The Wreckage Foretold

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Nigeria now equates to a new definition of extreme chaos in all its frightening dimensions and calamitous ramifications. A country betrayed by its Lilliputian leaders and short-sighted effete elites.

It was Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, who repeatedly warned weeks before the 2015 general elections that Nigerians would be boarding “a one-chance bus” if the APC [All Progressives Congress] won the polls. When the bus is inevitably driven into the ditch, he said, it could be irretrievable. Nigeria led by Muhammadu Buhari would end up being broken in every way. How prescient Fayose was!

Amplifying Fayose’s concern about the big gamble the country would be taking if the unthinkable happened with the then opposition party’s electoral triumph, Governor Segun Mimiko of Ondo State said, Muhammadu Buhari’s age wasn’t what should bother us but the age of his ideas and his unsavoury antecedents. He pointed out the absurdity and danger of electing a man so firmly stuck in the past to run the country in the digital age.

Many other voices raised alarm about the emptiness of the numerous promises the APC was selling to the electorate. Particularly worrisome was Buhari’s very airy promise that he would make one naira equal to one US dollar in value. He never said what financial alchemy he would employ to make the magic happen. And no one seriously interrogated him about his promise. He had dodged the presidential candidates debate where he could have been pinned down to sketch out his plan to elevate the naira to the status of the American greenback.

The whole country was febrile with APC’s intoxicating political sound bites and the relentless din of its well-oiled propaganda machine. It successfully created the narrative, defining President Goodluck Jonathan as “clueless and incompetent” and his administration “corrupt”.

APC resoundingly won the elections, according to INEC’s results, irrespective of the widespread irregularities that marred the polls. And Buhari finally got his long-coveted prize of becoming the landlord of Aso Rock. Soon after, he promptly went to sleep, forgetting why he was elected president. Since then, he hasn’t seriously engaged with his job, preferring to conduct himself as a potentate who’s above everyone and everything.

Today, the country he inherited is almost terminally wounded and bleeding profusely in every vital area. Nigeria is dying. The people are crying. And the man millions of Nigerians had invested so much hope in in 2015 has abandoned the country and the people.

The wreckage of Nigeria that began in 2015, is a triumph of boundless incompetence, mental indolence and obsession with inanities. Such as the endless buck passing by the president and his party by blaming their failure on previous administrations.

Buhari seems to think that the presidency is only about himself, and not the country. This is why he travels abroad frequently for medical treatment while giving scant regard to the country’s present existential condition. If Nigeria were a human entity, the doctors would have by now declared a medical emergency for it.

Mass killing is now the norm perpetrated by another set of terrorists who have been identified as mostly Fulani. Last Sunday, April 10, they ravaged several communities in Kanam Local government area, Plateau State. The scale of destruction was again despicable, and the number of those killed is over 100 and still rising. We don’t bother to count the injured anymore as the dead, many fiendishly mutilated well beyond the boundary of indecency, are interred in mass graves.

As Boko Haram and ISWAP continue to wreak havoc in the northeast, Fulani terrorists, formerly known as bandits, are holding sway in the northwest and northcentral. The president continues to hide in his Aso Rock fortress as insecurity envelopes the land.

Nowhere is safe. And no one is safe anymore. The terrorists, emboldened by the federal government’s tepid, uncoordinated response to their deadly challenge, are attacking transport facilities, including airports, trains, railway tracks and highways, with sheer insolence. Even military facilities are no longer immune to the terrorists’ brazen attacks. With every attack, their insolence magnifies the government’s embarrassing impotence and further delegitimizes it.

On top of losing grip on the country’s security, the government, through sheer incompetence, has run the economy aground. Hunger is becoming more widespread with an estimated 50 percent of the population living in absolute poverty.

Unemployment rate is the highest the country has ever experienced. And there’s no coherent plan to stem the economic haemorrhage. Meantime, inflation races daily northwards, making nonsense of the official figures issued by the National Bureau of Statistics. Naira is now light years away from the status and value of the dollar. The economy is the worst-performing in West Africa and one of the continent’s basket cases.

How did we get here as a nation? We made ourselves victims of APC’s towering mendacity and willingly suspended our disbelief about the suitability of the man, who, having become president after three failed attempts, proceeded to wreck the country.

How did he achieve this? In so many ways. What stand out are his unrestrained parochialism, limitless ineptitude, promotion of mediocrity and atavistic tendencies. He has validated one truism, which is that a nation and its people suffer in the absence of good, dynamic leadership.

Indeed, Nigeria’s abject condition today is a wreckage foretold seven years ago. How did we transform from a nation of lofty promise to one of general degradation, moral rot and insufferable helplessness? This is the urgent question every Nigerian must ponder as we prepare to elect another set of leaders from the same group of mostly political jobbers who seek power solely for their personal aggrandizement.

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