By Tony Eluemunor

These are trying times for Nigeria, and they call for a crop of insightful men and women with inspired ideas, ready to take on a sea of troubles and chart a new course for their country. Such leaders should solve problems in bold new and ingenious ways, to clear the mess inherited from the past, and this past includes the last four years during which unfortunately, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has held Nigeria captive, led it amiss, yet is combative enough to accept that it’s governance has proved to be nothing short of disastrous.

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Emotional video of Leah Sharibu(Opens in a new browser tab)

I know that APC’s  President Mohammadu Buhari has just with a few days ago been sworn into office for another term of four years. I know that re-election is supposed to be an endorsement owing to the good works the President must have wrought against the trials and diseases and economic problems and insecurity that faced the nation during the first tenure. But what exactly did Buhari and the APC achieve? Nothing!!!

Buhari and his APC rode into office mounted on the horse of complaints against the insecurity occasioned by Boko Haram’s odious offensive against Nigeria’s territorial integrity and devilish terrorism. That horse had a puny side-kick; an economy that was comatose.  For the woes Nigeria suffered under former President Goodluck Jonathan’s watch, he was aptly named: “Mr. Clueless.” Yes, none can deny that was in fact and indeed, clueless. A reading of his book explaining why he conceded defeat to Buhari in the 2015 election, shows that he still remains really and truly clueless. This is because Jonathan whined , moaned, droned and howled  about how he was betrayed by certain people who capitalized on the kidnapping of the Chibok girls, including the Bornu state governor by then, to blame and demonise him as being unfit to govern Nigeria. He explained over and over again, how some people failed in their tasks to make the girls safe while he was right in his suggestion  that that the particular school should not be a centre for the West African School Certificate examination, but that the Bornu state Governor refused to listen to him. Then he added what he must have thought  as the clincher; that the Bornu state governor was the state’s Chief Security Officer.

That was the most ingenious and self-defeatist argument I have ever read; pray, why did it not occur to Dr. Goodluck Jonathan that just as the governor was a state’s Chief Security Officer, that he too was Nigeria’s Chief Security Officer? So, what did he do as the nation’s Chief Security Officer? And he never explained the days or even weeks (some would say months) wasted determining whether the Chibok girls were actually abducted or not. How long should it have taken for a President who controlled the Police and the Military and the Department of State Security to know that hundreds of school girls were abducted? And if the school Principal failed in her duties by being out of that school that fateful night, on the pretext of having gone for a medical check -up elsewhere, why did Jonathan not instruct the Police and the DSS to investigate and slam charges against her if culpable?

In that book, Jonathan granted that his greatest achievement was that he conceded defeat in an election. What a shame!

Now, just like Jonathan in his book,  President Buhari, APC  and Nigeria in general appear to be in a state of denial. To begin from the last, Nigeria is in denial that Buhari has been a disastrous, tragic, even calamitous and ruinous President and then committed something akin to suicide…by re-electing a President with his track record for a second term of four years. The only way Nigeria and Nigerians should not share in the blame is if actually Buhari was not truly re-elected but was rigged into office.  That would mean that under Mr. Integrity, the entire people of Nigeria were robbed not only of their will in electing a leader, but of their collective and individual futures.

During Buhari’s first four years,  he did not solve the problem of insecurity that Boko Haram insurgency actually posed. Instead, his government gave the people a new lingo, degradation; as in Boko Haram has been degraded. And when recently Boko Haram bared its fangs, going from amorphous insurgents mouthing some misguided tenets of the Islamic religion to becoming a real and world-recognised TERRORIST GROUP, Buhari’s military top brass claimed that some politicians were behind that fierce wave of Boko Haram’s terrorist attacks—carried out with savage cruelty. Now, bandits have taken over Zamfara state but  the military has been echoing that nonsense and instead of sacking those military top-notchers, APC’s henchmen joined in singing that reprehensible song.  If politicians were sponsoring waves upon waves of ferocious military attacks against their own country, spilling the blood of civilians and soldiers alike, videoing captured soldiers being forced to say their names and units and where they were ensnared, and then later being executed, yes, the execution of gallant and well-trained Nigerian soldiers by imbeciles, what would stop any government or security agents worth those names from arresting such infernal politicians?

It just goes to show how insensitive some military leaders could be. And instead of sacking this so-called generals who disgrace their uniforms, they are still entrusted with the responsibility of fighting a battle they have been losing.

Now, to the APC as a party; how the impunity-besotted could solve the problem of impunity which the same APC has been accusing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of, beats the imagination. Every other problem could be traced to impunity; which is a feeling of licence or latitude or freedom to act as one likes, no matter how reprehensible the action and it also entails the conviction of immunity or exemption from punishment.

Thus, the Boko Haram insurgents keep mowing down Nigerians, yet, we have not been told how the arrested, tried and convicted Boko Haramists are punished. Pray, how many of them have been punished in any way, yes, in any fashion, prescribed by the law against high treason and terrorism? Or, who has been punished for the impunity that made APC ‘s candidates not to be recognized by the courts in Rivers and Zamfara states?

Most newspapers of this week’s Wednesday led with the charges and counter charges of impunity by APC’s leaders. It was either that its present National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole was being accused of impunity or his predecessor, John Oyegun was at the end of impunity finger-pointing. And the accusations and counter-accusations came from the apex of the party.

And what about the President?.  Wednesday’s papers alone showcased his cluelessness and impunity.  Leaders of the FCT came on a Sallah homage trip and he asked that they should stop criticizing his government so as not to make him unpopular, even as promised that though the FCT did not vote for him (that is Buhari’s way of saying that he came second in the FCT polls) he would not victimize them.  Such talks have no place in a Presidential Democracy. That shows Buhari did not grow in the office. In his first tenure, he openly justified his appointing people from states that voted massively for him into sensitive and strategic positions.

On the same page eight of the Vanguard newspaper where I read Buhari’s shocking message to FCT residents, instead of telling them what he intended to do for the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria,  his spokesman, Garba Shehu attempted to justify Buhari’s jetting off for an Organisation of Islamic Countries (IOC) Summit in Saudi Arabia immediately after his inauguration. Garba said that Buhari led other African countries to get OIC to achieve one great feat for Mother Africa; and I quote: “strong condemnation of terrorist acts.” That is the long and short of Buhari’s achievement at that summit!

Is there any reason not to believe that Nigeria is in trouble for the next four years?