For once let's applaud our President, Buhari Muhammadu

Buhari

The beginning of a new year such as now,
offers a good opportunity for Nigerians as a
people to take a second look at the previous
year 2016 and its catalogue of negative
events. Such a review will no doubt be helpful
especially if it can draw attention to the way
forward. In other words, to make 2017 a better
year, we need to avoid a recurrence of the
negative events of last year. Arriving at the
solution to our problems may not be an easy
task but we imagine that giving credit
occasionally to whom it is due is a wise
approach.
It is obviously superior to the current trend
whereby everybody is a critic in a game in
which only President Buhari is perceived to be
at fault all the time. The recent crisis in
Kaduna is probably a good example of an
issue in which the President has been hastily
blamed. Kaduna is a state with its own
governor that was elected to run the day to
day affairs of the state. According, Buhari
should not be the first to intervene in a
problem in one state within a country that has
adopted federalism as its system of
government
For the better part of 2016, the opposition
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was in crisis.
Many of the members would readily suggest
that the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC)
has been behind it. There are indeed, those
who would blame President Buhari for not
dissuading his party members from it.
Interestingly, the typical Nigerian politician is
ungovernable. The President cannot even stop
his own party members from destroying their
own party let alone telling them to let the
opposition be.
In any case, it would be difficult to find a
ruling party in a country like Nigeria which
runs a zero-sum political system to encourage
political opposition. Of course, it can’t happen
in Nigeria where a ruling party in a state “wins”
all the seats in a local election. If the truth
must be said, a political party like the PDP is
the architect of its fate. It is its members who
are currently in factions that have prevented
their party from making a mark even in a state
like Ondo where it has been in power. Painfully
they always do so for personal gains.
Buhari or not, Nigeria is far from being ready
for free and fair elections. The other day,
Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun state was
reported to have said that he knows those
who will not succeed him. We have no proof
that Amosun is a professional soothsayer just
as we are unaware that as a person he has
more than one vote. So, how else will he stop
those he has decided will not succeed him in a
future election? He would probably disallow a
level playing ground for all aspirants and like
Oshiomhole and Mimiko did during the last
governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states
respectively impose his preferred candidate.
Put differently, it is hard to find a blameless
politician in Nigeria. The alarm by Governor
Wike of Rivers state on the posting of 28,000
security operatives to his state for just a re-
run election makes a lot of sense but when
compared to what his PDP federal might did in
the same state in 2015, the alarm is not more
than crocodile tears.
The fight against corruption is an area where
many citizens have hailed President Buhari but
quite often, the applause is drowned by
allegations of selective prosecution. In a
nation that has for too long, been weighed
down by excessive corrupt practices, many of
those arrested would obviously attract
sympathy by singing religious and ethnic
tunes. As we argued elsewhere, it is logical
that many of those called to question are now
in the opposition.
This is because being the ones who were in
government yesterday; they are those who
currently have explanations to make on what
they did with public funds. It is thus irrational
to describe their arrests as amounting to
selective prosecution. It is worse to insinuate
that they are not the only corrupt politicians in
our midst because that cannot exonerate
them; rather that draws attention to the need
for many more people to be arrested.
Again, to harp on the sting operation by the
Department of State Services (DSS) on some
judges underplays the disturbing issue of
corruption in the judiciary-a distasteful act
which many retired senior judges had for long
been drawing attention to. Instead of praising
an administration that evolved ample courage
to deal headlong with the subject, the focus
became the inelegance of the method
employed. We are unable to support that line
of thought more so as the sting operation did
not target every judge. It is only fair that
Nigerians who claimed to have elected
President Buhari as a man that can rid the
nation of corruption should not also become
hyper-critical about a result-oriented approach
to the hydra-headed monster.
If however people are unhappy about the state
of our national economy, it is understandable.
The steep rise in the cost of living alone is
enough to sustain public frustration. While
agreeing with the argument that the problems
of today are the direct result of yesterday’s
bad governance, we can hold no one else but
the government of today which earlier
promised to fix the problems. Until the
economy is fixed, no sermon can convince
people to applaud the President. But the
premise of this article is that the government
should be commended for whatever is well
done while urging it to tackle other areas
requiring attention.
Today, the nation should be up-standing in
praise of our President in the fight against
insurgency particularly the capture of Sambisa
forest. Before Buhari’s time, Nigerians
languished in the forest as huge sums of
money appropriated for the fight against
insurgency were allegedly diverted by different
actors in the corridors of power.
Cynics may doubt the feat at Sambisa but we
prefer to commend our gallant forces seen by
newsmen in Maiduguri the other day
dismantling the official Boko Haram flag at
Parisu, Camp Zairo, in Sambisa Forest. Bravo
to our Commander in Chief!