I usually pick my words when it is about the perceived character flaws of others. That includes the President, Muhammadu Buhari. One, he is an old man. Yoruba culture forbids getting deprecating with elders and there is no footnote that elders from other cultures, should not be accommodated. Two, he is the President, the symbol of Nigeria’s statehood and I am proudly Nigerian. Three, every man and woman is flawed, one way or the other, some, worse than those they are criticizing. Four, Matthew 7:1-2 forbids children of God from judging others, to avoid the penalty of being judged, with the same measure. Five, all are imperfect, the only difference, is that some are sold on getting better, particularly those relying on the Holy Spirit of God, to help them become better man, better woman.
However, to all of these, are complementary flip sides.
One, Yoruba culture doesn’t expect an elder to be incorrigible. When it becomes compelling to rein in an elder, Yoruba will justify it with “agbalagba to so agbadomoidi (an elder who doesn’t know when to stop). Two, the President, should and must be presidential, to be so accorded. Anything less, will bring much less, to him. Three, being flawed isn’t the problem, remaining so, for an advantage, is. That is sheer opportunism. It is just like saying, no matter how low I go, I will get a pass, with “it is his weakness”. Four, the word of God only forbids judging men, not their actions. Jesus who cautions against judging men in the opening part of Matthew 7, moves to verse 16 to say, “by their fruit ye shall know them”. Five, the imperfect and the impure that do not desire a change, are the ones referred to in Proverbs 29:1, which says “he, who, being often reproved, hardens his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy”. This is followed by a warning on the kind of leaders people should desire. Verse 2 says, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked man rules, the people groan and sigh.”
There is another warning about the advice a leader should encourage. Verse 12 of the same Proverbs 29 says, “If a ruler listens to falsehood, all his officials will become wicked.” Verse 16 adds, “When the wicked are in authority, transgression increases, but the righteous shall see the fall of the wicked.”
Only President Muhammadu Buhari can tell how ended being this nepotistic, but it is going to be difficult to see anyone as indifferent about others as him, as not doing wickedly. Not when lives are involved. Whenever some politicians like former Ogun State governor, two-time senator Ibikunle Amosun, are referenced as friends of the President, I wonder how someone can like you, and hate your people. I see how some politicians in South East are sweating to connect the zone and the President, but the people over there seemed to have known enough of the President’s mindset to non-Northerners, to keep their distance, from him and his party. Only the South West is dilly-dallying. Well, it seems the political populace in Yorubaland, professing love for him, is doing so, at a price, but also for a prize. Guess, the group is almost there, with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, now at a touching distance of Aso Rock, though mostly by distancing himself from the outgoing, who is also feeling the heat of abandonment. In Imo State, he went into lamentation that he is no longer being hoisted as the poster-boy of the ideal statesman.
When Jeremiah went into lamentation, it was over the ruins and the desolation of Israel, the chosen of the Lord. The prophet was weeping over the adversity that hit the land, due to unrighteousness. Maybe the President would have received public sympathy if he was mourning the devastation of Nigeria. But that would amount to hanging himself, since he is a major ruiner of the country, through deliberate acts of wickedness unto non-Northern Nigerians. But the President is even too conceited to be worried about devastation elsewhere, outside core North, especially where his Fulani kin dominate. It is himself and his own. The me-and-mine affliction. If he isn’t telling global development agencies to concentrate development in the North, to the detriment of others, he is worried that he isn’t being garlanded enough, for the ruins he has brought the country into. We should call a spade, a spade. Nigerians groan and sigh today, because the wicked beareth rule. Pre-2015, impressionable Nigerians thought they had been taken to the lowliest of governance and wanted out. A couple literally split over the direction the country should go. The wife decided to stay with Goodluck Jonathan. The hubby chose Buhari. His reason; he was tired of Goodluck and the then-President should just go. He had no valid reason, beyond the fact that Jonathan had been heavily demonized and demarketed by media mob, completely loyal to the Lagos ruling establishment. Today, the husband knows better. Even his wife couldn’t do jaginiyodo (last laugh) hurray, because they are both in the current mess together.
But the President is unbothered about the couple and their Southern kith. Yoruba will describe such disdain for one’s supposed neighbour as eniamoriibaku (who cares). The insensitivity shown so far, to Southern Nigeria by the President over the North-imported insecurity, is baffling, but not unexpected. President Buhari has no desire to be a national hero. His ambition is limited to being lined behind Arewa’s deity, Ahmadu Bello, by historians on North’s evolution and development. And it is now too late to stop him or encourage him, to change his ways. He is like a bully, roughening others, to feed his ego and assure his fears that he is still untouchable.
For too long in his disappearing presidency, the South bowed. Borderline North, too. When Ayo Fayose, the former governor of Ekiti State took him on, even his Southern-brothers dubbed him, mindless and uncouth. Then non-state actors like now-late YinkaOdumakin came into the void, wailing loud enough for the presidency, to limit its outrageous insensitivity to the South. Does anyone still remember the administration’s decision to detain Yoruba traditional rulers because of deadly two-fighting between Yoruba and Northerners in Ile-Ife, early 2017. It required an uncommon courage, by Afenifere, to secure their release.
Five years after, nothing has changed and nothing will change, till May 29, 2023. As police scrambled to explain the mess of arming vigilantes in Katsina and I believe, in most part of the North, which is yet to come into the public space, while standing ramrod against Amotekun’s viability in South West, Yoruba race must accelerate the pace against the plenty of legacy nonsense this administration is definitely planning to leave behind, in case its preferred, Atiku Abubakar of PDP, fails, to elongate North’s hold on power. South East has been proved right in its avowed distrust of the Buhari administration. The zone is the better for it. Enough of the South West, seeing a friend in the President. The Buhari administration won’t protect non-core Northerners. It is time for Amotekun to also start training with AK-47, since the Katsina police command said the recruits, seen bearing arms in Katsina, were just practising how to face AK-47-bearing bandits. SMH.
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