The operational system of governance became more deceptive, corrupt, sycophantic and idiotic under the All Progressives Congress (APC) style because for the very first time, ordinary people were unconsciously transformed from being watchdogs of their leaders to praise singers, bootlickers, sycophants and in few cases murderers of opponents resisting tyranny as a governing mechanism.
For instance, a poorly exposed and mannered member in the House of Representatives from one of Bauchi State’s federal constituencies in the central zone representing less than 400,000 people has woefully failed to give robust representation due to incapacitation and intellectuality, but criminally catapulted himself through corrupt practices, swindles, scams and looting sprees to acceptable pedestal, in parliament and in his wildest imagination and primitive thinking, expects the very people he shortchanges and survives on their mandate to appreciate him beyond 2027.
The other dullard, a first timer from one of the federal constituencies in Bauchi South is there hobnobbing with women of easy virtue, deceiving and cleverly planning scarcism against his constituents as he deserts the federal constituency in totality but sends lapdogs as his representatives to the constituents in most times with few repackaged bags of probably expired grains in the name of palliative for accolades.
The same political novice with character deficiency for public appeal nocturnally and sadistically turns round to blackmail and ridicule the reputation of senior members of his constituency and misuses his opportunity in parliament to frustrate and scuttle the rising profile of those his senior players as a stay-put strategy against future aspiration by those his seniors to the position he occupies and still expect to be appreciated and celebrated by same people he kills silently with working tools of blackmail, deceit, and pretence despite being considered as mere settler in the federal constituency without ancestral base.
He is a character that has already overstayed his welcome within the short period he has stayed in parliament warming the seat with poor record that deserves no Thank You but a chase out to rescue the impoverished and grossly underdeveloped constituency he represents.
That is a federal lawmaker out of greed and lust for quick wealth to disconnect from the scourge of poverty he was enmeshed and almost grounded, hurriedly flouted two proxy companies specifically to corner constituency project contracts as well as contracts from his local government with the intent to swindle the contract sum and abandon the contract without challenge. The two companies from tracking record, seems to have no fix address for contact anywhere other than the personal residence of the crook located at Gwarimpa in the Federal Capital Territory as those submitted address for registration with Corporate Affairs Commission remain fake.
A case of a typical village criminal battling a sordid past, pounding the political turf in borrowed robe boasting of being a grassroots politician that cannot visit his imagined grassroots even when the grassroots is under threats of annihilation and persistent banditry attacks but unleashing mayhem piecemeal on his constituents as they bleed while he shortchanges them with pride.
A federal parliamentarian just on roll call but cannot boast of a single completed 2-km standard road anywhere within the federal constituency he represents or other basic amenities provided to the people. Shamelessly, he accompanies his peers with air of authority to commission their projects in their constituencies but he is yet to invite even his godfather to commission any completed project because there is none to his credit.
That’s a legislator, to satisfy his deceitful mechanism, repainted and delivered refurbished vehicles and ambulances to a mal-functional health facility and a police outpost to a community without portable water. The reasoning faculty of that federal lawmaker is more devilish than normal. He is adjudged as a mistaken creation trusted with a political test far above his reasoning faculty and exposure. He survives on sycophancy to those on top.
Not minding the incapacitation of such a character snoring and loitering in parliament but active in scams and lootings, stammers to scam with bulging eyes glued on public purse for harm and barks at the slightest challenge to dispense venom from his smelly mouth like a wild wounded cobra under threat of a kill sending shivers to the marrow of his hangers-on that know of his existence.
Nigerians have definitely found themselves at the desert end of their green pasture with those types of characters in parliament and in positions of authority. There are from my rating only few patriots left for now to lead the charge for our world’s lost splendors at various strata of governance. The much expected exiting President Tinubu, and few others in the race for 2027 elective offices.
Before he exits on May 29, 2027, the incumbent president seemed to be our best hope of snatching Nigeria from the jaws of decline and devastation but has woefully failed. But he won’t save Nigeria from his one year antecedents.
Someone else will, and probably it may be Atiku Abubakar or at worst, Peter Gregory Obi. Tinubu can only prepare us for the one who will lead the charge for Nigeria’s lost splendors. The Lagos born politician cannot tease our practiced tremble to affect the bounteous tumult. This is because he has lost the battle against the elements he swore to neuter.
This minute, Tinubu, a romanticized revolutionary by his appendages functions as manipulative integer in the designs of masterminds he swore to get rid of.
Emi lo kan apologists will frantically condemn this. They will say: “Are you saying there is no progress under Tinubu’s presidency?” “You are only writing what you have been paid to write and publicize by opponents”. But I only respond to such wailers after rating their intelligent quotient with cautionary silence to their hideous blather as I usually do with pity.
There was a time I heartily rooted for Buhari and few others in leadership positions. I had wanted them to succeed but not to recognize my contribution for any pecuniary gain because there is none to offer or solicit from any of them. I still want Buhari to succeed but not as our hope for the future but as the man who is to usher in one of Nigeria’s most effective leadership from the choice of Nigerians in 2023. Sadly, the leader most Nigerians are seeking for is not part of Buhari’s ‘Change Movement’ but a true capacitated democrat on the other strong divide.
Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC)’s victory at the 2015 general elections was no doubt cathartic, a resounding response by Nigerian electorate to the alleged 16 years of misrule by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that has now become the most preferred party by most Nigerians to return to power.
But rather than the APC to serve us to a clean breath of fresh air, Buhari’s leadership offers a mean draft of fresh stench and misery. Rather than take us on a voyage from myth to truth, plunder to plenitude. Buhari and his APC have taken Nigeria on yet another hazardous odyssey from the old myth to new myth, familiar ugliness to fresh grotesqueness. The 2022 national budget, like the previous ones, presage revolting realities and fulfills unpleasant stereotypes.
Buhari’s “Budget of Recovery and Growth” was expected to imbue Nigeria’s plummeting economy with sustainable growth. It should be his government’s manifesto of prudence and probity. Alas! These intrinsic traits that were used to vigorously market candidate—Buhari to the electorate during the 2015 and 2019 elections assumed creepy mutation.
Permit me to make reference to the 2017 budget for the sake of this discourse. According the 2017 budget, President Buhari spent N53million to drain the septic tank in Aso Rock Presidential Villa where he resides. Thus he gives a whooping N145, 000 daily just to drain human waste. Former President Jonathan had a budget of N75million for the same purpose in 2015. In 2016, President Buhari doled out only N6million for same purpose. This simply means the excreta charge went up by 1050%, compared with the 2016 budget. My apology goes to Mr. President and his late Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari.
Buhari also earmarked N43billion as State House operational cost although Jonathan had earlier budgeted about N23.5billion in 2015 for the same purpose. Yet there was a budget of N77.5million for Aso Villa rent although Nigerian tax payers own the property.
Two years ago, the rent was N22.5million. In 2016 it was pegged at about N28million. Nigerian tax payers built the presidential villa, yet Buhari, like Jonathan, keep on extorting us for its rent. He is making us pay for the property we own.
But rather than pander to trending anti-Buhari sentiments, I prefer a leap of fate and aver that Buhari was not aware of the gross, dubious and brazen attempts to ‘pad’ the 2017 budget and siphon public fund to suspicious draining pipes. But that also implied that the President had no clue about goings in his office and that, his super ‘change’ team was hardly the band of progressives he touted them to be during and after the campaign.
As you read, most members of his team are embroiled in one scam or nasty corruption scandal or the other yet Buhari takes pride in telling critics to stop tarring his team mates with the brush of corruption without facts. When you objectively criticize him for his glaring inadequacies, he laments that it is corruption that is fighting back with big money and dubious media.
Buhari scorns criticism from local media but he is always too eager to scurry to the foreign media to ‘tell his story’.
It is about time Buhari understands that no matter how adroitly he wheels or somersaults before the foreign media, their narrative will always fulfill the nuances and politics of their governments’ agenda or ‘enlightened self-interests’ against Nigeria and his government. Why is he desperate to earn foreign media’s approval? His frantic attempts to tower positively in their ratings, reduces him in stature and sullies the office of the President he occupies.
Rather than waste quality time and tax payers money, doing PR waltz to the damming opus of foreign governments and media, Buhari should accept his shortcomings as recounted by objective local analysts and take conscious steps to correct them. Agreed, his team of media nullifiers and sycophants will always tell him to ignore domestic narratives, dismissing them as part of the devious plots of his political detractors. But were his political ‘detractors’ responsible for padding the budget in every suspicious manner?
Are his so called ‘detractors’ responsible for his inadequacies and failed promises? Are they responsible for his barely disguised contempt for the ‘average’ Nigerian? Are Buhari’s detractors responsible for his groupies’ vicious barks against differing opinions and criticism of his shortcomings?
It is never okay for him to dismiss his critics and the average Nigerian as ‘incorrigible’ elements desperate to sustain the country’s culture of corruption. His government too is super corrupt. A cursory glance at his cabinet for instance, evokes unavoidable revulsion. His government should stop whining about his predecessor’s devastation of everything. He chanted ‘change’ and promised to halt the country’s spiral of death. He was even daring enough to outline measures and give timelines in which he would rescue Nigeria which he has failed.
Of course, some of us know he was simply grandstanding, playing to the gallery. But we hoped he would honour his words but he has not. It is tragic to see him mutate from an ardent critic of corrupt systems to a perpetuator of similar system if not worse. Buhari takes one step forward and 21 steps backwards with his anti-corruption fight- no sentences, no prosecutions, just politics.
As part of his political game, he awarded crude oil deals to a selected few Nigerians. Inadvertently, he created yet another band of billionaire oil magnets with pitiful entitlement mentality—a glance at the list of beneficiaries will repulse any sane mind. What he did contradicts his promise to rid the oil sector of corruption and reactivate the country’s moribund refineries.
On Buhari’s watch, the usual culprits were licensed to commit the same sins for which he criticized Jonathan but expect accolades in return.
Finally, as Buhari exits power, Nigerians must have learnt the tricks used to install Buhari as president by the APC cobblers in 2015. They are back to the drawing board to roll out other murderous plans if we mistakenly trust them again with power. Nigerians have suffered enough in the eight years of Buhari’s clueless leadership. Those so unfortunate that could not absorb the hardship artificially created, hurriedly joined their ancestors in the great beyond. We that have resisted with determination and prayers to survive are not better than the living dead. We have experienced what clueless and inept leadership entails. We can never repeat the 2015 foolishness to vote another set of leaders without NAFDAC Numbers having expired years back. In God We Trust!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues.
