THE PRESIDENTIAL UBER: YOU CAN NOW REQUEST FOR PRIVATE RIDES

The scales keep falling off the eyes of some of us, who ferried the integrity chant of the General as a chorus across the river Niger. However, as it falls off some, it lands on others and blind a lot more. How else do you explain away a budget of N8.5 billion for the presidential jet alone this year? Well, I can already feel the threatening breaths of a lot of Buharists over my shoulder, as they angrily and incoherently give half-hearted and full-heady explanations of the need for more travels for economic growth and luring of foreign investments. I hear you clearly, but the problem is that you don’t hear yourself, so I’ll leave you to that bit of madness.

I heard that the ride hailing business of companies like Uber, Bolt and Opay has gotten so lucrative and innovative that you can now request for private jet rides. So the beautiful daughter of our General turned Democratic and then returned General was the pilot customer of this highly radical business move.

Our dear Hanan Buhari simply logged on to an app and hailed for a jet, she didn’t know her dad’s personal jet will be the one to come pick her up at the airport (well, maybe in this case she specifically placed the request for this particular jet). But who cares, so long as this service is now available for all that can get on an app and click the link? Maybe I can attempt to give my alternate persona of a wildlife photographer expression, in the alternate universe, and take the jet to the Amazon. Alas I didn’t see jet on the apps I have. So who are we deceiving? And we are not supposed to complain when someone who has not constitutional office goes on a private ride on the National carrier for her lusts for good photography? On what moral and legal grounds do we excuse this wastage of taxpayer’s money?

The President must think so little of us, so much that things that were unheard of even in the governments of the terrible and the fascist and non-crusaders of corruption fight or integrity, have become common place in this government. Once upon a not too long ago, the First lady and the Daurans (Buhari’s kins) had a bout of words over the Aso Rock, which has now become the official personal residents of all of the President’s extended family, both real and imagined.

So if you have a Uncle that has an uncle who is uncle to Buhari’s uncle’s uncle, you’d better go to Abuja to your own apartment in the Aso Villa, instead of paying rents somewhere else. Beyond that, the country reeks of the stench of various illegal incarceration, abuse of power and human rights, and yet the government desires to lock our lips and conscience with some silly hate speech and social media bills.

A question that begs for answer, yet without definite responses, is when will our “mumu” do us? This government keep shifting the goalpost, and like the proverbial frog in a kettle of boiling water, each time we adjust ourselves and assume that all is well, that those who cry foul are enemies of the Commonwealth.

Now, the presidential jet has become reduced to a private jet for the first family, so much so that anyone that bears the surname of the President can get a lift to a private photography session, as a celebrity photographer. Yet some Buharists are so focused on the fact that Hanan is a first class graduate and deserves to be honoured with a private treat of her fantasies of having the National carrier as her O-jet.

The presidential jet is simply an official means of transportation that’s provided and serviced from the collective wealth of all citizens, to ease the travel inconveniences of the President, Vice President and other Constitutionally empowered officers in discharging their elective duties. This position is unambiguous and clearly does not capture in it’s scope the frivolities of members of the President’s family. And it sure as heaven does not border on whether the said lady is a first class graduate or an exotic photographer.