There is certain confidence in the deliberate and measured steps the President, Mohammed Buhari has taken so far since he received the instrument of office as President and Commander in Chief of the armed forces. In spite of the miasma and darkness that was bequeathed to him by the last three administrations, his own fount of strength remains now as it has for all these years, a source of comfort and quiet serenity for the masses of the people.
Even for those in the inner court of the shrine, his stately comportment should provide a sense of the verities of things beyond the day to day duties they fulfil. Errant critics who aim to turn the president into a short-dash sprinter should be reminded that the job he has to do can be likened to reassembling the feathers of a pillow bust asunder in a gale. For no man who set himself the task of clearing the Augean stable accomplished the feat by the wand of magic. It will take slow, strenuous, meticulous and deliberate work to arrive at the lofty targets PMB has set for himself.
The Peoples Democratic Party ran the Nigerian submarine aground, and I resume these matters not to stir up waning rancours, but to put things in proper perspective, since journalism is history written in a hurry. For sixteen years the ship of state groaned and lurched uncertainly upon the untoward currents while the Head of State, like Emperor Nero fiddled and merried away along the sad and tragic path to perdition.
In the states where the party held sway, the Governors left the footstool of the gods and became gods themselves. When a governor spoke, the lord God hath spoken. The patrimony of the people was the private wallet of the Governors. They bruised public institutions. They trampled on the people. They atrophied the electoral process. They handed electoral tickets to their cronies without due process.
The people of course were invited to celebrate even when served a portion of personal tragedy with inane platitudes and illusions of a better tomorrow, provided one remained loyal to the cult of spiritual pride erected around the Governor-hero, an apotheosis of the ego.
These governors circumscribed individual freedom and its corollary of freedom of association. All the friends of the governor-hero must be your friends. And you must also of political necessity fall out with all those how have fallen out with the governor-hero, even if you had no idea what went amiss between the former friends and confidants. To dare to do otherwise was certain political, economic and social harakiri
The PDP, it must be told lost power basically as a result of the excesses of the governors. Their dictatorial application of power divided the people and created discordant tunes among its family. Some governors lost sight of the big picture and concentrated supreme efforts on local battles and struggles for who-was-who. The insistence on the part of these governors to impose candidates from governors to councilors of their selfish choice on the people broke the ranks. In some states, the succession plan was strictly a business arrangement. For king Naira must continue to flow ever so freely.
Today, those who patented impunity are accusing PMB of impunity. Those who trampled on the rights of many are accusing APC of intimidation. Those who lived and operated above the law are afraid of facing the law. What they forget is that man is a microcosm corresponding to the macrocosm of the universe. Through reason, he is able to discern the universal law and order present in nature and to live life in accord with it. Through self-discipline and self-control he may achieve virtue and happiness, which are mainly a matter of inner tranquillity; nothing else matters. Not power, wealth, external goods, common pleasures or social ties and standing.
When they were in office, these governors forgot the University of Man in the natural law governing the cosmic community. Nor did they realize that every fellow individual bore something within him of supreme value and so deserved to be treated accordingly in the affairs of life.
President Buhari’s resolve to build strong and durable institutions is by all tests and measurements the long-term cure to our perennial malaise as a nation and as a people. I.E Hume it was who posited that institutions are necessary because man is essentially bad. For those entrusted the responsibility of imposing social discipline on others should by hypothesis be themselves better, The lengthened shadow of a man is history, said Emerson.
Dominic Kidzu is Abuja-based.
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