Outing the cycle of national cluelessness
by Chin Ce
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 by the zigzag metamorphoses of the political machineries called PDP, APC and their likes, knowing each of them as a distinction without a difference.
On 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. As averred in a 2005 memorial regarding our Politics of Nationhood, that party was and has been a charade of society’s dregs avoided like anyone would a horde of flies, especially by the enlightened minority of the country’s statesmen.
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 but 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 tainted with compromising gifts of SUV to wife of the president who happens to be Buhari the anti corruption crusader himself? What is Malami doing in Aso Rock as AGF having compromised Mr Buhari himself with a most embarrassing Mainagate? Why has his EFCC not prosecuted his erstwhile SGF for grievous money laundering and fraud as rightly being done to other political opponents? The queries are legion but 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 project? Many Nigerians cannot wait to align all terrestrial resources towards extirpating the disappointing phenomenon of this little educated northern irredentist from the national scene come 2019.
Nevertheless history seems set 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 finally 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 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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The third force already exists we dont need any one like Obasonjo to frustrate the movement and start his own so as to claim it was his idea. Join the progressives for Nigeria redeemed. Lets ignore BUHARI APC OBASONJO PDP and their likes.