Joseph Ushigiale
The purpose of any democratically elected government in power all over the world is to protect the sacred trust or mandate handed over to the elected representatives by the people.
In other words, the people form a government and also have the right to remove the government and vote in a new one. No government exists on its own without the people. Therefore, in exercising that sacred trust, the representatives of the people who form the government must do that with all sense of responsibility and selflessness.
According to English philosopher and political theorist, John Locke in his treatise on government, “a Government existed, among other things, to promote public good, and to protect the life, liberty, and property of its people. For this reason, those who govern must be elected by the society, and the society must hold the power to instate a new Government when necessary”.
In the last seven years since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power, we have seen how virtually every value, opportunities and sanctity of lives and property and all that United the country have gradually been eroded paving ways to the cliff hanger or precipice on which Nigeria hangs today.
To say Nigeria is bleeding would be the biggest understatement, the country is asphyxiated and seriously gasping for breath. Regrettably, those to whom the sacred mandate has been handed to continue to live in denial deluding themselves that all is well and Nigeria is on the part to prosperity.
Worried by this drift and the possible consequences, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) issued a statement calling on Buhari to resign. It cited the heightened level of insecurity precipitated by killings and kidnappings by bandits and kidnappers across the country and Buhari’s inability to provide solutions as reasons for the call.
According to NEF spokesperson, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed “The administration of President Buhari does not appear to have answers to the challenges of security to which we are exposed. We cannot continue to live and die under the dictates of killers, kidnappers, rapists and sundry criminal groups that have deprived us of our rights to live in peace and security.
“Our Constitution has provisions for leaders to voluntarily step down if they are challenged by personal reasons or they prove incapable of leading.
“It is now time for President Buhari to seriously consider that option, since his leadership has proved spectacularly incapable of providing security for Nigerians. Our Forum is aware of the weight of this advice, and it is also aware that we cannot continue to live under these conditions until 2023 when President Buhari’s term ends,” it said.
It will not be the first time NEF is calling on Buhari to step down for sleeping on the job. Two years ago, on December 1, 2020, NEF called on Buhari to resign for failure to combat increasing insecurity in the country after the beheading of over 67 farmers in Zabarmari village, Jere Local Government Area of Borno State, declaring that the Federal Government had breached Section 14 (1), which made security and welfare the sole purpose of its existence.
Speaking during the Inclusive Security Dialogue Retreat jointly organised by the Global Peace Foundation and Vision Africa recently, apparently frustrated by the inertia exhibited by Buhari to proffer lasting solutions to the spate of killings, other eminent Nigerians, which included the President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Samson Ayokunle and the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar, weighed in on the call by NEF and warned that widespread insecurity across the country is the greatest threat to the 2023 general elections. They also warned that there might be no election in 2023, if the current spate of insecurity in the country is not checked.
The Bishop of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Matthew Kukah also buttressing the position of the NEF during his Easter celebration homily argued that “Any government that is incapable of protecting the lives of its citizens has lost the moral justification of being there in the first place….our humanity is being eroded and that erosion is becoming a new normal.
“Similarly, the Northern Elders Forum, NEF, and the House of Representatives have finally called on the President to resign since, in their view, it is now clear that he cannot protect his citizens. This has come three years after the Catholic Bishops’ Statement issued on April 26th, 2018 made the same call that was greeted with cynicism.” Kukah reiterated.
In its reaction, the Presidency which accused the Bishop of spreading hate speech and disliking Buhari stated that Easter was not a time for religious leaders to play politics, or politicians to play religion, rather the statement said It was a time, as in Titus 3:9 to “avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless”.
Senior Special Assistant to the President Mallam Garba Shehu advised Kukah to leave government to the voters and the politicians they elect, while he concentrates on his job, as it is expressed in James 1:27: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
Not one that would allow such attacks to go unanswered, Kukah dismissed the President’s media and information team as inefficient, lacking in depth knowledge of what needs to be done and engaging in the poor job of second guessing what the President would say because they have no contact with him.
Kukah described the President’s media and information team as “the only spokesmen that have spent a lot of time buying, photocopying paper and simply typing away texts. They have been involved in all kinds of writing of the poorest quality, never talking to the issues. So, first thing is to show you their inefficiency. It is that they are used to writing statements as opposed to taking to Nigerians about policies.”
Furthermore, Kukah accused the President’s media team of executing their job poorly and claiming to know how the President’s mind works when in actual fact, they have no access to him and are basing whatever they say on guesswork.
Hear him: “What this tells you is that 99.99% of what they write are imply second-guessing what the president’s mind is. They have no contact with the president, they have no contact with government policies and all they are doing is writing on behalf of the president. There is no where in the world where the job of this nature is being done an has been done so poorly.”
The Bishop ended by throwing a challenge to the President’s media and information team for a public debate to talk about Nigeria. He said “I have made an offer to them and still make the offer that they can choose the venue, choose the time and just let me know. I would like to sit down with the three of them beginning with their honorable minister and both of them. Let us sit down together and talk about Nigeria. I’m ready, I will pay my way, I still repeat that offer to them.”
It has become the modus operandi of the presidency to always put a spin to even the most glaring and evidential issues dogging the policy. To them, the administration has done extremely well and they are unperturbed even with the spate of killings and kidnapping for ransoms by criminal gangs who have transformed the country to a jungle of killing fields.
This is not surprising given the success record in their exploits during the 2015 presidential campaigns when they succeeded in cobbling lies, half truths, outright falsehood and misinformation garnished in German’s Joseph Goebbel style propaganda to hoodwink the masses to support a born again democrat, Buhari.
Seven years on and barely two years to the end of the administration the President’s media and information machine are yet to distinguish between propaganda and the dissemination of the government’s key policies to the people who voted them to power.
Any dissenting view is viewed as opposition and all sort of laws and bar are being put in place to limit freedom of the press and expression by the people; if not, what is the meaning of hate speech? What constitutes hate speech? Does it mean people can no longer express their opinion freely even if they are critical of government policy?
If previous government had led the country with such dictatorial high handedness and intolerance like the Buhari government has exhibited since 2015, would Buhari had the opportunity of seeking the presidency? Would he not have been behind bars today?
It is very convenient for this administration to harass and assault the sensibilities of Nigerians for calling on Buhari to resign forgetting that in 2011, Buhari led a group of Civil Society Organizations on a protest calling on former President Goodluck Jonathan to resign.
Did Jonathan order his arrest? Nigerians yearned for new leadership when it became apparent that the Jonathan government had lost its way. In choosing a Buhari who was repackaged as a born again democrat, Nigerians were banking on him to lead the country on a new trajectory.
Regrettably, Buhari turned out to be worse than even Jonathan but he would prefer no one speaks about it; people should hush their tones and clap for failure. Nigerians are too sophisticated to be hushed by an ineffectual leader who promised so much and succeeded in so little.
While the country and people are groaning under the yoke of unprecedented hardship heightened by insecurity, the President is rather interested in how to win the next election to perpetuate a failed party in office. While he relishes in the allure of office, he takes no responsibilities for whatever goes wrong in the country.
As people get killed daily, the President is either unaware or promises that no stone would be left unturned to bring the culprits to book and the next day a calamity worse than the previous one happens and the security agencies are complicit in the words of former Minister of Defence, General Theophilus Danjuma and because the victims accuse them of either looking the other way while they are being attacked or abet the marauders.
At any given opportunity, the President is quick to assail previous administrations for digging the country into a hole. Hear him: “But few of us knew or appreciated the depth of the hole when we took office. Thus we spent the last two years digging the country out of the mess we met.”
If the country was on a sound pedestal, why was Buhari voted for in 2015? Was it not to come and clean the mess he assured Nigerians during his campaigns that he was capable of doing? So what was he expecting, to be on a boat cruise and flying NAF ONE and enjoying medical tourism at state expenses without work?
The President’s obsession with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) returning to power is already an admission of failure. Rather than concentrating on solving the insecurity and economic problems besetting the country the President’s worry and resolve to his party is how “We must not, by default allow the PDP to get its dirty hands on Government again and return us to the Stone Age. We must restore sanity and purpose in the affairs of our party and lead ourselves to victory and safety. Our aim must be to hand over to an APC Government at the Center and the great majority of states.”
While Information Minister, Lai Mohammed keeps telling Nigerians that Boko Haram has been technically defeated and blaming the past administration for the laxity, the sect alive and is busy killing soldiers and innocent civilians in the Northeast.
Recently, bandits attacked an Abuja Kaduna bound train, abducting scores of passengers in one fell swoop. Few days later, Mohammed told the media that the operation was carried out by a combination of ISWAP and Boko Haram insurgents.
How would that information lead to the rescue of those kidnapped and are still being held by the bandits for ransom? If there is any more evidence sought to show how insensitive this present government is to the plight of the people, this is a classic case.
However, the exception to this rule is the recent pronouncement by former Lagos governor and national leader of the APC, Bola Tinbu who acknowledged that indeed the party has not fulfilled its campaign promises in totality to Nigeria. Whether this is coming out of a truism or the mere fact that he is positioning to succeed Buhari remains to be seen in the coming days.
Now that the Buhari administration is on the lobby approaching the exit, it should allow Nigerians to judge the kind of legacy it is leaving behind. Which ever way the President postulates, the jury would be out in 2023 and Nigerians would exercise their power to either reinstate the APC or throw it out for frittering it’s goodwill. Indeed, the future is pregnant.
