By Olawale Olaleye
Perhaps, an excursion into the mind of President Muhamamdu Buhari for a glimpse of his thought process, is the one thing that could help an average Nigerian understand the current state of things especially, the need to survive the deluge of frustrations, which owes largely to the growing insecurity, a wobbly economy and the allegations of corruption flying around, the chunk of which emanates right from the corridor of power.
Nigeria has had too much to deal with in the last few months and weeks, enough to ponder for the rest of the life of the current administration. That each week is now ushered in with its bizarre stories is not speaking to the things that distinguish the country or the peculiarity of her people, but elucidating the potential separator factors and the evident lack of capacity of the government.
Saturday’s gruesome killings of no fewer than 43 rice farmers in Borno State, has again reinforced the reality about the state of the nation, where no premium is placed on lives. The Boko Haram insurgents did not just decapitate the farmers for doing nothing except working to earn a living, they also burnt their farms, so they could make a statement: total decimation.
However, while the economic implications of the destruction of the rice farm would close in very soon, what should confound anyone is how easily and quickly everyone moves on from such horrendous happenings as though they are the new normal.
The Borno State Governor, Professor Babagana Zulum, had escaped assassinations by suspected insurgents about three times, creating some nerve-racking suspense on the security situation in the state and the country at large. He, quite expectedly, lost a handful of his men in each of those attacks, including the one he was not on the convoy.
But the attacks on Zulum, which came in quick but embarrassing succession, had become suspicious, because the governor had earlier taken on the fight against insurgency, which in his reckoning, had become an industry on its own, despite repeated official claims that insurgency had been technically defeated and the lies that no part of the north was under the grip of the sect.
Yet, the governor’s later claims that the places of his attack were supposed to be terrorists-free, soon elicited insinuations about sabotage. Compounding the unceasing Boko Haram attacks are the continuing banditry and kidnapping in many parts of the country, which had seen even people with name recognition being kidnapped and killed in the process, including a monarch and a party chairman, who paid the supreme price recently.
The denouement of the October #EndSARS protests, highlighted many things about the security situation in the nation particularly, the vulnerability of the police being the first line of defence in the country. Although the protests were against a unit of the police, SARS, following its alleged brutality and highhandedness, the reprisal attacks on the force were almost unthinkable and the aftermath is still very much in play.
Curiously, there had been some precursors to the current state of anomie some months ago, directly identifying some of the worries about the government and situating them against the charge of the fight against the scourge of corruption and the promise to deliver change, five years after.
First, it was the suspension of then acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim, Magu, in July 2020, over allegations of insubordination and gross abuse of office. This development was triggered by a letter from the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami.
Magu was arrested like a ‘common criminal’ and turned in to face the Presidential Committee on Audit of Recovered Assets (PCARA). He ended up spending 10 days in detention, whilst the committee investigated some of the allegations against him, the result of which was carried out by the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), an agency severed from the EFCC not long ago.
But before Magu eventually regained his freedom, similar allegations of malfeasance had started to fly around also about the AGF, a counter-push believed to have been instigated by supporters of the suspended EFCC boss, confirming Magu’s earlier position that the situation was a matter of ‘dog-eating-dog’.
Documents were also released to suggest that the difference between Magu and Malami was like six and half a dozen. The panel headed by retired Justice Ayo Salami, recently submitted its report and from all indications, that might as well be the end of the drama that lasted months.
As the dust raised by this was yet to settle, the odoriferous state of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) reared its ugly face again, this time, stoking embarrassing recriminations between the Minister of Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio and a former Managing Director of the NDDC as an Interim Management Committee, Joi Nunieh. Soon, many other names were dragged into the sleaze.
The stench from that corner, which ranged from stealing to conspiracy to ruin the commission at the expense of development and later sexual harassment, the Niger Delta story is better told again by the gladiators, who seemed to have perfected the capacity to undo each other to the collective detriment of their people. At the end of the day, conspiracy of silence is the order, despite the alleged ignoble roles of the federal lawmakers.
Then enter the Nigeria Social Investment Fund (NSITF), where its suspended Executive Director of Operations, Mrs. Kemi Nelson, accused the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige of allegedly inserting a fictitious N1.2 Billion as commission to be paid to contributors of the fund in the NSITF budget.
Nelson, in a letter to President Buhari over the management crisis rocking the agency, specifically accused Ngige of inserting five SUVs in the 2020 budget of the NSITF among other sundry accusations as if the ministries and agencies were created solely for plundering by the privileged few.
Nelson’s letter was however precipitated by the suspension of NSITF’s Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer and three Executive Directors by Ngige over allegations of corruption. The suspended ED, in the letter dated July 9, urged Buhari to order an independent investigation of allegations levelled against the management of the agency.
But Nelson described the allegations as unfounded and that the suspension was because they opposed fraudulent activities of the minister, one of the favourites of the president, so it is said. Now, it is quiet everywhere at NSITF.
That had hardly taken off when the story of yet another dirty oil deal, involving some prominent and top government functionaries was uncovered in far away China.
The oil deal, which according to reports was worth some $800 million was allegedly shared by some cronies of the president otherwise referred to as the cabal, who might have deceived the president at the expense of the nation and made away with the money.
Other reports from the oil deal had also exposed the high-handed roles allegedly played by the president’s late Chief of Staff, Mallam Abba Kyari, who was said to have single-handedly signed off the monies and allegedly supervised the sharing as well.
Apart from denials by those concerned or reportedly mentioned in the sleaze, chief of which is the NNPC, there was no conscious attempt to investigate the weighty allegations. That too has been hushed. Thus, when you sit back to review these situations and realise that they aren’t happening under the presumably ‘clueless’ Goodluck Jonathan but right under the watch of the messiah – the one believed to have come to deliver the nation from the snare of the fowler – then, the shock is beyond comprehension.
If the president was unable talk to self or there was no one around that could look him in the face and speak truth to power, it does not change the fact that the ‘change regime’ of President Buhari, has lost it, considerably or to put it mildly, is mired in confusion.
It does dismiss the fact that the much-celebrated body language was after all some poorly concocted propaganda. It wouldn’t also dismiss the fact that Buhari’s revered mystique had long vanished. Indeed, it addresses the fact that the anti-graft war is compromised already, so to speak, and the president’s credibility, badly dented.
What more, it further speaks to an evidently inept leadership and the picture of the future it presents is nothing but inauspicious. With the country back in another recession, the worst since 1987, the economic imbalance has not even begun to manifest except extra-ordinary steps are taken and quickly too.
Therefore, what is currently happening in the country requires some collective and patriotic reflections, followed by official and organised response, to be driven by responsible and responsive leadership.
The current state of the nation reveals so many things, chief of which is leadership tardiness and its choice aloofness to the things that underscore why it is in office in the first place. Certainly, it’s a season of anomie typified by the business as usual culture of the irredeemably corrupt elite and the ruling class. Thus, for Nigeria, her leadership and the people, the times are clearly ominous and everyone might as well chorus: it is finished! After all, hope is not a plan.
- Olaleye, a Deputy Editor with ThisDay Newspapers lives in Lagos