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Most of us were part of a spirited
campaign way back in 2014 for the battle of votes against the clueless sitting
president of Nigeria and an end to the misery of the PDP political regime of
corruption and impunity in state affairs. However many of us were not fooled
into believing in the reeling zigzag metamorphoses of the political machineries
called PDP, APC and their likes, knowing them as a distinction
without a difference.
In the emergence of Messrs Buhari and Jonathan to the presidential candidacy of
both parties, active watchers had observed that the two personages were merely
Trojan horses that offered no real reformation or transformative possibilities
for the Nigerian nation. In this tragic leadership dilemma of a nation Buhari
was to ride to power only because he appeared dogged with his propaganda on a war
against corruption and decay of which his vaunted personal inclination to austerity
seemed the sole attestation.
Strictly speaking Nigeria was an utterly corrupt monstrosity of PDP mis-creation since 1999.
When Mr Buhari rode to power there was relief that zero level tolerance of
corruption had come to national culture. Even the Nigeria Police Force, the
world's most notoriously corrupt state killing machine, started to behave
differently.
But only tenuously.
After a few months when Mr Buhari betrayed his mandate with nepotism and
tribalism in governance, appointing his unmerited son of the North, Idris, above other senior elements of the hierarchy, the Nigerian Police went haywire
with its unbridled ethnicity and corruption pandemic in most every organisational
activity.
Mr Buhari failed to reform the driving force of corruption, ineptitude and
mediocrity in Nigeria being the Police. Mr Buhari proved, like other failed
Nigerian leaders that preceded him, that Police of Nigeria is only a political
instrument of any elite in power, whose mendacity may be pampered as long as
ordinary citizens are the victims and the right of the common man is pillaged
abused and desecrated.
Otherwise what is Idris still doing in office as Inspector General of Police
when his office is tainted with compromising gifts of SUV to wife of the
president who happens to be Buhari the anti corruption crusader himself? Does Mr
Buhari find time to reflect on the series of failures and compromises that have
tainted his administration and confined it to another hope lost for the Nigerian
dream? One cannot wait to align all human terrestrial intelligence and resources towards
extirpating the disappointing phenomenon of this little educated northern
irredentist from our national scene come 2019.
But history is about to repeat itself in the power struggle for the soul of
Nigeria come 2019.
First off, Mr Atiku's legitimate interest to govern Nigeria must be seen in the
context of the recurring paradigms that have kept the country blindfolded and
tottering on the brink of collapse. Sadly Mr Atiku, a liberal Northerner from
Adamawa, may be seen as offering no credible alternative to Mr Buhari, a
parochial Northerner from Daura.
Mr Atiku's laudable credentials as a successful businessman against Mr Buhari
whose business failure as a retired general of Nigeria's genocidal army and a
farmer of no consequence is still perceived as hugely symptomatic of the state
capture of national resources by her serving elite. Their legacy has been
looting the commonwealth for personal gains for their families, cronies and army
of sycophantic nationals and political hirelings at senate and state government
levels.
Second Point: There are fears the war against corruption and impunity may be dead on arrival
with a Mr Atiku presidency.
Otherwise, in his case, what does Mr Atiku mean by attempting to deflate an
international ranking of the insanely corrupt and brutish Nigeria Police Force
as wrongful assessment? If Mr Atiku is part of the elite who find themselves at
the echelons of the master-slave mind rut upon which the worst police outfit in
the world thrives to inflict its savagery on Nigerian youths and unprotected
citizens, where then is Atiku's empathy so lacking in a Buhari?
And now with his current political campaign on youth development is it not
noticeable that the restoration of true federalism via restructuring of such a
backward polity as Nigeria's no longer seems the pillar of Mr Atiku's
presidential campaign? Is it because such crucially urgent remediation need of a
failed state is not important to the North and inflames the most reactionary of
the parasitic elements among Messrs Buhari's and Atiku's Northern region?
In any case Mr Atiku may have dealt himself a death stroke of ill luck by
returning to the consort of the same vile band of pillagers and brigands in the
People's Democratic Party PDP who left this nation in economic ruins and
tatters.
It will be hard to sell to any thinking Nigerian - if thoughtfulness will be
part of the Nigerian mental quality in the coming 2019 elections - that the
political party that elevated corruption to statecraft should swing back in
power to continue the pillage where they left off just because Atiku has
returned home to the party of looters of treasury.
Like the average Nigerian entrepreneur will say, it will be hard market to sell.
Mr Atiku ought to align forces with the rising list of credible Nigerian
entrepreneurs, technocrats and resource persons who are working hard and
diligently to pull the country out of the rot of patronage politics, 95 versus 5
per centers, sectionalism, nepotism, pious religionism and social hypocrisy of
the present Mr Buhari regime.
Above all, Atiku should be seen consorting with his best national team of world
class professionals, young nationalists and patriots whose antecedents, not
aggrandised with the foul stereotype of maverick self interest, have
strengthened national consciousness and pride of belonging through offering
consistent blueprints for economic transformation and liberation of society from
the horde of vampires that infested it since independence.
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Chin Ce can be reached on Twitter @ceChinCe and on mobile 09030668650
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