By LARRY OYIMS
I can’t believe it is few seconds to the end of Buhari’s regime. I can’t believe that this man who gave us pain in the arse is leaving. When he said he would relocate to Niger Republic, I said glory be to God, for no sane person in Nigeria will like to see such an incubus.
I have looked back to the past eight years of his reign and I’m asking myself: What legacy is this man leaving behind?
President Muhammadu Buhari came into our political consciousness wearing a messianic toga. He came like one thrown down to us from heaven, in a blaze of glory, going by the avalanche of goodwill and tales of incorruptibility that followed his triumphal entry, especially from the North.
We were looking for someone with the Midas touch that can, if possible, turn stone to bread. We were looking for a man that can reflate our battered economy and deal decisively with corruption that was our albatross. With his binoculars, Tinubu went to the far North and brought to us a lanky man, as erect as a palm tree but hardly smiles. We reasoned that it was good for us. The job at hand didn’t need any smile. It needed a man with grit and grace. We remembered his stint as head of state in the 80s and the spartan lifestyle he exuded, giving us the impression he was the right man for the job.
I must say, he had a veneer of sainthood!
But eight years down the lane, we are asking: what has Buhari’s presidency brought to the table? What positive impacts did he create among the citizenry? Did he make our lives better or did he worsen it? Did his presidency put food on the tables of the poor and beleaguered masses or did he take them away? Is the average Nigerian better off in 2023 under Buhari than in 2014 under Jonathan?
Upon all the pontifications of the government’s praise singers, I must say that I have looked left and right and I’m at a loss to figure out any positive impact we can point to with cherish. To say the truth, he kneecapped our hopes. What I see as his memorabilia is a dilapidated and fractured country where ethnic nationalities that hitherto lived together in peace and unity as brothers are now going after each others throat. What I see is a chaotic and corruption-ridden electoral system where impunity and brigandage decide who wins and who looses.
Buhari is the worst leader to have ever mounted Nigeria’s leadership saddle. As he bows out ignominiously, we curse the day he came into our consciousness. For the years he reigned, Nigerians never slept with two eyes closed. From the East to the West, from the North to the South, we went to bed expecting a knock on the door. In a glaring show of ethnic chauvinism, he allowed Fulani terrorists to kill us and urged us to accept them as brothers. But how can we accept such band of brute and uncultured feline who raped our women and made us unsafe in our homelands? How can we accept a set of primitive and disoriented savages who drink blood like water?
Right now our roads are not safe, not even our schools and other public places. Everyday we hear of bandits kidnapping innocent school children or unknown gunmen killing and maiming fellow Nigerians and nothing happens, not even a shrug from the citizenry or the security agencies. Like many other parts of the country, in Plateau and Benue states we scupper blood of the innocent daily, no thanks to the Fulani terrorists. It has become the new normal! Like a troubadour, they traverse our forests unmolested and lay siege on our farms looking for people to take for ransom.
Need we go farther to look for the dark spots of His Imperial Majesty? No. The sullen faces and beleaguered mien of your neighbour, all the men and women that gather at mkpokoro Oru looking for people to hire them for daily pay to eat, our embassies and airports where our youth struggle for visa, waiting for the next available flight to ‘japa’, says it all: Buhari’s presidency failed!
It negatively impacted every facet of our lives. Which area can we look to without sadly seeing his imprint boldly written? None. We didn’t cough aloud nor did we swallow our phlegm without a charge of treason heaped upon us. Yes, we are in a democracy but Buhari slept while the same democracy was hijacked by civilians in military jackboots. Like slaves being taken across the Mediterranean, we were gagged, shackled; we couldn’t speak nor protest anymore. Even our votes, our inalienable right, didn’t matter under him. He promised to bequeath to us an electoral system we shall ever be proud of, not knowing, like little children, he was singing us a lullaby.
Our judiciary which was once the bastion of justice when merit was the criteria for appointment of judicial officers was the hardest hit. He decapitated it and appointed persons who didn’t read law as judges. I remember the eloquence and logic of the Socrates of the Supreme Court, Justice Oputa of blessed memory. I remember justice Kayode Esho who was our Aristotle at the hallowed chambers. We remember Justice Nnamani and many other erudite and stainless judges whose judgements transfused hope in us that, indeed, the judiciary was truly the last hope of the common man.
But it wasn’t so under Buhari. A man who came 4th in a gubernatorial election was declared governor. A man who didn’t contest the senatorial election was handed the ticket of APC. When a very senior lawyer and one time president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Chief Olisa Agbakoba said boldly on a national television that he no longer had faith in the judiciary as presently constituted, what other evidence did we need to understand the depth of rut and decay of the system under Buhari? Right now, our judiciary is irretrievably and irredeemably lost, that is the legacy he is leaving behind. And still, Obi is waiting and hoping to retrieve his mandate in a temple dominated by money changers!
But is Buhari leaving us a fulfilled man? The answer is definitely no, never. No matter what his media handlers may want Nigerians to believe, I know that, in the dark recesses of his heart, Buhari is not happy. He promised much but delivered little. He was betrayed by those who served under him as a result of his cluelessness, not knowing that it is not often that the dhow follows the wind.
Really, I can’t believe this, that the sad spectre of Buhari in our consciousness will be over few hours from today. I’m enthused-and so are majority of Nigerians-that we are still standing strong after 2920 days of intemperate and unrestrained bad governance under him.
Although the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has foisted on Nigerians a president-elect after its heart, we shall not be fazed. Although that president-elect has promised Nigerians to continue from where the man from Daura stopped, our hearts shall not be shaken. Even if, like Rehoboam, he whips us with scorpions, our glory shall shine forth like diamonds in the dark sky, for no tribulation can defeat hope nestled in eternal assurance. If God saved us in all the vicissitudes that came our way in the past eight years of Buhari, He will save us in every circumstance, in every tribulation, even in the coming years of one, like Melchizedek, we know neither his name, his origin nor his mission.
Like Ichabod, our glory departed with the ascension of Buhari as president. Will that glory ever return again? Even if he has asked for our forgiveness, can we forgive the horrible pains his administration inflicted on us? His years were the years of the locust!
However, as he leaves Abuja to Niger Republic, we have nothing more to say than to sing: Consummatum est: it is finished!