It’s hard to estimate the damage that President Buhari’s shinning and overt incompetence has done to the entity called Nigeria.
Almost on a daily, people are being attacked, killed with reckless abandon. The effects such shining bad leadership are having on the fabrics of the contraption known as Nigeria is unquantifiable. With Fulani supremacy bolstered from Aso Rock, hate crimes and terrorism incidents are increasing. Buhari’s government’s responses to these ugly trends have been outright dismissal or mere rhetorics to the effect that the situation is under control.
While Nigerians live in constant fear, it appears that the FG’s strength is in the act of stifling dissents. This aggressiveness with which dissenters are quickly arrested while immigrant bandits are called up for dialogue only goes to show that the motives are nothing but sinister. A democracy without opposition ceases to be a democracy but a dangerous path towards autocracy and anarchy.
It is common knowledge that law enforcement officials are emboldened to think they can act with impunity by unlawfully arresting and detaining anyone who does not think alongside the ruling party which has seen Nigerians become poorer. Yet Mr. President unrestrained merry making in tearing off the fragile scab over the lingering sore that is Nigeria’s plethora of issues, as if to ensure it never heals has become legendary.
The president has achieved an appalling goal, and quite simply so, and has pit Nigerians against one another for crass political purposes. His lack of will to retrain militant herdsmen who are from his ethnic group has made it possible for every act of insecurity to be blamed on the Fulani.
No one is to be blamed but the president who came to power promising to deal decisively with insecurity but seems to be comfortable within the confines of Aso Rock as the country goes up in flames, but will only talk when he seems to vent his unabashed personal prejudice.
The APC-Controlled National Assembly by and large amplifies Buhari’s message of waving off these killings and unlawful arrest of dissents while the country burns through their deafening silence, abdicating their responsibility to put the people above their political master, thereby making a mockery of their claim to be Progressives.
The consequences of Buhari’s pathological incompetence are not only contained within Nigeria but reverberate around the world. Almost every single young Nigerian you see expresses lack of hope in the country. This also increased the number of people hoping to run away from the country. More of Nigeria’s young drowned on the Mediterranean in the last four years than ever before. African countries are having a field day arresting and deporting Nigerians who are running away in droves due to hopelessness.
When a member of the president’s inner cabinet revealed himself to be an unabashed bigot, threatening to leave election monitors in body bags, or when he raised the hand of the man caught in videos receiving bribes, Nigeria’s image was being remoulded by the rest of the world.
The inability of the All Progressives Congress to stand credibly against human rights abuses and injustices especially repression of minorities and dissenters, and the exclusions of parts of the country from decision making processes laid bare their claims to progressiveness.
Buhari has not encountered any opprobrium from the APC who are comforted to find a fellow traveler in rhetoric and policies that demean his own people.
Okenyi Kenechi writes from Nigeria
