TheCable

BY SANI MUHAMMAD UZAIRU

At home, we face enormous challenges. Insecurity, pervasive corruption, the hitherto unending and seemingly impossible fuel and power shortages are the immediate concerns. We are going to tackle them head-on. Nigerians will not regret that they have entrusted national responsibility to us — Muhammadu Buhari, May 29, 2015.

From the promise of a great country, Nigeria seems to have become a broken nation in rudderless largely because unprecedented corruption, insecurity, and stagnated economy loom large whilst Mr. President remains in slumber.

The unabating rate of killings, stagflation and graft scandals rocking Buhari’s government has yet brought to the epiphany the subterfuge of a man wrongly addressed as Mai Gaskiyya. Even damning, the president’s day to day utterances have made it crystally glaring that he is utterly bereft of understanding of the theme of his key electoral pledges, security, economy, and corruption.

Today, the economy lies in ruin largely because of executive recklessness, impunity, indiscipline and irresponsibility, merciless looting of the resources of the people of Nigeria. Year in, year out, a humongous amount of the nation’s budget is used to service the very corrupt politicians that have brought the countries to its kneels while a large population of the country lives in squalor.
Whilst unfolding events have revealed the much-touted integrity of Buhari to be a farce, his zero tolerance policy on corruption has been impeached.

He is unlistening and has demonstrated some semblance of a power drunk ruler, besides his manifestly displayed dearth of political will to bring to book the ignominious members of his inner circle. Shakespeare in his book, Macbeth, wrote: ‘It is common knowledge that it is human nature to crave power. Also, that the more power that is acquired the more power hungry someone would become, and with this power they become more and more corrupt.’ In the same book, Macbeth symbolized this throughout the entire play. There was a strict and proportionate relationship between the amount of power Macbeth obtained and the corrupt acts he committed. When Macbeth had no title or had only the title of his father, Thane of Glamis, he exhibited little predilection for corruption. Essentially, the gist of Shakespeare’s exposition is that the true nature of a man cannot be predetermined until he is entrusted with power. With the woefully enduring developments in our polity, Shakespeare’s thesis fits the description of President Buhari.

No doubt his hypocrisy, insularity, inertia and the decision to appoint himself the minister of petroleum have combined to expose his underbelly. It is equally the bane of Nigerians today, as the inadequacy of refined petroleum has submerged us in untold hardship. And it is this decision that will eventually break the camel’s back of Mr President’s animal farm leadership at the centre. The reasons why he would become the petroleum minister can only be conjectured by discerning Nigerians.

His predisposition for making appointments that are skewed and preponderantly from a segment of the country, the section that contributes little to national development, with contemptible disregard for federal capital principle brings to question the legitimacy of his government. Peradventure, George Orwell had Buhari in mind when wrote in his book, Animal Farm that, ‘ man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.’ Obviously, the masses of this country, today, are deliberately given just as little to keep the wolf from the door despite their sacrifices.

But for how long will this injustice prevail? Hell has now broken loose, no thanks to the perceptible inequity in the system that robs Peter to pay Paul. And as Chinua Achebe in his revered book, Things Fall Apart, sums it up: turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Ultimately, the despicable fallouts from the maladministration of the change government are glaring for everyone to see. And perhaps, as has been observed with his deceitful party, the All Progressives Congress, President Buhari was desperate for power but never desperate to govern.

Uzairu, a political commentator, can be reached via [email protected]