The declaration by President Muhammadu Buhari to seek re-election next year has unleashed the beasts in us once again as happened in 2015. There is no shortage of hateful opinions, “expert” or otherwise and it may appear we learnt nothing from the fallout of that particular campaign. The venom-filled campaign of 2015 has ruptured the core of the country so much that we are yet to find common ground on any single issue, particularly when religion or ethnicity is involved.
With the declaration by Buhari, we are yet again back into our hate mode and only God knows if the country will survive a virulence-filled atmosphere two times in a row. Though Buhari and his government have been negotiating this treacherous creek since May 2015, the haters have upped the ante once more. We are now back to our primeval best – trading in fear and hate, unmindful of the consequences of our utterances and actions. We can safely say that Buhari has the largest pool of enemies compared to any past Nigerian president, military or civilian. To his credit, he has remained steadfast to his principles.
Among those who don’t wish the president well are those voted out of office by the Nigerian electorate and are still living in denial. They do not care if the country will come down on all our heads as long as Buhari will be booted out of office. I blame the president for dragging his feet on prosecuting them for their myriad of criminal offences, which includes looting, election rigging, murder and several crimes against humanity. I blame the president for their ability to walk free and insult us. Then there are those who hitched their wagons onto his but never believed in the ideals he propounded throughout his public service life. They are found in both the executive and legislative arms of government. There is also the so-called ‘big business’ whose head offices used to be Aso Villa, but now lacked even the remotest access to the seat of power. And then there are their proselytes who are, by and large, illiterates that are used to crumbs, which falls from the dining table.
And of course, the media. The Nigerian media fed fat on corruption to the extent they became hunting dogs of the enemies of Nigeria instead of being society’s watchdogs. They were so comfortable under the PDP that most of them subsumed their corporate identity into that of the PDP. They led the chorus for candidate Buhari’s demonization and most of them couldn’t come out of their 2015 campaign mode. If the media is the first synopsis of history, then Buhari’s government will be judged harshly by posterity. I am talking about the mainstream media here, not the madhouse called social media. They are yet to forgive Buhari for forcedly pulling away their mouths from the tits of the nation. Every word uttered by the president is twisted to suit a particular outcome. Every pronoucement is perverted to make the president look bad. The president is always portrayed negatively to the extent that our “progressive” media to the consternation of the civilized world celebrated his purported death.
His recent honest assessment of the attitude of the Nigerian youth was twisted and the word “lazy” was inserted into a statement that contained no such word and our youth as usual are so lazy that they couldn’t find the time to look for and watch the video of what the president said before going-off the handle based on what an unfriendly media claimed the president said about them. Pathetic. When all our youth are good at is to struggle to get one hundred Naira and buy data to insult people, what will be the right depiction for them? Hardworking? Hardly.
I can understand who hates Buhari’s guts for making them irrelevant with his brand of politics. What I cannot understand is the senselessness the elites are deliberately nurturing and which is now gripping our collective psyche to the satisfaction of those opposed to Nigeria. Senselessness has become a major factor in our lives. It has become the enemy of Nigerians. The coalition of opposition forces against Buhari understands this and has gone ahead to make it their ally. Our society has become one big complicated machine, the kind that needs only a push of a button to operate. The opposition knows this. An example of such a button is the misrepresentation of what the president said at the Commonwealth Business Forum in London.
I do not blame those who hate Buhari and his brand of politics. I only blame Buhari for holding a mirror for us to see who we really are. And we don’t want what we are. It is a trite fact that a society gets the leadership it deserves. May be we don’t deserve Buhari. In what kind of society is Buhari fighting to bring sanity? When I look around and see those populating our political landscape, I don’t hate them, but only pity Buhari. He is committing unspeakable indignity to incorrigible criminals by asking them to mend their ways. People who are used to throwing around US dollars like confetti at the drop of a hat are now asked to earn their living like honest folks. Worst still, they are asked to explain the source of their wealth.
Buhari’s integrity and moral rectitude is a threat to their behaviours. If Buhari is allowed a second term, most of us will not be able to look at our bathroom mirrors. This will be cruel to our vanity and us. While they have been trying day and night to destroy the building blocks of a decent society Buhari is trying to build, they do not pause to see the damage they are doing to the youth.
We do not care that we are breeding our youth on a diet of hatred and illiteracy. A youth that is perpetually high on drugs and low on education. We think we are fighting Buhari while in the real sense we are destroying our future.
When you deal with moles that are opposed to mountain peaks, then do not expect pearls but poke chops.
Toungo wrote this piece from Abuja.
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