Under Buhari Nigeria hurtles to disaster
…how his poor leadership endangers Nigeria.
OPINION
By Ngozi Asoya
Days after Nigeria marked 61 years of her independence, I’m still too tongue-tied to capture, in words, my views of that otherwise important event for divergent reasons.
There’s an uncomfortable scooping to injuries and more hurts at the beginning of Nigeria’s 62nd birthday. The signs are bleak. Disaster is more visible than hope. That’s what the horoscope appears to forecast.
“Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning!”
(Ecclesiastes 10:16)
The country is currently led by a retired soldier, General Muhammadu Buhari, whose only achievement is having worn starchy apparels with no additional mental epaulettes. Since leaving office in 1985, he has not added any qualifications of note except political gas lighting and religious fawning. The quality of his thoughts is infantile and his views of politics too provincial for the multifaceted and sophisticated people he leads.
His jejune leadership is one of Africa’s current burdens. He drives the country deeper and deeper into debt, social discord and economic stagnation and yet seems oblivious of the consequences of his actions. He blames everyone else but himself for his failings. Nigeria’s African super power hopes hang on a cliff hanger with this child in the driver’s seat.
Insincerity
Nigeria’s insincerity problem is multifaceted. There’s insincerity of the leadership, of the political class, of policies, and of the elite.
Nigeria’s leaders are some of the most dishonest specimens of the human race. They pretend to offer leadership whereas, they are only interested in themselves. Self aggrandizement and personal enrichment are their only enduring gospels.
Nigeria’s political class just mirrors the current leadership specimens. A new class of leadership is emerging though but without a vigilant citizenry, the new corps stand the risk of corruption, and stymieing before it has festered.
With the neck-breaking debt of this administration, there’s no loud hue and cry from any opposition groups suggesting that there’s no superior governance credentials out there.
The tail is wagging the Nigerian dog from all sides. It has taken the agitations of Nnamdi Kanu, Sunday Igboho, the publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore and the #Endsars protests for a few reasonable government leaders to start addressing the issues on the front burners of public discourse such as restructuring and devolution of powers from the centre.
Internal contradictions
Despite the reality that all economics fly at the level of human resources available, Nigeria’s policies have coagulated at the stage of federal character and zoning. Singapore’s example is never considered and the country is a perennial consumer who exports what resources she needs most. Top quality Nigerians are shipped out in a mindless manner that you wonder who is left, except the aged and infirm to build the nation.
Fuzzy visions, impaired visionaries
Though we have dreamt of economic self sufficiency since the 1970’s, nothing captures the vacuity of that vision than to have voted an expired old general to lead a vibrant corps of young and starry eyed generation of dreamers
It’s pretty impossible to expect an acutely impactful vision from a leadership class that is lacking in social compassion and communal empathy.
Godless generation
“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” (Proverbs 29:2)
The problems that face Nigeria today can only be ascribed to the people’s godlessness. Social values are trampled under the feet and the country lacks a sense of history and cultural pride. There’s an acute rivalry between Western and Arab cultures.
You wonder where the indigenous ways of life have gone. Although we practice the religions of our colonial ancestors, we are still a godless people, devoid of much humanism.
Just how close is this country to her tipping point, the rapid acceleration towards the precipice is discernable. No one knows for sure but the combination of godlessness with an inebriate and occult idiocy at the top signal only one thing: the death of the status quo.
Asoya writes from Lagos, Nigeria
