Nobody is sabotaging Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari


More than five months into the Presidency of Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria is experiencing agonising fuel shortage and price increases. Probably, out of ignorance or deception, many Nigerians around me are saying, “They don’t want him to succeed.” Who are the “they”? It means, in the context of the discussion, saboteurs. I then ask a series of questions.

Was it saboteurs who prevented Buhari from choosing his ministers until more than five months after his own inauguration as the President? What was happening in those ministries in the fallow period? Was it saboteurs who asked the President to be selling dollars cheaply to pilgrimage-makers, and to spend N70m to celebrate Nigeria’s 55th anniversary notwithstanding the economic downturn and the downtrodden? Where lies his focus and priority?

After election, Buhari had some weeks to prepare for taking over power. What did he do in those weeks that he could not strategise for effective takeover? As soon as he took over, he started going from pillar to post on how to “defeat Boko Haram”. He alienated himself from the economic situation and what was happening in the ministries, including the petroleum industry.



Yet, we have to assume that he has been in charge of the petroleum ministry and the other ministries since he took over on May 29, 2015, and early November 2015, petrol scarcity and high cost of fuel ensued, and biting hard, even as I write this article, because Buhari cannot pay fuel importers.

Instead of raising critical questions, many Nigerians descend on imaginary saboteurs. Was it saboteurs who asked Buhari to make himself double as the Minister of Petroleum Resources? The smartest of them all, the former President Olusegun Obasanjo tried and later dropped that portfolio. Did Buhari consult with him, or he is self-conceited? Will Buhari now relocate to Warri, Yenagoa, or Port Harcourt, or what, for effective petroleum ministry?

Might is right is the order of the day in Nigeria. It led to the Boko Haram insurgency. The Nigerian Army threatening the Biafran agitators may mean another long struggle, because Nigeria lacks leaders but dictators who rely on coercive resources to settle scores, rightly or wrongly. That is in tandem with religious aggression and imperialism that are also the order of the day in contemporary Nigerian society. Whatever Christians and Muslims don’t want cannot be done even if stipulated in Nigeria’s constitution, e.g. official secularity.

I met my mother in America. Rosemary Curcio would say to me: “You are highly opinionated”, where my biological mother, Babayemi Okugbesabi Abioje, would say: “You can be very repetitive”, meaning being focused and insistent. Nigeria is currently unsustainable; it needs reordering, for which President Buhari and his All Progressives Congress are not ready. Previous rulers were also not ready. If the international community will help Nigeria, it will not be to “defeat Boko Haram”, but to reorder the country for sustainability. “Might is right”, opportunism, survival of the fittest, etc. cannot bring peace!

Pius OyeniranAbioje, PhD, University of Ilorin

We know

FREEEMANAN:
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he is only reaping what he sowed