“Whatever one’s views are, Nigerians must thank former President Jonathan for not digging-in in the face of defeat and thereby saving the country untold consequences”. These were the words of President Muhammadu Buhari as he delivered his first Independence Day broadcast to the nation, four months after replacing Goodluck Jonathan with a barrage of disparaging denunciations. The fact that such unrelenting bashing continued to be a defining feature of his “corrective” regime made his Independence Day unsolicited salutation of the former president too good to be true. But it was truth delivered in a live broadcast!
In the heat of the momentous victory of the former military head of state spectacularly signalled by the world-acclaimed telephone call by the outgoing president to his successor conceding defeat even before INEC declared the results it was said that certain world powers virtually forced Goodluck Jonathan to submit. Since then however and especially from the sober statement by President Buhari quoted here it is beyond contention that the former president actually made the call voluntarily and with all sense of statesmanship and humility solely motivated by the overriding concern for the sustenance of peaceful coexistence even at the expense of his right to challenge what was after all a contentious election.
A review of the political arena since President Buhari’s ascension highlights the paradoxical pre-occupation of the victorious with the real and contrived failures of the defeated to the ridiculous extent of promoting such retrospective recrimination to the status of main agenda of governance. In what was aptly described as a case of an incumbent government unable to shake-off its addiction to the compulsive campaign of criticism typical of opposition parties, neither the President nor the APC could avoid bashing Jonathan and the PDP while ostensibly unfolding the agenda of government.
The ultimate outcome of this propaganda overdrive manifested as a self-inflicted assault on the otherwise “stainless” public perception of the capacity of the Buhari Presidency to actualize its much-anticipated change agenda. The ecstatic anxiety with which the masses expected dramatic disappearance of the “rot of the past” turned out to be far beyond the capacity of the APC leadership to live up to expectations.
From bending over backwards to blame evident paralysis of government even after 100 days on the saddle on the overblown decadence of the departed administration, the exasperated exponents of Buharian Tsunami of Change resorted to bizarre escapades like attributing quantum electrical feats of boosting national electricity supply and revamping of obsolete petrol refineries on mere “body language” of its lean President!
We also had to accept that the Nigerian Army’s increasing assault on the Boko Haram insurgents was not the logical result of the continued deployment of the new and updated arsenal of arms, ammunition and array of military equipment procured against all odds by the Jonathan Administration but rather because of the ludicrous impact of the “military savvy” of the Commander-in-Chief. The fact that the new government was still too busy sorting out the backlog of salaries and wages and the elusive pursuit of “stolen billions” to spare thought or dime on the procurement of weapons for the “unequipped, demoralized and cowardly” Army bequeathed by its predecessor was conveniently cast aside by the change chanters.
But some Nigerians retained enough critical gumption to decipher a distinct sluggishness and apparent confusion on the hitherto crystal clear “way forward” and its pursuit. This in turn forced the APC into even more pathetic political contortions by which it not only admitted qualification for such relegation of ranking in change-capacity but went further to adopt the weakness as strength under the guise of a latter-day realization of the necessity for a “methodical and measured” approach to policy implementation, regardless of the exaggerated expectations instigated by its campaigners.
The dilemma facing Nigerians now is how to manage the worsening outcome of the electoral feat of “overthrowing” an incumbent government whose dividends were physically evident but politically rubbished under the sarcastic spell of a horde of veterans of out-of-power politics spewing spins of utopian change with intoxicating potency. Ironically, their consolation has now been presidentially-confirmed to reside in the good deeds and incomparable achievements of the very same Goodluck Jonathan that were frantically buried and forbidden to pave way for “change” that has practically changed the reality of leadership politics in Nigeria.
Oreh writes from Benin, Edo State.
