the President expect anyone to believe him when he speaks on the imperative of patience amidst this extravagant waste? Listen sir, it sounds like a bird with a broken beak each time your administration repeatedly blames the present hardship on the 16 years of “mismanagement, corruption and inefficiency”. When what you dubbed a “temporary pain” begins to take the form and shape of an inelastic and endless stream of hopelessness, the people have no option but to romance doubt. They question why they should continue to trust a President that has fetched them a harvest of regrets instead of “abundance joy as we put our country firmly on the path of sustainable growth and development”. If only the President would listen and do something about the sorry twist in the tale, maybe his aching ear would get some relief, listening to the true beats that demand his urgent action. Just maybe!
NATION
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There is really no substance in this write up.