By Rahman Owokoniran

A crisis-ridden state is a troubled one. Our country is in such a deep mess. Thanks to many intellectuals who would constantly put pen on paper to remind us about who we are. Yes, indeed we are Nigerians of multicultural, multilingual, multi-religious diversities and interests.

Our background made it imperative for our choice of a democratic system. While some may be quick to argue that it is not the best, this article only wants to deal with the given. We inherited not a perfect Federal system of government. It is arguably an imperfect Federal system of government, to put it mildly.

Even the best democratic government in the world often swims in constitutional trouble waters. But our constitutional crisis became intolerable because of the APC government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, whose administration scapegoats the rest of the country and make no pretense of his love only for the Fulani.

This is a nightmare for the rest of the Nation. The whole Nation is in shock as Africa’s giant becomes a midget. Our Nation is recklessly violated by neighbouring  Fulani descendants. Our neighbourhood gradually degenerated into war zones where our citizenry were tortured killed and maimed by guerilla offensive perpetrators.

It has become difficult to unmask the real perpetrators as government security apparatuses are helpless. They are so incapacitated that they have become spectators on the crime scene. Arrests are not made and the pursuit of justice becomes impossible. The perpetrators cannot be delivered to justice.

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And the rate of insurrection continues to rise. Why should that be the case in a Nation like ours where the sanctity of our democracy can only be sustained through justice delivery and fair play? Everyone must be seen to be equal before the law.

The situation is deteriorating almost into a total state of anarchy because the extremists from both sides of the divide keep pushing different views to ignite rather than solve the problems. To say the least, government has been irresponsible, negligent and reckless in its counter-insurgency plans if there was any.

The Nation watch helplessly as government seemed perplexed and clueless about what to do, watching the horrific lynching of his own people by these terrorists— foreign and homegrown— bandits , kidnappers and common thieves. To make matters worse, our President is completely absent most of the time.

If only he takes time to climb down his high horse to address the Nation more frequently, at least the people will know what the challenges are and they will understand how to organise their own militias to ward off the attacks. Lack of empathy by our number one citizen to communities and families, who lost loved ones during these horrific episodes, is a major disconnection between government and the people.

Also, the shoddy and reckless responses from government occasionally really showed that the government is caught napping and frankly out of touch. But to appear to be on top of the situation the government occasionally, via its Twitter handle, throw tantrums which unnerve the citizenry.

Right now this government has pushed the Nation that was hurting from economic depression, lack of public healthcare services, grossly inefficient transportation system, and poor standard of living to the edge. This can be explained by the number of Nigerians of all shades of life migrating to seek greener pastures in far away Europe, the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and others.

The intellectuals, the professionals and the millennia, who voted Buhari into office hoping that he was going to actualise their dreams of a corruption-free Nigeria, have been checking out in droves. They are not necessarily expecting this administration to deliver all its campaign promises

 At least if only he could make significant impact on the first three reasons why he was voted into office: security of lives and prosperities, improved living standards and transportation system; the people will appreciate the progress being made.

But the nightmare of majority of our people is that this President is completely distracted. Rather than address the challenges faced by the general population which relates to our economic life, he decided to invest in political capital which has always been the bane of our economy from independence.

Defection of governors from our party PDP to the ruling party is rather unfortunate at this point in time. We have our challenges like any complex organisation. We are addressing the issues that aggravated the situation and hopefully it will be put to rest by the end of the year.

Don’t be surprised to see them returning later. APC had similar crisis. They dissolved and put a caretaker in place until their convention this year.

On our own side we decided to be democratic about our processes by allowing the current position holders run out their tenure as stipulated in the constitution of our party: the processes shall be commencing from this July to the last quarter of this year.

God bless PDP, God Nigeria.

Owokoniran is the General Secretary, PDP, South-West Zone

Vanguard News Nigeria