“I pledge myself and the government to the rule of law, in which none shall be so above the law that they are not subject to its dictates, and none shall be so below it that they are not availed of its protection. You shall be able to go to bed knowing that you are safe and that your constitutional rights remain in safe hands.”
– Muhammadu Buhari, acceptance speech as president-elect, April 1, 2015.
I wish President Buhari could read these words contained in his acceptance speech when he received his certificate of return as president-elect on April 1, 2015. If for no other reason he would discover that he has not lived up to his own part of the covenant with the Nigerian people. Under his watch, godfathers and untouchables taunt Nigerians with their invincibility and superiority over the laws of our nation. Under his watch poor and hapless citizens are slaughtered on a daily basis by a bunch of serial murderers, with nothing happening to the criminals. Those Nigerians who go to bed with the assurances that their rights and their lives are in safe hands do not wake up. They are murdered in their sleep.
As I have recently stated elsewhere, a quiet civil war is underway. Again and again, Southern Kaduna has emerged as a metaphor for a nation that watches helplessly and unperturbed while an amorphous and clandestine league of death merchants amuse themselves with the blood of innocent citizens. When we are beginning to think that one spasmodic deluge of blood has finally come to an end, we suddenly find ourselves in the throes of another scene of mayhem and mass murder. As things presently stand, we seem to have collectively resigned ourselves to fate while a rampaging squad of psychopaths freely fulfils its mission of creating a lake of blood in the very heart of our nation. Everywhere you turn to today, from North to South and from East to West, Nigeria is heating beyond boiling point temperature. Agents of the state and criminal elements are now in a fierce competition for who can kill the most number of people.
In the East, armed policemen descend ruthlessly on unarmed IPOB protesters and discharge their bullets on them. In the North and Middle Belt, suspected herdsmen and their mercenaries trained in the art of systematic liquidation of human lives continue to wreck havoc of untold magnitude. As environmental degradation and backwardness cast a dark pall over the lives of citizens in the Niger Delta region, militants have taken to incessant destruction of oil and gas installations, albeit the hazards to their own lives and those of their people. We see hypocrisy on the part of our political leaders in their persistent failure to address the root causes of the Niger Delta crisis. All the stopgap measures over the past two decades have yielded nothing but further violence and destruction. This year 2017 will mark 22 years since the gruesome execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni sons on account of their struggle for the emancipation of their people. Yet the circumstances that gave rise to that dark chapter of our national history still hangs ominously over this nation. Environmental degradation continues to cast a death spell over the lives of our citizens in that part of the country. A region that has given birth to Nigeria’s prosperity still finds its people living in abysmally subhuman conditions.
In the South West, armed policemen rain their bullets and teargas on hapless university students for daring to protest the indiscriminate killing of their colleagues. As we struggle to grapple with the aftermath of the atrocities wrecked by Boko Haram on the psyche of our nation, we suddenly hear of an accidental bombing of IDPs camp in Rann, Borno State, by a Nigerian Air Force fighter jet, which has left over 200 persons dead and over a hundred injured. A surgeon with the International Committee of the Red Cross, who narrated his experience to a national newspaper reporter, spoke of medical workers of international aid organisations conducting no fewer than 68 surgeries in 48 hours, mostly on women and children.
What about the casualties arising from the recent collapsed church building in Uyo and the collapsed building in a Lagos police barracks? A few months ago, a detachment of soldiers from the Nigerian Army descended on a procession of Shiites in Kaduna and liquidated over 300 human lives. Nothing has happened. No one has been brought to book. Impunity is the answer! Today, it would seem that all sectors of our national life have been dangerously positioned to spew out blood and tears. What sane nation is there on earth that can cope with such wanton destruction of human lives? What further evidence do we need to know that the whole of Nigeria today has come under demonic and evil forces?
Under President Muhammadu Buhari, the architecture of governance has practically collapsed, leaving yawning gaps to be exploited by criminal elements. To show how indifferent and undisturbed our president is by the recurring decimals of mayhem all over the country, he jetted out of Nigeria to Britain some days ago for medical vacation, all at Nigeria’s expense. If he could do this when his country is on fire, it only shows how far removed he is from the reality of what is happening. This was the same man who during the election campaigns promised to end medical tourism in Nigeria. Today he has become the best advertisement for all that is wrong with our national healthcare system. Four months ago, he was in London to take care of an ear infection, and he ended up spending ‘only’ £50,000 of Nigerian taxpayers money. The embarrassing joke of Buhari’s media henchmen was that his acceptance to spend ‘only’ a paltry sum for his medical safari was a mark of his austerity, accountability and desire to curb waste. How much insult to our collective Nigerian sensibility!
Yet in America, we are reportedly told that Joe Biden who had served for 35 years as a senator and 8 years as vice president was unable to raise enough money to pay for his son’s cancer treatment. His son was an Iraqi war veteran before be became attorney general of Delaware State. Yet both father and son could not meet the financial obligation for the son’s treatment. It was in Biden’s bid to sell his house to assist his son that President Barack Obama volunteered to write off the medical bill at his own expense. Any patriotic Nigerian who reads this must stop to think about our country and about how our transparency and accountability aptitude for leadership has reached its lowest ebb.
Nearly six decades after independence, Nigeria has no world-class university, hospital or even tourist attraction. Thieves and rogues continue to fester around the corridors of power for their own selfish interests like maggots around excreta. The whole idea of leadership as an avenue to serve the public good has been totally lost on us. Politics is largely seen today as a means of making quick money. One who enters politics today and does not dip his hands in the public till is often considered a fool; and not many Nigerians want to be fools. Many of us thought that things would change drastically with President Buhari. On the contrary things have turned out far worse that we imagined.
With Buhari and under Buhari, a government that rode to power on the crest of banishing corruption and impunity in the land now carries and openly celebrates the virus of its own infection. But beyond the hypocrisy of the Buhari administration in the fight against corruption, we see how President Buhari’s majestic silence in matters of serious national importance has become one of our biggest national leadership catastrophes. Even when he chooses to speak, there is an unusual fondness for drag and delay. This tendency to respond to everyday governance issues after maximal delay has now turned out to be a contagion that afflicts both the president and his entire administration. Unlike other world leaders in civilised climes, President Buhari cannot draw up a list of three trouble spots that he has personally visited since he became president. And there are many of such places from the North East to the Niger Delta, to Ukpabi Nimbo and to Agatu among others. Carnage of monumental proportion takes place in this country every other time and the grieving citizens hardly find their leader on their side. Does this not say something about the president’s perception of the value of the life of his fellow citizens?
When we criticise President Muhammadu Buhari on account of his abysmally poor leadership and governance aptitude, our criticism is not borne out of hatred for the president, but out of love for our fatherland. We know the great potentials and possibilities that abound for this nation and her people if we have the right kind of leaders: courageous leaders who can take on vested interests, visionary leaders who can build a policy for governance marked by an extraordinary combination of grit and persistence, morally upright leaders whose attitude portrays zero-tolerance for corruption and impunity. That is the kind of leader that Nigeria desperately needs. We need a leader who embodies compassion and sensitivity: a man who can cry with those who weep and can laugh with those who are happy.
Emmanuel Ojeifo is a Catholic Priest..
No comments:
Post a Comment