25th October, 2017
By: Amir Abdulazeez
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his week, the news of an alleged secret recruitment process
by the Federal Inland Revenue Service broke out. According to the news, FIRS
was sending text messages to some privileged individuals inviting them to a
certain location for interview and possible appointment. Just as the news went
viral, I came across an appeal by a concerned citizen on Twitter copying the
handles of the organization in question, that of the Nigerian Senate, House of
Representatives, the presidency and a host of others. Here was my thought and reply
to the appeal; why petition people without whose open or silent approval such a
thing can never happen or perhaps those whose candidates are most certainly the
beneficiaries of this kind of recruitments, if not this same exercise in question.
Now, the question is not about FIRS, CBN, NNPC, DSS
and other Federal Government parastatals allegedly conducting secret
recruitments targeted at few privileged Nigerians to the detriment of the less (or
non) privileged, it is about it happening in the government of (or which supposed
to be of) change supervised by a party promising a fundamental difference and a
leader whose credentials have always been about integrity, honesty and justice.
One thing, I personally expected to see but have since given up on seeing in Buhari’s
Nigeria was a united country driven by justice and fairness for all; at all
levels and in all matters. Nigeria becoming a society of equity and justice is
once again elusive.
One fundamental political manoeuvre that the ruling APC
appear to have succeeded in executing is convincing (or may be bullying) many
Nigerians into accepting their submission of only promising to tackle
corruption, insecurity and the economy. Lest we forget, the APC was a merger of
political parties who spent their whole lives claiming everything was wrong
with Nigeria because of PDP. The APC itself spent between 2013 to 2015 telling
us how everything is wrong and how, if elected, they will fix them. Their well
packaged all-encompassing campaign promises which they never disowned until
weeks after the commencement of their tenure are well documented.
This was the first basic (mis)step the APC Government took
in disappointing Nigerians. Considering the disastrous past which the PDP
represented, it was easy to forgive APC and give it more time to achieve its
mandate until it gradually and lately proved that it cannot. Let us for the
sake of analysis briefly focus on anti-corruption, which is the APC’s national
anthem; tackling insecurity, which is what primary aided the party to power and
fixing the economy which is the most tricky of all.
While anti-corruption is what President Buhari has
emphasized the most, it is also the issue in which he had critically and
decisively failed the most so far. Nothing captures this more adequately than
the Punch’s editorial of 24th October, 2017 titled ‘Maina: The
Audacity of corruption’.
Read some abridged sections from the editorial “There has been a serial condoning of corruption when
it comes close to home. The Chief of Army Staff, Yusuf Buratai, and Dambazau
were alleged to have acquired unexplained wealth, as was his controversial
Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari. He brushed these aside just as he initially ignored
allegations of corruption against the SGF, Babachir Lawal. Even after
eventually suspending Lawal and receiving a separate probe report of a
presidential three-man panel, Buhari has sat on the report.
When
Abdulmumuni Jibrin blew the lid on how budgets had been padded by billions of
naira to corruptly enrich lawmakers, even confessing to being a beneficiary,
the government failed to move against the House Leadership thus missing a
golden opportunity to break a system that enables lawmakers to annually cream
off up to N100 billion through the notorious constituency projects scam in the
lower chamber.
Corruption
was on the march again when Senator Isah Misau recently accused the IG of
Police, Ibrahim Idris, publicly of failing to account for over N10 billion
monthly earned from special security postings, among others. Again, instead of
using this lead to resolve the contentious issue of over 100,000 policemen
being assigned to individuals and corporate bodies and the monies levied on
them, the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, curiously filed
criminal charges against Misau.”
With all these and other incidences, we can
effectively assert that President Buhari’s fight against corrupt individuals
who mostly served in the immediate past government is still alive, but his
anti-corruption war is effectively dead. This is where he lost the most
significant part of his goodwill and can be said to have unfortunately and needlessly
proven many of his critics right.
On insecurity, one can give the Buhari administration
a big commendation for decimating Boko Haram amidst sustained and determined
efforts to completely crush it, which will understandably take some time. However,
the same cannot be said of other equally disturbing security threats like
kidnapping, herdsmen killings, armed robbery, religious and ethnic crises, etc.
How the government handled (and continue to handle) the Shiite crisis in Zaria two
years ago and the Biafran secessionist insurgence, coupled with its inadequate
response to senseless herdsmen and communal killings which had seen no one brought to justice so
far, has worsened the deep suspicion and cold relationship that existed between
the Nigerian security architecture and the citizens. Nigerians today are
generally just as unsafe as they had ever been and the efforts to finding the
lasting solutions to our security problems are as inadequate as they had ever
been.
One area which you may find it difficult to
categorically score the APC government is the economy. One thing that is
undeniable though is that, whether justifiably or not, there is no economy in
recent history in which the common man has suffered like this current one. Though,
the APC’s theory of previous mess being mainly responsible for nearly
collapsing the economy and reform efforts making the suffering inevitable is
largely acceptable, but the question of its inadequate role towards improving
it is very much in place.
The government have made giant strides with its social
investment programmes; their sustainability and impact on the economy
especially in the long run is something we cannot ascertain yet. The government’s
claim of making significant progress in diversifying the economy is still somewhat
vague. We have seen some states make noticeable progress in agriculture, we
have also seen the fruits of the Federal Government’s determined interventions
in resolving catastrophic salary issues, we have seen power supply relatively
improving but not stabilizing, etc. However, we see big ambitious national
budgets without diligent implementation. We are yet to see the successful progression
of any of the critical infrastructure the government have been talking about,
especially the ones in the transport sector. Perhaps, this is the one area we
can give the APC some time before judging.
At the end of whatever analysis, Nigerians are largely
disappointed openly; even those who are pretending not to be, are disturbed
deep inside them, particularly about recent developments. Nobody expected many
of these things to happen under Buhari’s watch and no excuse will suffice. This
is by far the most tolerated government whose response to people’s expectations
has always been a demand for more time, patience and understanding with little
to show for it. Buhari was considered by many to be the last bus stop to turn
around things, now people are uncertain of what to do next. We are in a season
of dashed hopes.
With the high expectations they made Nigerians to
have, the APC cannot demand that we judge them with average standards. After apparently
not learning from the past, they do not deserve to get away with all these
disappointments and dashed hopes. When PDP started misbehaving and Nigerians
were reluctant, they gained more and more courage until they devised fraudulent
means of remaining in power in spite of Nigerian’s efforts to remove them. We should
ponder on the possibility of the APC following suit.
Though we have had so many cross carpeting of
individual members that had almost collapsed them into one, but at the moment,
the fundamental difference between PDP and APC is that, one had enough time to
metamorphose into a notorious impunity machine, while the other is still
pretending as if all is well, and the real tragedy of 2019 is that both may be
the only options for Nigerians to choose from.
Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez
