The Paradox Of Buhari Nigeria: If Nakedness Promises One Clothe, Ask It What Is It Called? By Okai Austin Usman
The ubiquitous and ever loquacious Presidential Assistants and Spokesmen – Garba Shehu never cease to amaze me in this blessed country of ours. Any careful observer of the President Muhammad Buhari led APC Government would have noticed how these wordsmiths have raised the art of re-echoing speeches of kings and elders at parleys as practiced by our royal ancestors to some groveling pedestal. They have themselves transformed into some sort of ‘Presidential Oracles’ whose mouths have become one of the orifices of the gods. Therefore, whether the gods spoke or not, once the oracles speak; that is it. The gods have spoken and so, these egoistic courtiers in Nigeria’s corridors of power have usurped their taciturn principal amidst the endless failures of the APC Government to belch out utterances that do not only defy logic, but also sound so ridiculous that one cannot but conclude that the whole bunch in this fast disintegrating contraption is a huge and sickening joke.
I am so rankled at the bespoke falsehood that someone claiming to be speaking for our President was spreading in front of some impressionable National Youth Corps Service members recently in Daura, the country home of President Muhammad Buhari. Lying before those youths at a time when youth unemployement is at a all time high as a result of the past six years of APC feckless governance of the country.
The depth of the damage this administration has done to our economy and social fabric is beyond comprehension. For the Nigeria youth, the future holds little or no hope for them. Gifting the youths on the occasion of Sallah celebration has come to be a presidential tradition and an act of piety that is customary to the holy holiday -the people that claimed to be speaking for Mr President should have left it at that.
But going beyond the bounds of reason and reality to say that President Muhammad Buhari and his perilous APC government has governed Nigeria so well that there won’t be room for PDP and other opposition parties come 2023 amounts to crass sacrilege and a betrayal of good reasoning.
I am sure those helpless but happy looking youths who paid the president Sallah visit while enjoying the spoils of the visit know deep inside their heart that the country under president Buhari leadership is nothing to write home about. They knew that those that uttered those speeches on behalf of our President were lying to themselves and not to the Nigerian youths that they represent. My only worry about this not so Presidential impudence and self-glorification in the wake of the legislative charades that Nigerians and the world witnessed over the electoral bill amendments is that, it signifies a grand design by the President Buhari’s government and the APC to rig their way back to power in 2023 against popular wish.
And if the Spokesmen doubt me, let them conduct an independent and unbiased survey among Nigerians on what they feel about this APC Government. You don’t need a soothsayer to know that Nigerians will overwhelmingly reject the APC worst than the did the PDP in 2015. Truth must be told no matter how bitter. And it is the realization by the PDP that the electorate will decide the fate of any political party any day under a free, transparent and fair electoral processes that made the party to return to the drawing table and listen to what the electorate is saying. Otherwise, even the deaf and dumb in Nigeria know that things have fallen so apart under President Buhari and APC that there is hardly a center now; let alone holding.
I particularly trust Nigerians that, given a level playing field during any election process, they will reward each political actor or gladiator according to his or her work. At least President Muhammad Buhari can bear me witness to this having been a beneficiary of the level playing field that PDP under former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan provided during 2015 election. Had former President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP undertaken the type of political machinations that the Buhari led APC government orchestrated in 2019 and is now trying to elevate to a larger scale in 2023, there won’t have been a President Muhammad Buhari let alone APC as a party. But as a true democrat that was not willing to subvert the collective wish of majority Nigerians for selfish reasons, the former President allowed freedom and much latitude in the political space. It is therefore surprising why the same President Muhammad Buhari and his party are so afraid of conducting credible elections in 2023.
Haba Mr President and APC, please remember that Whoever much is given, much is expected from so goes a popular adage.
If Mr President and APC have done so well for Nigeria and Nigerians over the past 6 or so years as those lying oracles claimed, why all the executive falsehood, judicial banditry and legislative fraud that we are witnessing in this country under President Muhammad Buhari and APC currently? It can be as a result of only one thing as far as my young mind can fathom and it is this: the oracles and the APC party are now afraid of their own shadows. That is why they are resorting to the type of volt face bravado that we are witnessing against many contradicting evidences in the polity. From the way they are going and judging by the amount of mischief that people in the APC led government are perpetrating, I doubt if there is going to be a party called APC in 2023 after the party’s current lone talisman vacates power.
Therefore, if the lying oracles like let them continue in the game of self delusion and lies- what has become their stock-in-trade.
The world is watching and 2023 will be our common arbiter. As a popular Nigerian saying in pidgin English goes, ‘if nakedness promise you clothe, ask am wetin be his own name’; translated it means, ‘if nakedness promises to give one clothes to cover his or her shame, the promisee should ask the promisor what is its own name.’
And also remember that nobody gives what he or she does not have. Nigerians under the current living condition that is worst than what the classic philosopher, Thomas Hobbes once referred to as the ‘state of nuture’ under the APC led government.
The lying oracles in whatever position currently in Nigeria are simply indulging in self-delusion but time has it’s own way of exposing sycophants. I doubt if Garba Shehu can look at his children in the eyes and sincerely tell them he is proud with the state of country today; but, for the sake of political preservation, he was busy lying to the corp members and future leaders.
