A Hot Mess! Between A Rock and A Hard Place! The Crimes of Buhari and Buharists and Their Stockholm Syndrome are two write-ups that have been circulating on social media for a while now with the intent of educating the uninitiated and reminding those that have forgotten, about the excesses of General Mohamodu Buhari during and after his twenty month stay as Head of State in Nigeria from December 31, 1983 through August 27, 1985 I do not disagree with most of the facts stated in those articles nor do I have any insider information to dispute those I do not possess any knowledge of and that I believe can be said for more than 99% of the Nigerian population. Those that are in the know have more explosive information about the people who have ruled Nigeria since independence, much of which may never see the light of day in my estimation and as damaging as the facts in those two write-ups may be, they are only part of a whole. I am not here to state, prove or disprove facts. Anyone can use figures and documentation to sway people one way or the other. I am just going to try be logical and pragmatic by removing any sentiment from my thought process. Prior to his emergence as the APC presidential candidate this week, I did not voice any support for him and actually still lump him in with the generation of those that have brought Nigeria to its knees. Many of us hoped that we would see the rise of a politician that had no strong ties to the past leadership of that country. To find one without any ties at all will be like looking for a needle in a hay stack anyway. Well, that certainly did not happen! General Muhammadu Buhari has emerged as the one who will challenge an incumbent president who does not seem to know what he is doing being president of Nigeria I dare say! We are at this seeming impasse because President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was thrust into office by a series of misfortunes that hit those he was acting as a member of the supporting cast to. We know that in Nigeria, the post of Deputy Governor and Vice president is not given to the person with the greatest ability to replace a sitting Governor or President in case the need to arises as it did with the death of President YarAdua, but it is a compromise position to assuage the thirst for equity in a system based on ethnicity derived quota allocations. The usual Nigerian way of doing things. Creating more problems than it solves! All I am saying is that we now realize that the man was not prepared in any way for that office at all! History was thrust on him and we all hoped he would rise to the occasion but as we can attest to, if we are going to be objective, GEJ has not performed well by even the lowest standards we can honestly measure him by! That evaluation may seem harsh but with what he inherited from his predecessor, he should have done so much better. That is the reason why Nigeria is in this hot mess at this time. Now, why is it a hot mess really? We are now being forced to choose between GEJ and GMB! Between a rock and a hard place! One has to be preferable right? We cannot decide to jump into the water separating those two islands in the ocean of uncertainty. Nigeria has gone down that road one too many times already and the experience has not been great by any stretch of the imagination! Those two articles I mentioned, referenced just one regime, the Buhari-Idiagbon led one out of the six by my count that have straddled Nigerias history since 1960 if you lump Generals Muritala and Obasanjos together! It is a tough place to be but not unique to Nigeria. Ghana were faced with the same situation in 1992 and again in 1996. They had to decide if they were going to elect a former military Head of State that once led a brutal regime no matter how you want to paint it but was now retired and subject to civilian laws. The difference between Ghanas situation then and Nigerias now is that Flight Lieutenant John Jerry Rawlings had cleared off, killed by execution most of the civilian leadership from the generation that led Ghana down a degenerative path. Some say that was a necessary step. I still say, it was a very brutal one and a by product of dictatorship. Unfortunately, Nigeria is still in the grasp of her evil generation. They are in their last throes but have spawned offspring that like vipers are as deadly right from birth! This we can see from the horrible stench of corruption that emanates from the decay of Nigerias political structure beginning at the Local Government levels! There was a lot of soul searching in Ghana and many articles such as the two I referenced about GEJ were written about Mr Rawlings. Impassioned pleas from the families, many of them the crème dela crème of Ghanaian high society whom he had executed during his military regime. Ghana choose to go with the evil they knew rather than one they were not sure of and did so again after four years with Mr Rawlings. Did Ghana burn? No. Is Mr Rawlings a saint? Definitely not. That is a country which realizes that sometimes in order to move forward, pride, resentment and the quest for revenge has to be swallowed because the best out of two poor choices must be selected. That is the hot mess Nigeria is in now. We have seen what GEJ can do and I for one do not see any signs that he will do any better if given four more years which he does not deserve at all. His government reminds me on a much larger scale of historical accounts about the latter years of General Gowons regime when corruption started becoming entrenched in the psyche of the Nigerian state. He deserves the proverbial Red Card please! GMB will have to rule within the confines of a democratic system and regardless of how ridiculous the Nigerian version of democracy seems at times, it still offers more human rights than the military regimes ever did. That is huge! Today, anyone can criticize the leadership of the Nation and live to read rebuttals from those that disagree with them. Those criticisms can lead to movements which often lead to change. Who dared to do that openly during the dark years of General Sani Abachas reign of terror? If GEJ comes in and curbs the corruption which has taken flight with a jet pack to a new stratosphere in the last five years, that is saying something. If he cannot do that, we will have the chance to show him the door, a Red Card in four years. That is the beauty of democracy. That power lies in the hands of the people. Had I allowed my personal sentiments based on religious inclination, ethnicity and distaste for military regimes cloud my reasoning, there is no way I would consider GMB getting half a chance to lead Nigeria once more. However, from my perusal of the current political standoff in Nigeria, he is the better option in my estimation. That is my humble opinion. It is... a hot mess! I hope we do not regret the choice we eventually make, but that is what happens when you find yourself between a rock and a hard place!
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 10:30:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015