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| Felix N.Jarikre. |
Without any question,
the political leadership of Nigeria
suffers from a desperate lack of vision and a destitute mentality. Their overriding
aim is to capture and maintain power. With violence, bare-faced deception, lies,
extreme propaganda, judicial trickery, they would stoop to anything, no matter
how base, in their attempt to take advantage of the weakness of their
opponents, and push them out of power. Reducing politics to a thinly-veiled
organised criminal activity, the people for whom they claim to be fighting are
disposable. Psychologically unprepared
to lead the people on the path of
abundant prosperity and progress, the knee-jerk reaction of the
political leadership at any point in time is to inflict massive hardship and
misery on them in the name of fiscal prudence and discipline.
President Muhammadu Buhari
travelled to India in October, and granted an interview to Nigerian Television
Authority and Channels TV. Defending himself against the claim that he
is slow, the president of Nigeria says
his government does not know where the money
to develop infrastructure would come from, talk-less of paying cabinet
ministers. According to him, before his coming to power the second time around,
Nigeria was materially and morally vandalised by agents of corruption who had
the capacity to fight back against any attempt to expose and recover their
loots.
If the president’s
intention was to lower the people’s expectations to avoid disappointment from
the government, he failed woefully. He only succeeded in casting a pall of
despair and gloom over an unsuspecting populace. Some of his self-serving
acolytes might imagine what Buhari said to be truth-telling, but it
inadvertently revealed a failure of imagination, lack of creativity and
resourcefulness in governance.
Thankfully, Buhari’s
so-called truth-telling did not go unchallenged as men like Alhaji Balarabe
Musa, Second Republic governor of old Kaduna State saw it as a ruse to score
political point and gain cheap popularity. Challenging the president to quit
lamenting, he said, “When you have people, you have everything. If you have 170
million people, you have 170 million ideas. And it is not possible to fail like
that. What we need is leadership. A
country with our huge human resources, crude oil deposits, flourishing
agricultural profile cannot be said to be broke. What we need is a government that can perform. We have APC
government that is in power, and for five months, they are not doing anything,
and all they are saying is that Nigeria is broke!”
Truly, in the face of
ravaging unemployment, massive retrenchment and layoff of workers, and
businesses grinding to a halt, can the people dare hold Buhari’s government
accountable to an economic agenda that is yet unknown? What can be done to
prevent oneself from stepping over the edge of hysteria at a time when the
president is saying there is no money to develop infrastructure because the
country has been vandalised , materially and morally, by ogres of corruption? Can we dare to entertain ourselves with a dose
of hope and optimism that Buhari and his crew are prepared to deploy fresh
ideas to tackle unemployment, deteriorating health services, and epileptic
electricity supply?
Rather than surrender
to mental paralysis or despair, Buhari’s government should have the presence of
mind to reflect and know that Nigerians ( including the 95 percent Wailing Wailers and 5 percent Lamenting Lamenters) are fed up with
recycled excuses and blame-games from the government. They are impatient with
economic stagnation. They are impatient with Buhari’s enthronement of nepotism
and tribalism under the guise of holding
on to “competence and meritocracy.” They are impatient with bad roads and bad
governance. They might be manipulated for a time and railroaded to applaud what
is thoroughly inexcusable, but they remain impatient with political leaders who
glibly say “I-don’t-sign-cheques” to
excuse mismanagement, misallocation and misappropriation of public funds.
Yes, they are impatient
with leaders who say “corruption-is-hard-to-define”
because they don’t take bribes. How or why would you take bribes when in
Nigeria, it is easy for a state governor to mistake the common purse for his
own personal purse?
Nigerians want actions
now, positive, innovative and practical actions that would take them on the
road of economic recovery, development and prosperity. They refuse to be
disposable cannon-fodders for politicians to step onto power and opulence.
The stakes are high.
Buhari is comfortable with maximum power, and he is not afraid to show his
ambition for power. He says he wants to be remembered as one “patriotic leader who fought corruption to a
standstill.’ All well and good. Corruption
itself is a symptom of an underlying sickness in a man or woman who is “destitute
of the truth”. Indeed, corruption
is a by-product of mental slavery.
Corruption thrives where there is mental destitution. Where fresh ideas to
develop the society, making it more productive and efficient, are not given
room to take roots, and grow, corruption flourishes. Where money-power, and not ideas, rule, corruption takes wings
.
But for
journalists and other concerned Nigerians who insist that the president should
not use this fight as a pretext to hound or persecute his political enemies,
the days and months ahead are going to be dangerous and treacherous. Would they
be treated as saboteurs, those who insist that Buhari should not remove himself
from accountability and transparency? Could the president expect neglectful silence from
Nigerians if he treats his political friends with kid-gloves who are alleged to
be neck-deep in official corruption?
One thing I know. For
too long, we have allowed the same cycle of expired politicians and retired military
generals with stale, degenerated ideas to re-invent and bring themselves into
political relevance, riding rough-shod over us
.
This is not the time to
sit on the sideline, and be satisfied with how critical we are of government
policies. We must get involved, and not abdicate to others our responsibility
to serve the society, at whatever level.
I am a teacher of the Bible,
and have decided to write a series of articles on the above subject, drawing
inexorable lessons and principles from the Bible, as a guide for anyone to
intervene and contribute as a leader and commander within the
political space of Nigeria and elsewhere...To
Be Continued.
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