WHAT WOULD BUHARI DO? Presidential campaign speech is typically senseless, and ultimately pointless, because it is deliberately orchestrated for electoral advantage. None of it is conceived with either logic or reason. So when Mohammadu Buhari, contemplating Aso Rock with familiar, now amusing, ambition, carpet-fires Goodluck Jonathan for attempting to borrow $1 billion in foreign loans to reinvigorate the military, lets assume he is just making a pre-campaign speech. Lets assume that, like girls who just want to have fun, a resilient presidential aspirant just wants to talk. This is not an endorsement of Jonathans misguided loan idea. Far, very far, from it. It is, instead, an inquiry into the mind of a man who clearly flinches from proposing an alternative way out of a labyrinthine quagmire. Yet, with almost nostalgic sarcasm spiced with self-adulating heroism, Buhari reminisces the military gallantry of yesteryear, when, for 30 months...we fought a civil war from here to the East, and Nigeria never borrowed a dime, and dont forget that Nigeria won the war that continues to keep us as a single entity. Shortly after that victory, however, and largely encouraged by Yakubu Gowons ludicrous, patronizing no victor, no vanquished fictitiousness, Nigerias military began its perilous deterioration, when its top brass embarked on the malevolent mission of stupendous self-aggrandizement. With ruthless, relentless, remorseless plunder, successive regimes of the military establishment vandalized the countrys ability to fight. Men and machinery were being systematically depleted to saturate insatiable self-fulfilment appetites, in a sickening orchestration of institutional pillaging. Military budgets were repeatedly but surreptitiously vanquished by the monomania of top-brass audacity, jealously protected by a decidedly ruinous institutional instinct for self-preservation. The consequence of the disastrous devilment has only just begun to alarm large swathes of citizens, who have been astonished by the militarys serial capitulations to the onslaught of Boko Haram. After losing town after village to terrorists and watching them brazenly renamed as caliphates, the military is demonstrably now a ragtag force that would retreat and surrender when faced with a more formidable enemy than a collection of rabid medievalist psychotics. Ironically, Buhari was there - presumably even participated - when all the verminous buffoonery was unleashed. So, it is thoroughly exasperating when he rails against Jonathan, who hopes, albeit naively, to rebuild the military with the injection of a humongous loan. Although he sees “no basis or cogent reason as to why Nigeria must borrow money to fight the Insurgency, Buhari is understandably mute about his own ideas for the militarys rejuvenation. So, the question he must answer to the expansive panel of public opinion is, What would Buhari do? He should reach deep into his military intellect for that answer.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 06:02:41 +0000
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