In recent times, there have been serious artillery bombardments of the two-prong pedigree upon which the Muhammadu Buhari government rode into the hearts of Nigerians and into power. Buhari stood on the dual prong of anti-corruption and restoring people’s sagging faith in government. The Economist had badly shelled what was left of the credibility of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan when it referred to him as running a “clueless government” and was an “ineffectual buffoon who let politicians fill their pockets with impunity.” So while the tag of buffoonery and cluelessness stuck to Jonathan like a leech, Buhari wore on his lapel his 1984 medal of austere personal lifestyle and highly advertised menacing frown at corruption. Conscripted by those evocative words, “if Nigerians don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria,” Nigerians, who took it literally to mean abridging the perceived grossly corrupt government of Jonathan, united at the polls to throw the Jonathan crew out of the Aso Rock Villa. But, two years, five months down the administration of Buhari, the government is unraveling as equally clueless about what to do with the maggots which wriggle in the Nigerian public domain.
The situation is so bad today that if Nigeria were a country which conducts opinion polls about the ratings of its President, Buhari’s plummeting statistics would ring like a bell. So when a verbal exchange ensued recently between Jonathan and the presidential office over the former president’s condemnation of the Buhari government as oscillating on same spot since ascending power, and the Buhari office, thudding its chest to say that the difference between its government and Jonathan’s was that Nigerians trusted Buhari, it was apparent that the Buhari crew had become so ostracized from the people it administers. Rather than trust, the cynicism, disappointment, shock and disdain for the Buhari government today are so huge and widespread that they could be likened to a pestilence.
Even as a surging crowd shouted Sai Baba in cultic following of Buhari in 2015, two of the former Head of State’s sore thumbs stuck out: his alleged ethnic bigotry in favour of his Hausa/Fulani ancestry and his alleged lack of depth. The latter was why even Jonathan, ruled out from the comity of brainy persons, was downcast when Bola Tinubu and his crew rationalized why the Daura-born retired General would not be at the national public debate. Jonathan was sure that if Buhari ever appeared at that debate, he would unravel the hemlock that the Tinubus were forcing down the throats of the Nigerian people. But never ever, in the people’s faintest imagination, did it occur to those who lined up for hours at the polls, that Buhari would be so enviable of Jonathan’s Economist ‘laurel’ of “ineffectual buffoon who let politicians fill their pockets with impunity” that corruption would become the official imprimatur of his own government too. Buhari adds to these two a presidential silence to national complaints which verges on disdain for the people or what I once termed a you-may-go-jump-inside-the-River-Niger presidential disposition.
Take for instance the Senate’s indictment of Buhari’s erstwhile Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal. While the probe was afoot, Buhari wrote the legislature, defending Babachir of the charge, maintaining that Babachir was neither given fair hearing before the indictment nor the company allegedly used for the perpetration of the corruption roulette invited by the Shehu Sani committee. Babachir was being investigated on alleged breach of Nigerian laws in the sloppy manner contracts were awarded by the Presidential Initiative for the North East (PINE). He was thus indicted for receiving N200 million contract to clear “invasive plant species” in Yobe State through a company, Rholavision Nigeria Limited. Buhari’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has not done the needful on it.
Not long after, specifically on April 20, 2017, Nigerians were alarmed by the discovery of unascertained large amounts of foreign and local currencies by the EFCC in a residential apartment in the Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos, which the NIA DG, Ayo Oke was connected to. In the midst of buck-passing as to the paternity of the fund, Buhari announced the suspension of Oke and Babachir Lawal and set up a three-man committee which comprised the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, the National Security Adviser, and headed by the Vice President. Their brief was to investigate the allegations and 14 days given to do so. Since August 23 when the report was submitted to Buhari, mum has been the word.
A few weeks ago, a leaked memo from the Minister of State, Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu alleging that the GMD, NNPC Maikanti Baru, singlehandedly and in flagrant disdain for process, awarded contracts of $25 billion in excess of national budget, became another sore thumb of the Buhari government. Incoherent, implausible and ineffective attempts were made to explain this national rot which many believed was a conduit through which government was mopping up cash for the 2019 election but till today, Buhari has remained worryingly quiet about this national tragedy.
Like an internal contradiction primed to self-destruct, wife of the president, Aisha and daughter, Zahra, a few weeks ago, also burst the Buhari government rot pipe. On her Instagram page, Aisha had criticized the Permanent Secretary of the State House, Jalal Arabi, alleging that at the Aso Rock clinic, not even Paracetamol tablets or syringe could be found, despite a sum of N3 billion budgeted for the provision of drugs.
And now, Nigerians opened their mouths agape when told a few days ago of the reinstatement of the former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdulrasheed Maina, as acting director, Human Resources Department, in the Ministry of Interior by the Buhari government. Maina had hitherto been embroiled in a pending corruption trial and was declared wanted by the EFCC. In 2012, Maina was accused of being at the forefront of a massive national pension heist of about N100 billion after being drafted by the Jonathan administration to sanitize the pension system. He absconded from public radar ever since and was only recently heard of upon his reinstatement and even elevation by the government.
The Maina menace has blown open ethnic and connivance theory allegations against the Buhari government. The first was that Maina’s ethnicity was the only passport for the governmental impunity that restored him to service rather than prison. Commentators upon commentators have imagined what would have been the fate of a Maina of a different ethnic grouping from the president’s, judging by Buhari’s long-drawn ethnic advertisement. Second, the divergent and grossly contradictory statements from the presidency on Maina have proven that the Villa was not only complicit in this national dross, it indeed gave Maina a fertilized ground to fester. Were the maggots that surrounded the infamous name of Maina so negligible that whoever recommended him for a comeback into the service didn’t notice the Maina odour? How could the president not be aware of such odour, even from the Presidential Villa? So when presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu drew the Jonathan government into the fray, the presidency merely succeeded in finally unraveling as mendacious and capable of being likened to the cushion chair which, outwardly, beautifully attracts but indeed, inwardly stomachs dirt.
On each occasion when presidential affirmation of what it advertises is needed, President Buhari disappoints with his age-long insouciant silence. In the thick of the raging allegation of Maina’s re-absorption, the presidency issued a statement of Buhari’s displeasure with the Maina odour and asked that a report be made available to him before the close of work that day. Presidency confirmed that the report was indeed made that same day. Today, more than 120 hours after its submission, the report has gone into the silence pouch of President Buhari like the report on Oke, Babachir and their allies.
It is painful to submit that corruption is making a gossamer round the Buhari government, just like it did with its predecessor. While Buhari as a person hasn’t disappointed in his personal lifestyle, he is surrounded by menacing wolves and hounds that bay for blood every hour. These hounds are locatable in every of the rot that has dragged him down and rubbished the residue of his governmental integrity. Not only is there no institutional framework to fight corruption since 2015, corruption is metastasizing by the day in this government. Only few days ago, Senator Isa Misau alleged that IG of Police, who has a spidery necklace of corruption on his neck, gave the First Lady two Prado jeeps. Like each of those allegations, this too would soon dissolve into nothingness. Immigration, customs, armed forces, etc are still as corrupt as ever under this government; contracts are still being hawked like sachet water by mallams in Abuja and impunity is festering by the day as it did with earlier governments. It is apparent that maggots are daily being served a la carte at the Aso Rock Villa.
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Ali’s curious thesis
The Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Colonel Hameed Ali, (rtd) spoke truth to power on Friday. He was speaking at the inauguration of the Buhari Support Organization’s office in Abuja. Fuming, Ali said that the Buhari government had been hijacked by some Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members who decamped into the All Progressives Congress (APC) and that was why the government had been failing woefully and the centre can yet not hold for the party and its administration.
To put the Colonel in perspective, some of the ex-PDPs who decamped into the APC were Rotimi Amaechi, Bukola Saraki and a few others.
As well said as Ali’s statement is on the railroad of the Buhari government, he made the same mistake that many analysts of the polity make. As things stand right now, there is not even a thin veneer demarcating the PDP government of 16 years from the APC’s at the moment. To believe Ali is to subscribe to the belief that ideological separation demarcates both parties. There is really no difference between the two parties and their members. While PDP members come to political party and government with a scavenging mind, APC members don’t join theirs with lesser eye on sucking the nectar dry. It is their Nigerian foundation that is faulty. To now place the failure of the Buhari government on the influx of the PDP into APC is a fallacy of generalization that even a sophomore of logic would not commit.
What this writer thinks went wrong is that Buhari never had a grip of governance for once. His narrow perspective of the Nigerian which necessitated him to gather Fulani vermin and termites of dubious pedigree round his government is the culprit. This is worsened by his failing health which makes him incapable of overseeing national events. The result is this slant and slow descent into the precipice of everything we thought would be bright and beautiful. Is Ali listening?
