A bony ear never listens

The Hausa man’s wisdom of describing a stubborn person to have a bony ear instead of the usual cartilaginous one is a thing one must ponder on.

Several times as children, ears were pulled in an attempt to punish those who were defiant, disobedient or generally stubborn.

You must have wondered why ear today and what’s bony about it?

Since the election that brought-in PMB as president, his first term, as president elect, he received numerous unsolicited calls from patriots and well wishers, to congratulate and caution him of the office and expectations people would have on his administration, mostly asking him to distance himself from some I-know-it-all kleptocrats.

But has he listened? Has he distanced himself from even the famous corrupt?

I guess it’s just rhetoric. So, his ears, most likely, are hard and bony.

What has he done differently from the rest, since his inauguration?

It took him bizarre six months to compose a cabinet in his first term, made of mostly square pegs in round holes.

Was he not the person that begged on TV for a chance to walk his talks? The talks he made disproportionately every opportunity he had to be on screen. Has he?

Was he not the same person that mobilised protesters to take over streets, that fuel price must be reverted to N65?

How much is it today under his watch? Was he not the same person that cried for the hardships people were made to suffer during administrations of his predecessors?

I assure you the artificial hardship created today is at the rooftop. Was that all a movie act?

We need to know so we can make necessary adjustments to AMVC-Awards so as to accommodate our new set of politicians (fainters not excluded) and the so-called converted politicians, since it’s the only thing they’re all getting right of recent – acting.

Who has squandered all the goodwill? who hiked almost the prices of everything and still got wanton support in his first term, thinking better days were ahead? Who once asked, who is subsidising who?

Has he not affirmed everything he once regarded and renounced as false and fraudulent? It was this regime that removed subsidy and still pays it?

What a paradox! Atiku was rejected only because people believed his campaign policies were neo-liberal, anti-masses and pro-wealthy.

The policies to some are perfect but only for saner climes, and not Nigeria. Had it been the voters then, trusted the system, Atiku would have had no capacity to accommodate the tired, disappointed and hunger stroked voters (creation of this regime) that would have piled and lined themselves behind him at the 2019 polls.

The Bony ear leadership is still squandering pool of goodwill from everyone that was once a diehard of it – the educated, the wealthy and the no-hope population.

If he did not revisit and inspect his performances and how they impact the people in his last 3 years ever, as the landlord of this house, he will go down worst than GEJ, whose strongest crimes were only not being able to stop the killings in the Northeast, and  his weakness for “stealing is not corruption”, which he tried hard to defend in his “My transition Hour.”

Right now, as bandits, cattle rustlers and you name it, have taken over farms in the Northwest and Northcentral,  and have terrorised most roads linking to cities, that not even the road to Abuja is free. GEJ’s score card remains bad but Bony Ear’s score card is trending worst.

Education under this regime, if not worst, has not got any better.As I write this piece, university lecturers are still on strike; their earned allowances still unpaid.

Students’ future is still bleak. Fuel price is still rising. Naira is in its worst times. Many farming activities are succumbed to banditry. Security stretched to its limit. Debt is in cresendo.

We were once supportive, asking lecturers to halt strikes as strikes are not the only alternative. But this regime seems to promise things, knowing from the start that it won’t keep its end. Just a trick to swell its votes.

Under GEJ, it was always one thing or the other, but under this regime, it is always so many things at the same time. One does not need to be educated to know this is lack of leadership. One does not need to be a leader of even a small class room, or of a school or a community group to know that this is absolute absence of leadership.

If not bony ear, how can it be, that his superintendents in affairs of security, Infrastructure, human development… and the list goes on, are not performing and every right thinking person in this country calls his attention to reshuffle, redress and jettison these superintendents accordingly, but all to no avail?

His excuses will not abate for him when he decides after he’s  gone to say he had given positions to children of the land to solve the land’s problems, as some children are either naturally without capacity, disinterested or even black-sheep, and it is his duty to act accordingly. The flock of self-enriching like minded team this regime put at the helm of affairs has done well enriching their pockets, unchecked.

I wonder what the man that donated two thousand Naira to his campaign in Borno in 2015, the family of the now late Hajiya koko that donated one million Naira (her lifetime savings) in Kebbi State, and the pool of us that contributed via cards as we were desperate for change (change of affairs) not the one we have, are feeling and thinking now as the bony ears continue to block words.

It must have been an absolute disappointment. This tenure, if care is not taken, is going to be characterised or remembered in history, as one in which deliberate inaction, an unwavering intolerance, endemic inequality and artificial hopelessness went unchecked. But a bony ear never listens.

Mustapha Anka    [email protected]