I have just learnt from the presidency that President Buhari is “suffering from tyranny of high expectations” (see Nigerian Tribune of Monday, 15 August, 2016). All of us who read the story/report would react to it differently. And those who are skilful a little as literary artists or as imaginative journalists would construct tales that would fashion their thoughts to accommodate the feelings generated in them by the atrociously precious and preciously atrocious declaration of a top presidencynologist in the Buhari presidency. And the presidencynologist in question is a thorough bred composer and weaver of words and apt phrases and epithets that in the not distant past were employed faithfully and decently on behalf of the suffering, exploited and hungry masses and poverty-stricken people of our country. But the times for him have since changed for the better. Now he carves and composes terms to underline his new status as an all-powerful composer of political yoo-hoos. His well couched “tyranny of high expectations” that his principal is “suffering from” has touched a unique chord in me. But this writing is not about our inventive presidencynologist.
Never before have we seen what we are seeing now in our polity. Poverty has occupied our land fully. Hunger is everywhere about us and we are fully under its occupation. All the things we thought we would get under Buharism are now mirages tantalizing and tyrannizing our great expectations. Our “high expectations” have captured us. They have turned us into real captives of deception. We are gradually losing all our rights to live as decent human beings who can no more banish hunger and live and die artfully as happened well before now.
When will hunger and poverty stop insulting us day by day? These dangers, these tragedies, these storms, when shall we toss them out of here? These are questions that are questions that we must keep asking until we are free again, until to eat well becomes a new human reality; until our horrifying circumstances are tackled by a new Resistance of un-insipient thoughts.
Comrades and compatriots, things cannot go on like this. Comrades and compatriots, things must not go on like this. Comrades and compatriots, we must dare to dare the political and economic tyrants who are denying us the freedom to feed well as Nigerians who must be well-fed. We must buy plantain and yam and garri and rice and beans and tomato and kerosene and gas and petrol and diesel at affordable prices. We must buy bread and biscuit and vegetable and chicken and fish and fire-wood at affordable prices. We must get medicines for good health to buy at affordable prices. We must have good jobs, well paid jobs that will enable us to do everything that we must do rightly and well as human beings and as Nigerians who must live and exist as healthy free persons of our country that no one, no political leader, no army that we call our army should torment further.
This regime has done well, excellently well, in terms of its crusade against corruption that it wants to imprison, deport and kill permanently. But what has it done so far with all the stolen monies it has retrieved from the big, bigger and biggest thieves that are yet to enjoy in jail the music of their atrocious acts? Buhari’s spiritual mission will soon be a meaningless and forgotten mission if the recovered stolen monies are not used to give the masses of our people the freedom of a living people who are no more abandoned by a regime that is seemingly turning our country into a Republic of Deception.
It is curious that our central regime piloted by “Mr Integrity” now seems to have an obligation to defend and protect a parliament whose top leaders have been accused of the very serious crime of budget-padding. Let me state clearly that I uphold the declaration that until the dramatis personae in the centre of the storm that is not a storm in a tea-cup are found clearly guilty, the presidency may treat them with extreme care. But I am worried that the presidency is seemingly allowing his acolytes and executive institutions to hunt and intimidate the whistleblower who is seemingly ready to go the whole hog to prove his allegation against his boss. I use the term “seemingly” here because our politicians are a special breed whose untroubled consciences always compel them to be chameleons of the finest breed.
In any case, until the whistleblower in the House of Reps changes his colour, he must be allowed to display his boundless tongue to blow the whistle that he must blow. The police force, EFCC, state security services, including the army must let him be. By the way, why did the president refuse to see the lesser of the men who are boxing themselves in the budget-padding ring? The president must be neutral as the gladiators entertain and cease to entertain us. Whatever happens in the end must, however, serve the cause of justice. And the guilty party must experience deportation from parliament, a deportation that must lead him to imprisonment. It is the responsibility and obligation of “Mr. Integrity” to make this happen. We highly expect him to do this – as a man of ascetic virtues that we must not interpret as a vizard, a mask, a means of disguise to do us in – further and further.
This Republic must not be the Republic of Deception. Mr. President must assert and re-assert himself and fulfil his destiny and our country’s destiny urgently. He must redeem his pre-election promises NOW. If not, abandonment will abandon him before he knows it. He must be deceived no more. Or does he want to enter our history books as a two-time abandonee? Our pens are waiting. They are the true weapons to bail our suffering, dying and dead compatriots out of the depths and graves of murderous deception.
and then