If there is anything that the trending audio leaks from the minister of transport and director-general of President Buhari/Osibanjo campaign organization, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi reveal, it is that the party which came to power promising so much but delivered almost nothing, has decided – by itself – to remove the veil with which it used to masquerade itself as a government of change. Amaechi’s verbal diarrhoea has delivered the verdict that the President Mohammadu Buhari led government is a Trojan horse which was received with so much hope but soon became an object for which hunger, nepotism and corruption has been institutionalized. But I am afraid, that just like other revelations before this, the audio leaks will be overtaken by perhaps a new shaku shaku dance. Such is the premium we place on issues of national importance.
The ruling All Progressive Congress came to power flinging all manner of promises, most of which it has arrogantly avoided. But in the midst of this aggressive quest for power, Nigerians are like slaves who are divided among themselves as to which slave master treats them better. That is why Nigerians have been busy helping the Buhari-led government hide its glaring impunity for over three years while the others are trying to help the other party of another brand of trojan horse to regain power. The rest stare, helplessly.
However, no matter how creative an African elephant gets, it can never hide under the shrubs. Buhari’s government is that mighty African elephant in the Serengeti trying to hide its inefficiencies under a shrub.
Opportunity controls political loyalty, not conscience – at least publicly as Amaechi has shown. Amaechi, who was in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, told his audience that the next month’s election is between the rich and the poor. Amaechi who is known for his abilities to wield worlds like loaded AK-47 said to his hungry audience that the difference between his party, the APC and others is that his party is the party of progressives while the other party, the PDP, wants to collect from the poor and eat from them. Amaechi, just like others within his party, has continued with their monotonic pretence that their main challenger destroyed everything in Nigeria.
Yet, even the most dutiful researchers from the world’s best universities will almost declare the job of finding any significant difference between the APC and PDP impossible. The two parties are two sides of the same coin in what Mrs Obi Ezekwesili, the former World Bank Vice-President referred to as APDPC. This is why members of both parties switch between each other like fishes switching between two bowls of freshwater.
Scrutinizing Amaechi’s comments further, we must praise the minister for saying the truth. In as much as what he said in those leaked audios are funny, they are also quite saddening, to say the least. In his own words, the minister said: “This country can never change, I swear. The only way this country can change is if everybody is killed. This country is going nowhere, I swear.
“Even if you divide the country into 10, it will still not change. I’m not joking o. When Magnus (Abe) was my SSG, I told him that this country is hopeless and helpless.
“He said ‘Oga, stop it now. Coming from a governor, don’t be saying that. But two months in Abuja, Magnus said this country is hopeless and helpless. I said ‘why?’ He said, you are right, the only thing they do in Abuja is share money, they don’t work.”
“The president does not listen to anybody. He doesn’t care. You can write what you want to write. The president doesn’t care. Does he read?
“He will read, he will laugh. He will say ‘come, come and see, they are abusing me here’.
“In fact, there was one case of somebody in Onitsha, a trader in Onitsha who couldn’t sell his goats during Sallah. And I was with Oga on the plane and the man was busy abusing Buhari.
“He said, ‘Amaechi, come, what is my business with Onitsha goat seller?’”
It must be admitted that the minister is not alone in his belief that Nigeria will never get better unless the greedy elites of which Amaechi and Buhari are the proxies are killed. His sentiment was of the type that drove Major Kaduna Nzogwu into a coup six years after Nigeria gained independence. In his famous speech, he classified the Amaechis, Buharis, Atikus as political profiteers and swindlers. But unlike Nzogwu, the killings will not be in the form of spilling their greedy blood.
The minister only amplified our thoughts and contrary to popular opinion, it is not in any way, a negative assertion as any discerning mind knows that the country as presently constituted is not working. A country that brought Obasanjo to power as a civilian president after 20 of ruling the country as a redneck dictator and also excavated Buhari 30 years after he was chased out of power by his fellow dictators cannot be said to be working.
The merging of millions of person from different ethnic groups into the Nigerian project by the British colonizer without their input sealed the fate of the country before it came to be. That is why the country is peopled with leaders who see it not as a country to be nurtured but as a meal ticket and a means of survival. The continual recycling of these set of leaders only goes to enlogate the suffering of the masses. What Amaechi is asking the ordinary Nigerians is simply; what can you do?
