For the better part of President Mohammadu Buhari’s three years and nine months tenure as president, Nigerians waited anxiously to hear their president speak to them. The country was on fire; Boko Haram was maiming people in the North East while Fulani Herdsmen were murdering farmers in their sleep. Insecurity was rising to a fever-pitch high coupled with inflation as the country was wholesomely and carelessly dragged into a recession by the calibre of hands employed by the president to handle the economy as well as other aspects of our national life.
Nigerians waited for that reassuring words from their leader. It would perhaps have assuaged their pain temporarily; letting them know that their leader understands their pain with a promise that something is being done about it. In America, it comes in form of State of the Union address, SOTU, where policies and government progress are made known to citizens. In Nigeria, it is in form of media chat where journalists grill the president and his records. Buhari said nada. Nothing because he was deaf and dumb but because he felt Nigerians do not deserve to know and few months to the elections, the president who had feigned deaf and dump to citizens’ cries for mercy began making quaking noise garnished with lies, of achievements that no one can correctly point to.
But the Buhari’s presidency is wrong on so many levels. Not just that it is a fraud that was made legal but that it has become a gift that keeps giving. That’s why students of history are not in any way surprised by what the president has turned to be; careless, ineffectual and above all, clueless. It was there from the unset beaming red but we were asked to ignore.
President Buhari’s declaration during the caucus meeting of the All Progressive Congress after the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, postponed the presidential and national assembly elections to avoid having staggered polls that ballot box snatchers should be shot is laughable in a way but should be taken seriously by every discerning Nigerian.
There were also claims that the president’s men sabotaged the electoral umpire in order to rig the election using security forces. He should have started by addressing that.
First, the statement mirrors into the mindset of the man leading Africa’s most populous country and biggest economy. It also shows that claims by the president of being a reformed democrat are nothing but lies standing on their heads. But we have seen this before as the president has in several occasions called for mass annihilation of citizens.
But for the president not to understand that his failure to sign the electoral act which mandates INEC to make exclusive use of card readers for the elections makes ballot snatching attractive also opens a defence for his backwardness. It is also evident that the president is not in tune with Nigeria’s laws which stipulate 24 months imprisonment for electoral offenders. He has refused to learn and can be said to rarely take advise owing to the fact that his deputy is a senior advocate of Nigeria and a professor of law.
Discerning Nigerians should not allow the president to wallow in his ignorance. If ballot box snatchers are to be shot, how about those who snatched democracy as the president did three decades ago and forced himself to power as a military head of state? Which is graver a crime between snatching ballot boxes and snatching democracy?
Yet, on the surface, the president’s statement looks attractive as his followers and defenders are making it look. However, given the antecedent of the man himself and the bad human record of Nigeria’s security agencies, the president is opening ways for mass murder. Moreso, his deafening silence to herdmen rampage which deserves the same punishment he is prescribing for ballot box snatchers says a lot about the forces Nigerians are dealing with
Our actions and things we support will one come and haunt us all. That is why those who have chosen to swallow shame by siding with the president need a re-think. This is a democracy, irrespective of how it looks, so the president should abide by the rules set in the constitution and stop setting citizens up to be killed by federal bullets.
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