The fog of the 2015 general election is finally clearing up; the falsehoods sold to the people as change are unravelling at dizzying speeds. Even some vociferous supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari are deserting him in droves. Those who have not openly expressed some apprehension about the path the “messiah” has chosen to lead the country are grumbling and sniveling. However, a few diehards are still clinging to a tiny strand of hope that a miracle just might happen and things would change for the better under his government.
Well, it is going to get old saying I told you so. I can bet my bottom naira that nothing is going to change, at least not from what we have seen so far. As I have repeatedly stated in this column, change cannot come from a man who has not changed one bit, nor shown the slightest inclination to change contrary to the tales that were peddled on the campaign train. That will only happen when it’s proved that a leopard can now change its spots, or a tiger can change its stripes. His recent actions are a further proof of his ironclad narrow-minded, and ethnically inclined nature.
Those who collectively misled the people that Buhari had changed but are now singing a different tune must be held to account. We were bombarded with all sorts of virtuous and exemplary conducts of his past, and told his ethno-religious tendencies were “contrived” to undermine him. We were assured that Buhari would heal this land and restore hope to a fractured people. That has not happened; instead he has more than any president in the history of Nigeria consciously exacerbated the ethnic and religious divisions of the country by his actions and total display of insensitivity by his appointments.
They told us that he was the expected one – the long-awaited messiah who would bring back the glory of the fatherland and restore the pride of a people that were terribly famished. That wishful thinking has now clearly exploded in the faces of the proponents who spent their precious naira burnishing his image with cosmetics, as the candidate played along to the excitement of many.
In the last one year, the Nigerian economy has practically collapsed under the great “fixer”; the business environment has been scorched to the ground. Hunger and starvation have become daily companions of many people such that parents now exchange children for food. The change agents told Nigerians the ominous sounds of the prospect of a Buhari presidency that rang out so loudly during the electioneering were in fact drumbeats of exhilaration, hope and renewal.
Today, Nigeria stands challenged in all spheres, rudderless and floundering like never before. And of course we have so many astonishingly ridiculous and perverse people making silly excuses for the man who clearly has no business being at the helm of affairs of this country. Now it seems so obvious that Buhari and his party were very good at making promises but only excel spectacularly at making excuses for not fulfilling them.
The clamour for change can be categorised into four broad subheads, viz., the genuine change-seekers, the willfully blinded, those that lost out in the power struggle and had become spiteful, and the extremely partisan and sneaky activists who now even look the other way as the rule of law is mocked and torn to shreds.
It is true that many people yearned for a more fundamental change and desired it desperately; indeed, they still do. They constituted the genuine but ignorant, naive, vulnerable and undiscerning majority. These genuine change-seekers however became easily susceptible to the illusions called “change” promised by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its standard-bearer who walked about with padded feet, waving and smiling sweetly at everyone to frenzied applauses from enthusiastic crowds.
This Article was originally wriiten by Shaka Momodu under the heading “Buhari’s endorsement and state of the Nation”
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