by Eze
Eluchie,
By his
failure, in his maiden ‘democracy day’ address (whatever this is supposed to
mean in a country where vestiges of totalitarianism reign supreme), to
apologize for the mass murders and other atrocities committed by troops under his overall command
against members of the Shiite Islamist sect in Zaria (Northern Nigeria) and in ongoing efforts
against the people of the oil producing regions of Nigeria’s delta and his
non-mention of any plans of addressing the mass murders and other atrocities
committed by the acclaimed 4th most deadly terror outfit in the
world, the Fulani Herdsmen, across virtually all parts of Nigeria; and choosing
rather to continue on a path of wailing over what had transpired, focus on
spurious gains of a partisan and skewed ‘anti-corruption war’ and celebrate the
highly questionable and doubtful
release-cum-arrest-cum-capture of supposedly 2 out of as yet unknown
number of students ‘abducted’ from Chibok over 700 days ago, Muhammadu Buhari
has merely broadcast to the world that in Nigeria, we are stuck with business
as usual, and the following will continue:–
a. The lies
will continue with increasing ferocity;
b. Impunity
by the military will be condones and covered;
c. Blaming
past administration for present failures will continue;
d. The
killings by Fulani Herdsmen will continue with increased frenzy;
e. The
Chibok ‘abductions’ charade will continue to serve propaganda and political
purposes;
f. The lust
for cheap petro-dollars, even at the expense of human lives, will continue;
Inadvertently, the Presidential address
revealed that rather than address systemic corruption which had for decades
crippled the Nigerian system, efforts were merely being focused on targeting
individuals having opposing political views and creating new, ‘more loyal’ beneficiaries
for the corrupt system. The announcement that over 43,000 ‘ghost workers’ had
been discovered in the Federal workforce, without any person being prosecuted
for receiving salaries {on behalf of these ‘ghost workers} amounting to
billions of Naira for this workers and cataloguing drain-pipes in the system
without mentioning any concrete efforts or plans to plugging such loop-holes
only indicates that at the end of the current junta, Nigeria, Nigerians and the
international community will likewise be regaled with ‘stories’ of monumental
fleecing of the national treasury.
Towards the
end of a lacklustre ramble, and desperate to show that something positive has accrued
to the Nigerian State as a result of his thus far 1-year stewardship, Buhari
ventures to throw thank-you’s to all manners of agencies and countries,
including to the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescents
which he terms ‘a UN agency’, to “France, the US, UK and China” for contributing
to efforts at tackling the Ebola Virus, a feat which was attained long before
the emergence of the present junta; finally seemingly spicing up the drab
performance with a potpourri of phantom undebated, ill-thought white-elephant ‘promises’
to Nigeria’s poor and vanquished masses, promises which like many sundry
promises of the junta will be soon be denied and thrown into the junk-bin of
lies severally told to Nigerians.
A monumental
mistake of historical proportions was made in Nigeria on 29th May 2015 when the present junta was (s)elected into office. It will be unhealthy
to wait till 29th May 2019 to reverse the mistake, and I doubt if the country can survive the delay, to correct same. Efforts, within the
ambit of legality and our Constitutional framework, should be hastened to
salvage our contraption from the unfortunate direction it is headed under the
present junta.
Picture: Nigeria’s lackluster and clueless ruler, Muhammadu Buhari.
