THESE are indeed trying times for Nigeria. The auguries are portentous and analysts and critics of the state of affairs cannot avoid damning verdicts. For instance, in his Easter message, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Hassan-Kukah, raised some fundamental issues on the Nigerian state and the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. He submitted that Buhari had destroyed every fibre of the Nigerian life and allowed a floodgate of corruption to meander its way through. He said: “With everything literally broken down, our country has become one big emergency national hospital with full occupancy…Our hearts are broken. Our family dreams are broken. Homes are broken. Churches, mosques, infrastructure are broken. Our educational system is broken. Our children’s lives and future are broken. Our politics is broken. Our economy is broken. Our energy system is broken. Our security system is broken. Our roads and rails are broken. Only corruption is alive and well. Nigerians can no longer recognise their country which has been battered and buffeted by men and women from the dark womb of time. ” His very unflattering comments apparently raised blood pressure at Nigeria’s Presidential Villa, Aso Rock.
On his part, legal luminary, Chief Afe Babalola, raised almost similar issues about the future of the Nigerian state. At a media briefing in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Babalola bemoaned the mercantile disposition of Nigerian politicians and suggested that rather than holding the 2023 elections to mark the end of the Buhari government, an interim government should be put in place. The proposed government, which would be in office for six months and be saddled with developing a new-look peoples’ constitution, would provide for part-time legislators and a non-executive president. This interim government, he said, would be a stop-gap measure for Nigeria before any election, as the current constitution could not create a new Nigeria. Like Hassan-Kukah, Babalola, aware of the misery in which the vast majority of Nigerians are mired, wanted a drastic change in the state of affairs.
The president’s response to the critical issues raised by Babalola and Hassan-Kukah was that no one would be allowed to destabilise the country. And as is their wont, the president’s media men went after the person of Hassan-Kukah, recycling their boring allegation that the cleric was mixing politics with religion. In their attempt to deflect the arrow shot at the Nigerian presidency and which aptly mirrored the mind of the average Nigerian, they portrayed critics as traitors. They refused to answer the fundamental questions raised in the Sokoto and Ado-Ekiti homilies. The question is: was Hassan-Kukah wrong to have asked questions about the frightening state of the nation? And was Babalola wrong to have decried the worsening situation across the country and offered solutions? Are things not regressing in Nigeria under Buhari and should anyone not be genuinely concerned that the government could plunge the country into chaos?
What the presidency should have done was to rebut the critics’ claims with convincing evidence. It should not have trodden the path of its predecessors in their negative disposition to public criticism. Nigerians cannot be faulted in seeing many of its responses to genuine criticism as pedantic and irrelevant. Are innocent people not being massacred at will in Plateau, Benue, Kaduna and many other parts of the country? Is any part of the country safe? Is it out of place for Nigerians to call out a government under whose watch Nigerians are being killed in droves? And again, are Nigerians not facing economic strangulation?
If anything, Hassan-Kukah and Babalola’s warnings reflect the apprehension among Nigerians over the state of the country. But the president, apparently seeing criticism as mischief and as opposition to his government, said he would not allow anyone to destabilise the country, which is a blatant lie. Terrorists rule vast swathes of Nigerian territory under Buhari and he has not tamed them. While the government typically has ample time to write lengthy rejoinders to critics, it slumbers at critical times when defence of the country’s territory should be mounted, leaving terrorists to roam freely and wreak havoc. Buhari and his appointees are the only ones who, ensconced in the sweetening perks of office, see Eldorado ahead of Nigeria. What the rest of Nigeria sees is darkness and blood. Buhari must step up his game in the next few months or subject himself to the harsh judgment of history. History is poised to confine his government to the dustbin.
and then