How much did I miss Buhari’s 2022 Independence Day speech? Not a jot! I made a super conscious effort not to even listen to, or watch, it belatedly. Why? You may ask and justifiably so, because to have an opinion about something, one needs to have some sort of knowledge about it. Otherwise such an opinion would be discounted as nothing but hot air, gibble-gabble, or just downright prating. Having been super disillusioned for pretty much the last four years (not that the preceding four was anything to write home about, but an allowance had to be made for the case of getting stuff into position), I just feel the need to say a thing or two before this horror show of a President winds up his unregimented regime of disasters and heads back to Daura to look back at what carnage he has made of Nigeria. I'm pretty certain that he'd look back with delusion and glee, rather than derision and regret.
I could not stress it seriously, and loudly, enough that I feel great shame in advancing Buhari’s cause in 2015 and again in 2019 but how I wish I had the proverbial crystal ball! The phrase ‘hindsight is a wonderful thing’ could hardly be more idoneous. Nevertheless, I, like many Nigerians, considered him the best of the worst bunch of political apples on both occassions; not that he was the sharpest knife in the drawer.
The multitudinousness of Buhari’s ineffectualness, and in a wide array of cases, abdication of responsibilities and unconscionable abandonment of duties,
are manifestly obvious, well-documented and widely commented upon. You see, we all are on the
receiving end of this non-governance as evidenced by the quotidian and rampant kidnappings (perpetrators almost invariably never caught); extrajudicial killings (very rarely satisfactorily investigated); the total breakdown of the tertiary education system (cue the almost year-long ASUU strike); the parlous state of the economy (does Nigeria even have a functional one?); the almost universal lack of employment or
business opportunities (the hundreds of thousands of graduates and post-graduates riding 'okadas' for survival tells its own story); the unrelenting depreciation of the Naira (making
business decisions an almost impossibility). The list is dispiritingly long and unedifying in its endlessness, and Buhari had
the tactlessness to proclaim that he had changed Nigeria! What a shameless
display of brute insensitivity and arrogant rodomontade! Oh, yes, he was right
in his proclamation. Yes, Buhari has changed Nigeria in ways that defy belief
and sane comprehension. Nigeria has never reached such an improbable and impossible low in
hope and expectation (not even in the God-awful days of Babangida and Abacha), which
has resulted in millions of youths and middle-aged Nigerians shipping out of
the country by the planeload, and even, by the busload, scrambling for the
nearest exit in desperation and exasperation in order to escape panhandling as a career.
As far as they are concerned, anywhere will do!! Nigeria, under Buhari’s watch,
has mortgaged the future of its citizens no end. Yet, a few that benefit from this insipient regime are often quick to paint such an impressive picture that only Leonardo da Vinci or Rembrandt could conceivably conjure up!
It is nigh impossible to paint a dimmer picture of our country, Nigerians
have never had it so hopelessly awful, it would be funny if it wasn’t so hurtful and
unendingly damaging. The plain truth is none of us, including those unborn,
will ever forget Buhari for the untellable and the almost irreversible damage
he did to the Nigerian consciousness, well-being and psyche.
Many a Nigerian has resorted to visiting the schlockmeister just to
clothe themselves and their families while millions have resigned their mere
existence to fate. The Nigerian passport is a magnet for derision while the
Naira is just marginally worth more than toilet paper. The political scene is
awash with the most unscrupulous beings who belong to worse than prisons while
the political climate is crowded by abdominous rapscallions who perceive the
national coffers as their meal ticket while the populace become straphangers on
the bus driving excruciatingly, albeit ever so slowly, towards hardscrabble existence. Is it not
pertinent to ask of each other, ‘Quo Vadis’? Where is the hope for Nigeria? How
do we even begin to define what hope is in the context of this level of
desperation and unmitigated want?
Now the General Elections are just around the corner, the insufferable and perennial
carpetbaggers are it again, promising hapless Nigerians Heaven on Earth, bread,
butter and jam, with the odd Indomie thrown in for good measure. The spirit of discernment has long ceased to be a value
Nigerians held high; that spirit has long given way to that of sheer discontentment,
utter disaffection and manifest disappointment. The joie de vivre Nigerians
were universally famous for has been all but snuffed out of them by the reckless
abandon with which their fortunes have been balkanized.
All I’ve got left to say for now is that we all need to lift our heads high, live as happily as we can, and look ahead in hope while we still have a remnant of it. From the ashes of ruin, Nigeria shall rise again like a phoenix, and we will begin de novo. I can bet my last dollar on it (whoops! Sorry, I almost said Naira).
In the meantime,
I say ‘pax vobiscum’, God bless Nigeria AGAIN; may the Almighty God rid us of
those malefactors whose nisus is to gormandize on our commonwealth and substitute them with
mortals who are composed of charity, bags of cojones, and chariness. Never such an unregimented regime in Nigeria ever again. EVER!!
