The change or commonsense revolution Nigerians hankered after is already in place. Psalms 126 vividly captures the mood of millions of Nigerians especially those that suffered deprivation, poverty and hunger occasioned by the misrules of the recent past. Permit me to adapt a passage to illustrate the new political dispensation:
“When the Lord again turned the captivity of Nigeria, we were like them that dream.
“Then were our mouths filled with laughter, and our tongues with singing. Then said they among the PDP folks: the Lord hath done great things for them, whereof they are glad.
“…They that toiled and went forth, bearing precious seed (Permanent Voter Card, complemented by Card Reader), cometh with rejoicing”.
The new Buhari-led government was inaugurated last Friday at the Eagle Square, Abuja, amid fanfare. President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) delivered an address that we will not be tired of playing back in months to come. Expectedly, he beamed his searchlight on some key issues. However, three of them stand out. They are corruption, insecurity and comatose economy typified by electricity collapse. The hydra-headed monster blossomed under the immediate past administration led by Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.
Buhari gave us an insight into what to expect of his administration when he declared in his inaugural speech and I quote: “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody”. This declaration has become a popular mantra among most Nigerians. What the new president was telling us is that he would be everybody’s PMB, even though PMB is Private Mail Bag that belongs to somebody or an organisation, as it is the case in a post office. In other words, though he is everybody’s president, he would not be pocketed by anybody. A political godson belongs to somebody… the godfather who bankrolled the anointed to power. But Buhari is old and too big to be anybody’s stooge. I was discussing PMB’s victory with some friends from the Niger Delta region sometime ago in Abuja. They were skeptical about Buhari’s resolve to fight corruption, arguing that his efforts, devoid of maximum power this time around, would be hamstrung by the powerful moneybags who surround him… the cabal that helped him to power. I hope by that declaration, my Niger Delta friends would give PMB the benefit of the doubt.
Everybody knows that corruption will be the main challenger of the Buhari administration. The invidious crime that impoverishes the masses became synonymous with the Jonathan regime. Virtually every facet of our national life was thoroughly corrupted. Not even the military institution was spared the dirty brush of corruption. Trillions of naira budgeted annually to fight the insurgency in the North-east axis were funneled into private pockets, while troops were ordered to fight on half-filled tummies, ill-equipped to face the sophistication of Boko Haram’s weaponry. Stories of commanders rationing bullets to soldiers like popcorn and ordering them to the warfront, sounded like a moonlight tale.
The religious institution, the moral fabric of the nation, was not spared. Bishops, archbishops, general overseers, pastors of all hues, imams, bitten by the bugs of mammon, fell over one another to dine and wine with corrupt politicians that made multimillionaires of them. These so-called men of God prayed, fasted and made predictions favourable to their benefactors. One of the bishops even swore to open the gates of hell on Nigeria should Jonathan fail to be voted back to power. At the end of the day, their naira/dollar-inspired prophecies blew up in their shameless faces. God disgraced them!
The traditional institution was also sucked into the cesspool. The royal fathers were pampered with crisp dollars. They in return threw their weights behind Jonathan. But the King of kings sided with the denigrated suffering masses, and visited disgrace and dishonor on their cheapened thrones.
As for insecurity, it got to a level that no one, including the ex-president Jonathan, was safe. Remember his flight from the Eagle Square after the October 1, 2010 bombing? It took him more than three years to venture back to the venue for very important national engagements. The Boko Haram menace that started like a stroll on the desert six years ago ballooned into a full-scale war. The criminal elements waxed stronger despite the proclamation of a state of emergency that lasted for 18 months as they overran communities, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of hapless Nigerians, declaring a caliphate, seizing young and vulnerable boys for conscription into their ranks of fighters, abducting women and forcing them into marriage. Their atrocities culminated in the April 2014 seizure of the over 200 girls of Government Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok.
In all of this, the economy was the punching bag. One critical infrastructure which is the heartbeat of the economy is electricity. But Jonathan bequeathed to Buhari and the rest of us a little over 1,000 megawatts of electricity, about a third of what the Heathrow International Airport alone consumes. Once the heartbeat returns to normal, many things will fall into places. Collapsed industries will sneeze back to life, while the runaway ones will return in droves. Many new industries will find their ways to Nigeria. Jobs will be available and the unemployment monster tamed, eventually.
But I am disturbed by the body language of PMB. He has surprised many of us with his born-again posture and forgiving spirit. It is like those who have cleaned up our common weal in the Jonathan regime will get a blanket presidential reprieve for their crimes against the Nigerian state and be asked to go and sin no more. However, some of us are still optimistic that by the time Buhari sees the books and discovers the quantum of heists committed by his predecessor, he will be shocked into changing his body language. He should not be hamstrung by the “If you probe me, you must probe other regimes before me” blackmail. If Jonathan did not deem it fit to probe the regime he took over from, that was his own palaver.
