I "CURSE" NIGERIA TO GREATNESS BY Muhammad Ali
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We must "curse" Nigeria to greatness, and we must criticize our leaders to greatness. I use that word that shocked you in its rather positive sense for there is energy embedded in its very pronouncement which seem to make it more potent than its literal opposite.
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Nigeria is greater than Buhari and the Buharists. But the issue is that some of those who supported GEJ have suddenly become a seeming pervertedly embittered shallow critics. They misdirect their energy just as their criticism is misdirected. They still seem to be voting uncle Jona while the man has since been displaced and oughsted from the rockhood. They criticize what they brazengly hitherto supported during Jonathan's reign of plundering spree. Albeit, they too have been baptized by the cleansing waters of change. But come o, is there yet any change at all?
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What of the Buharists? Buharism is wrongly held by some of them as a universally sacrosanct religion, which those who do not follow have not only erred but have sinned, and are doomed. But this is not so. Buharists fear the possibility of being seen to have made wrong choice. Hence, they sweat profusely in defence of his government. This to me is an act of sheer bravado. Let them be told that the failure of Nigeria should be viewed as something that far outweighs that of Buhari, and their choice. And it is rightly so. But these failures are hardly seprable as they seem to be mutually reinforcing. We must welcome discursive pluralism especially when it is aimed at liberating the country from the shackles of backwardness. However, the country must be understood backward, and indeed to the present, if we want it to move forward. This draws me to a recent statement credited to APCs National Chairman, Chief John Odigie Oyegun, who Governor Rochas christened at a pre-election rally as the 'political John the Baptist of Nigeria'. Oyegun reportedly said of recent, that "we are investigating yesterday, let tomorrow investigate us". To me, let today also investigate itself before irreparable damages are done, before leaders abjure their responsibilities for frivolities, before they start the ignominious act of blazoning our national patrimony in financial institutions oversea, and before it is too late. The masses who are usually foisted to be at the receiving end of leadership failures are the TODAY that must defend TODAY against the evil inclinations of TODAY so that tomorrow will not be overburdened with works as it is today. Ha! One billion Naira for tables for presidency in 2016 budget? Seven billion Naira for reforblishing Senate President's office? Ehen, that reminds me, the National Assembly does not even account for its budget. Who do they account to? Why would they account to anybody when they are like sacred government within government? That institution still stinks more than the mouths of a thousand pigs fused together. We need perfume. And some, if not most of them are so reckless that I doubt their ability to shave away some items in the budget and rigorously review its content.
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In all, I'm proudly a Buharist. I want to believe I am part of his followers described by a columnist as "cult-like followers". But I atimes shudder and recoil from this belief. For it is dangerous. At the same time, I have been tailing him as a bee does to honey comb, Just in the spirit of altruism, which he himself is an improbable symbolism. The man understands the principles of meekness and ascetic living in a clime of bestial dialectical materialism. A man of apparently unaparalelled integrity and moral candour in public space. But I think unlike other followers, who are drawn to hero-worship, I don't semi-deify let alone deify any individual or believe in messianic caricaturing that fire some of his followings. I have been following him since 2003 consistently, and I shared in the pains of his failures at the polls, three times. I was following him not even because I believed he could win, but I wanted posterity to judge me to have stood for integrity, and against what was popularly viewed as PDPism (not PDP). But he won in the last election because non-Buharists voted him. And now it is too early for me to be throwing barrage of criticism at his every single move. I did not proceed in such maladventure in the days of the messiah from the swamphood. Because I know, it is much easier to pick faults in another person's work.
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I "curse" Nigeria to greatness! You can say this repeatedly after me.
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