Charles Okoh
The race to 2023 general elections is gaining momentum and the consensus is that this all-important year may make or mar the growth of the nation. It is hoped that this time, sentiment would take the backstage in deciding who would be spear-heading the affairs of this nation in the next four years. This time, it is expected that the election or choice of who becomes the president of the country or governor of a state would be decided by the electorate employing their brains rather than ceding that critical assignment to their hearts.
In 2015, the decision to vote Buhari to succeed then President Goodluck Jonathan was taken completely by lots of Nigerians employing their hearts and we have not stopped paying the price for that indiscretion. The decision was taken ignoring the critical issues around the ability of the then retired army general. We took for granted the fact that he refused to submit himself to public scrutiny and open debate on his agenda for the nation and how he hoped to achieve them. That would have saved us all the troubles today, as he and his party, the APC, have been speaking from both sides of the mouth, denying all they were alleged of having promised to deliver. They have denied not promising to decentralise the police force; they have denied offering Nigerians the much demanded restructuring of the nation that is bogged down by its own self-inflicted complexities, contradictions and inconsistencies.
When the APC promised that Buhari would end the problem of insecurity in the country; we did not ask him how he would achieve it or what the incumbent government was doing wrong and what he would do differently. We were contented that by being a retired general, the mere mention of his name would send the dissidents, terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and all scampering for their lives. How could we have thought that even mere killer-herders and friendly bandits would overwhelm the retired general?
Similarly, when issues around the failure to meet the basic educational requirement for that office became an issue, the APC and their sympathizers, told us that given his experience and many years in government, even a utility bill would suffice. It did not matter to us that he would be breaching the laws of the land.
When the party promised to make the dollar at par with the naira or at least strengthen the naira, we did not ask them how they planned to achieve it. We did not scrutinise their manifesto to know how they hope to improve on the economy which at the time was on the growth trajectory and finding its footings. At the last check, the exchange rate of the naira in the parallel market was N588 to a dollar, while the CBN rate is N416, from what it was at N199.05 to the dollar on May 29, 2015, something for which many of us would have screamed tufiakwa, if mentioned before May 2015.
Again, when General Buhari told his awe-stricken followers that he would fight corruption to a standstill, declaring that unless he does that corruption would kill the country, there was no need to ask him how he would pursue that since he already had the reputation for jailing the late Dr. Alex Ekwueme for corruption while placing his fellow northerner, the late Alhaji Shehu Shagari, on house arrest in an administration that the most remarkable thing Ekwueme performed in office was attending in England the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Dianna on behalf of President Shagari.
Today, President Buhari presides over a party that told the world that all you need to be forgiven of your transgressions is to move to the APC. Now, all those who honoured that invitation by the inimitable Adams Oshiomhole, the then party chairman, are today leading the APC. All the alleged PDP thieves and felons are today canonised saints and steering the ship of the APC. So much for the anti-corruption fight!
So, you can imagine our astonishment when on declaring his presidential ambition last week, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, said he hoped to build on the legacies of President Muhammadu Buhari, when elected as president of Nigeria.
What legacies was he talking about? The legacy of selective fight against corruption; the legacy of not having been pictured in seven years in any of our public health institutions; or that of sending all his children to schools abroad and fiddling while our educational sector, now a shadow of their old selves, burns with ASUU on eternal strike?
Will Osinbajo, if elected president, maintain this frenzy to borrow to fund consumption or provide amenities for neigbouring nations while many parts of the country are begging for attention? Will Osinbajo continue to guarantee killer-herders free reign while hunting the Sunday Igbohos of this nation? Or will he be watching aloof while friends of bandits and terrorists stroll in and out of their hideout demanding to be compensated with public funds after killing our people in their thousands and maiming and manufacturing widows and orphans in grand scale? Or would Osinbajo admonish communities, who had barely buried hundreds of their defenceless people who were mowed down for refusing to surrender their ancestral lands, for not being good neighbours to their assailants?
Will Osinbajo engage international collaborators to arrest Nnamdi Kanu in Kenya or Sunday Igboho in Benin Republic, while listening to appeals to grant bandits amnesty and pretending not to know where these bandits are in their so-called forests?
When Osinbajo said he would build on President Buhari’s legacies, was he saying that he would populate all the ministries, parastatals and agencies of government with the Yoruba at the expense of other parts of the country? Is he saying all his service chiefs and top military brass and para-military agency heads would be Yoruba or Hausa alone?
Is Osinbajo promising Nigerians that whereas Buhari chastised us with whips he would chastise us with scorpions by ensuring that all Nigerians die of hunger after finally granting Fulani herders the freedom to roam and ravage farms and make the entire nation their grazing reserve as they have been requesting?
Perhaps, in an attempt to clarify the slip of his principal and following the wide criticism his statement generated, the VP’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, in an interview on Arise News Night last Monday in Abuja, said the vice president will build on the gains recorded by the Muhammadu Buhari-led government in the areas of infrastructure, ease of doing business and security.
He added that Osinbajo’s presidential ambition is solely to consolidate the gains made by the current administration in the past seven years.
He said, “The Buhari administration has achieved so much in terms of infrastructure development, ease of doing business and this is what Professor Yemi Osinbajo wants to continue.”
I have some advice for Akande. He should be sure to advise his principal to go and do some homework and be prepared to tell us something more meaningful and substantial in future. Let him be told that even the worst of administrations have built infrastructure or claimed to have delivered on the ease of doing business. Where are the businesses when the basic function of government; that of providing security of lives and property had been abdicated? Where will those businesses thrive, is it in a place rated as the third most unsecured place to live? Is Akande aware that businesses are fast relocating to neigbouring Ghana and other places?
Of course, we all know that the vice president cannot afford to castigate the president; it is to be expected but he could have done that without being overtly patronising. By the way, where are the infrastructure they talk about, are they the same roads, rail services or airports that have been rendered inaccessible and ceded to criminal elements?
To be sure, I have no doubt that Prof. Osinbajo is primed for the job given his antecedents on the few occasions he acted as president. I have no doubt whatsoever that he would have been a better offering to Nigeria as president than Buhari. I am without doubt that Osinbajo would be more firm, articulate and focused as President and therefore it would be in the interest of the party to take some of these considerations into account in deciding who flies their flag at the polls, but he must come and tell us what he would do differently to save this nation from these voluntary shackles placed upon us.
