When Nura Ilyasu climbed one of the many telecommunication masts that dot Abuja, Nigeria’s soulless capital city, to protest the political malfeasance and economic hardship that define President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime, he was making a statement on behalf of the majority of Nigerians who have been subjected to grinding poverty and unimaginable misrule.
Poor Ilyasu, like many Nigerians, must have voted for Muhammadu Buhari who flew the flag of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 presidential election. The moment and events preceding that election threw up odds which put the then president of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and the then ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in bad light. The Jonathan administration was lackluster with officials whose hoity-toity tendencies rankled the nation. That regime represented the tendencies that have liquidated the promise of many a Third World country Corruption, insecurity, economic drift, failure of state apparatus, indecision and the deepening lack of national aspiration made that regime the poster card for tomfoolery.
By 2014, when Jonathan was tagged clueless by the APC propaganda hit men it was clear to discerning Nigerians that it was a matter of time and he would be swept away by a political tsunami occasioned by expediencies he could not comprehend. Buhari who had been a draconian dictator in his earlier outing as military ruler was touted not just as Jonathan’s alternative, but the redeemer with the magic wand that will transform Nigeria once voted into power. Buhari’s victory at the polls signaled his emergence as president. This phenomenon points to complementary dualities, namely; Nigerians were utterly fed up with the Jonathan’s regime and that the nation’s predilection for looking in the direction of erstwhile military rulers in moments of national disillusionment was yet to abate. The later especially reminisces the second coming of Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999. Obasanjo left power in 1979 and returned twenty years later in 1999. Buhari lost power in 1985 and also returned thirty years later in 2015 to reclaim it.
Despite Buhari’s abysmally unimpressive performance as military ruler in the 1980s, the moral cum political inebriation of the Jonathan era turned Buhari into a patriot with the noblest of nationalist intentions. Most Nigerians fell over themselves as salesmen of the Buhari phenomenon. Even hitherto inveterate foes join the “Buhari Must Rule Again” chorus. Among these was the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka. Professor Yemi Osinbajo whose grandfather in law, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was harassed by Buhari’s Gestapo goons became his running mate. Bola Tinubu, Rotimi Amaechi, Nasiru El-Rufai, all of them, progressives without convictions, led the Buhari onslaught wrapped with the foil called change.
The “Buhari Must Rule Again” proponents sold Nigerian a pig in a poke. Three years after Buhari was sworn in as president the Nigerian condition simply went from bad to worse. All the indices of state failure under the Jonathan administration deepened under Buhari’s watch as his government has failed on all fronts. While his appointees reel out achievements that are visible and known only to them, the generality of Nigerians wallow in hopelessness as they are gradually being eating up by hunger and anxiety. Nothing gives Nigerians cause to cheer at the moment. Things are falling apart and Buhari is carrying on with an imperial superciliousness in the face of the buffetings by the misrule he foisted on hapless citizens.
President Buhari has been shielded from the truth. When Nigerians are lamenting Lai Mohammed tells him they are singing paean for him. When Nigerians yawn as a result of the pangs of hunger Audu Ogbe tells him they are actually belching for eating sumptuous meals. When Buhari directs the police chief to relocate to a crisis zone, the man merely gives a perfunctory nod and sneaks into a cozy corner of Abuja to savour pepper soup and kunu. When Buhari is confronted with details of dilapidated schools, ramshackle hospitals and gulley ridden roads, his Men Friday tell him those belong to the Jonathan era.
Buhari and his deputy, Professor Osinbajo having failed in turning around the fortune of Nigeria have turned scapegoat-ing into a national pastime. They now look to the past which they hold responsible for their abysmal failure, the failure that has brought affliction on Nigerians, the failure which provoked Nura Ilyasu’s protest manifesting in his climbing the mast with a resolution to embark on hunger strike. Ilyasu’s action is a model of civic responsibility drawing attention of the smug rulers to the plight of the majority of Nigerians. Ilyasu says, “I climbed up for seven days hunger strike to protest the incompetence and cluelessness, to protest presidential impunity and general docility displayed by the masses. We can’t continue like this” This is, in part, an indictment on us all. Now, I must go and look for a mast to climb in protest!
