PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency is entering its most deviations yet. The political landscape is becoming deformed by divisions, deviations and the questionable paradigm of change which is yet to bring in any change in the polity. The roundaboutation of our political structure with its inbuilt impunity against perceived enemies and adversaries does not help the progressive aspirations of our democratic renewal one jot. Buhari is an ideal president that fits our yearning for a new Nigeria, but when that idealism is hostage to some secretive actors called cabal, then we have to speak truth to power in a way that transcends cheap partisanship.
Over a year ago, Nigeria was a cyclone of disastrous political experiment under PDP. We lived under the fiction of permanent abundance while Nigeria was being mismanaged and damaged. There was widespread industrial fabrication of purpose-designed corruption without any communal sense of shame among the actors who relentlessly share the loot of our common wealth. The aftershock was the Dasukigate – the man propelled ATM machine that dispenses money among elites without any sense of moral shame. The elites, through Dasukigate, perfected a way to suck this nation dry.
Nigerians, filled with ambition, patriotism and hope for a better tomorrow waited for a messiah. A kind of Mosaic figure who will roam the wilderness and bring home the lost, the tired, the hungry, the thirsty, the demoralised, the battered and the dying. We wanted to plan our lives differently. Millions called for revolution. But that call receded into apathy. The facts of our despoliation and exploitation stared and mocked us in the face. The excesses which were meant to be used to develop this battered nation were instead cornered by the elites and the result were the opulent mansions owned by politicians which dotted many gentrified Abuja streets from Maitama to…yes, fill the gap.
ALSO SEE: Buhari faces high risk of impeachment — Iloh
In the midst of our tribulation, tragedy and travail, President Muhammadu Buhari emerged as a noonday hero with the uncommon assignment to dislodge the institutional corruption of the old order. Buhari became a redeemer politician ordained to save Nigeria from implosion. Buhari’s mandate was to change our politics which had become a ruthless business that required leaders to steal and do things their conscience intensely abhor. The political volcano and hurricane of change kept us intensely fascinated and with breathless hope, we cast out vote for a man of change.
The political voodoo of the time is coming home to roost today. The embattled Senate President Bukola Saraki has accused our hero, President Muhammadu Buhari, of being controlled by unseen hands we love to call cabal in this part of the world. Critically contrasting voices unheard of a year ago are emerging to launch one sortie or the other against the president. Is Saraki being propelled to say what he said by a desire to fight back and dirty? Is the Senate President sure that Buhari could be remote controlled by a cabal – a man of his giant integrity and presence? Can Buhari be tethered to the whims, sentiment and caprices of any Nigerian, no matter how powerful?
Who are the cabal that have got hold of the President’s jugular at this critical hour of our national rejuvenation? Can Saraki be seen as a victim of prideful presumption borne out of political expediency? Can we say that his accusation of Aso Rock cabalocracy is imagined rather than real?
Or can we say that Saraki has joined the rank of ubiquitous purveyors of heresies and lies against our hero, the great Buhari? Distant voices must confess a dislike here. For all his manifest good and genial nature, distant voices is not a fan of Saraki. There is no way distant voices could relate to a bloke who had lavish access to opulent living all through his life. Yes, it is true that liberal democracy deals in lies and hypocrisy but Saraki has gone a notch up by adding treachery and political duplicity to his political sins. Yes, Nigeria is a land of both sinners and saints but Saraki’s sins outweigh his saintly side and with that, distant voices is naturally steered away from him. If Saraki wants our sympathy and support, he should vacate vagueville and name the cabal who have encircled President Muhammadu Buhari like poison ivy in the inner fortress of Aso Rock.
On the other hand, is it time to question our mandarin elevation of President Muhammadu Buhari as a saint without any clay on his foot? Has Buhari political reinvention reached its nadir? Would Buhari ever sell Nigerians to a band of self-serving demagogues we called cabal thereby tearing apart his political glory and grace we still fond of mythologising? Is it not too early for President Muhammadu Buhari to turn into an ambidextrous politician, who publicly advocate for total war against corruption in the abstract, but in practice a clannish, tribal jingoist who surrounds himself with a shadowy but powerful Fulani/Daura figures we called cabal?
Would President Buhari ever morph from being a transparent and integrity-driven leader to a hideous and shameless charlatan who will give room to the narrow agenda of a band of rogues called cabal, the unseen enemies he has sworn to bury for the sake of change? It is too early for the president to be arrested by a clash of convictions. The President still owes us our change and before we get to our destination he must give you and I our change.
tajutijani@hotmail.com
08181497471.