By May this year, the PROTRON, President of the Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari would have ruled Nigeria for three years. In the last couple years and few months, some of the expectations set for his administration have not been met. His handling of governance has been pre-judged, judged and condemned outright from all classes of people. The lower class angst is centered on the rising cost of living and the suffocation of their economic and political conditions. The middle class complaint centered on Buhari’s shutting the door against all avenues of ill-gotten wealth and unearned opportunities and class favour formerly enjoyed by this lecherous class.
As I write, Nigeria has slid into a shithole of brutalizing circumstances. The most disenchanting of all these negative circumstances remains the ongoing terror of the armed Fulani herdsmen and their bloodlust desire to steal, kill and destroy anything that stands in their way. Buhari’s other sin is the stagnation and unwillingness to fight corruption with the animal zeal people expected from him. Before he became another army-turned-civilian leader of Nigeria, his admirers were coopted into a messianic belief that he was the awaited messiah that will sever the hydra-headed corruption that had crippled, pauperized and defiled the Nigerian state for decades.
In our consciousness, the belief was that by his iconic name, thieves will tremble. By his iconic name, the belief was that Nigerians and snakes who had swallowed public money will vomit them. By his presence, the belief was that unemployable youths will be smiling home every month with the reward of their labour. By his presence, the belief was that insecurity and police brutalization of unarmed and peace-loving Nigerians will be eradicated.
The question now is this: where did Nigerians draw all these primordial beliefs? Why was the PROTON framed in the likeness of omnipotence? Today, this nation is reeling from an unusual bifurcation. Today, the illusion of Buhari’s omnipotence is staring us right in the face. Today, Nigerians are grappling with a classic hubris of political incredulity. As articles of our faith in Buhari begin to dwindle, pessimism is becoming the bookmaker’s favourite. The politicization of his inefficiency, weakness, flaws and frailties have all became targets for shooters to lob gunshots at him. Anybody you speak to in Nigeria has one or two grievances against Buhari. The language of the aggrieved is on the airwaves, online and any place where two or more talk heads are gathered.
Now that Buhari is faced with the insurgency of the disenchanted, could this man be given another four years mandate as PROTRON? Are we to set in place the usual parameters of apathy and resignation to fate and ‘sit don look’ and manage him for another term come 2019? Are we fair in our assessment that President Buhari has not performed as a leader? Are we setting the best parameters to judge his administration? In calling for his exit or resignation, are we falling for fear and the scare tactics of his enemies and opponents?
Are the recent evocative cries of Ibrahim Babangida and Olusegun Obasanjo against Buhari’s continuation as the PROTRON the voices of sane or mad prophets? Can we say that the appointment of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as head of a peace committee of the internal disharmony of APC a kind of political masterstroke that will calm pained voices of poisonous effusions, anger, despair, disappointment and loss of confidence in the PROTRON? Or do we need to question our impatience with President Buhari and give his sun-clean integrity a second chance to confound his die hard critics and the ongoing PDP’s lethal and self-righteous denunciation of this administration? Is four years of Buhari’s presidency enough to see the fruits of change as promised in 2015?
Of a truth, under President Buhari, the social statistic of privilege among his team members still remains. The cost of governance is as high as under the administration of wasteful Jonathan. Also, unemployment among the army of our youths has remained the flesh-and-blood distillation of Nigeria’s incongruity that will shame a less rich nation. The number of unemployed are high enough to make the devil blanch. Of a truth, under Buhari, the reaffirmation of the dominant paradigm of Fulani internal lordship of Nigeria has become a state policy and Buhari had not been a reflective enough man to know that his change mantra was a document designed to disinter this primordial tribal hierarchy.
Yes, Nigeria is rotten from root up. The stolen wealth of Nigeria’s criminal politicians is still circulating and causing social and political upheavals. The ethical matrix of our society values nothing but money and more money. However, what is disempowering Nigeria and Nigerians is the Northern/Fulani elites who believe, to the point of divine conviction, that they are the anointed internal lords of the Nigerian state. This dark interplay of political hierarchy had been in existence since the dark days of Tafawa Balewa, Ibrahim Babangida, Abacha, Abdulsalam, Umar Yar’Adua and now Mohammadu Buhari.
This Fulani ideology of divine rulers of Nigeria had always placed the Yoruba and Igbo under restrictive sphere and this had continued to undermine the prospect of launching a unified counter hegemonic force as an agency of progressive change in both the Southwest and Southeast.
Mohammadu Buhari is a continuation of this divine ruling mandate of average Fulani personality. The ongoing catastrophe in our emerging democratic aspirations is the leverage we all complicitly continue to give to a tiny and lecherous Fulani cabal to calibrate power, dominion and control over the destiny of Nigerians on well-grounded ideology of Fulani caliphate mentality. We pretend that the southerners and northerners share the same common view of Nigeria or even occupy the same secular, heterogeneous and diverse nation. Nahhhhhh……………….. The Fulani caliphate ideology manifests crudely as a practical tool to control, contain, dominate and harass Southerners to humiliating submission to Fulani’s mysterious, yet political omnipotence that brook no alternative to its hegemonic character.
The Fulani caliphate ideology believes in forced unity. It has an infinite hatred for social and political restructuring of Nigeria. It has no desire for fiscal federalism. Yes, Buhari sold the mantra of change to a somnambulist nation, but he is not a radical change maker. The state police will not happen in its own time. The demand for restructure will not happen under his watch. Why? President Buhari is a torch carrier for the continuation of Fulani caliphate ideology. That tedious language of change has come to haunt him.
