Sometimes, democracy shows contraptions that can only be given an acceptable substructure of meaning by the power of mysterious reasoning. Let’s speak truth to power now. The stock of ‘blessings’ this Fourth Republic democracy has provided for our circumstances as Nigerians is greater than can be hidden under the bushel.
For example, in our strange democracy, backed up by indolent legal interpretations, Nigerians have in history earned the awareness of one personality, a prisoner either of or not of conscience who was picked, while still tenuring in the prison yard, to be voted as President. Party and power-driven cabals acted in concert to achieve this.
His choice by those who went for him was not established based on the seat of any campaign promises or visible preparation to be President. Jesters selected and dragged him, slithered into winning the election, and no legal ding-dong could revert the cabals’ joint intention to make a king out of an elephant in 1999. They knew who they wanted, and since Nigeria was like their corporate property as if for keeps, any rantings made by a non-member of their confederacy for a change to the norm were only as loud as graveside laughter.
Not only did this incident appear as anathema but a mystery, coming first in Nigeria’s history. Do you wonder why the cabal-made President turned out a woeful report card after eight uninterrupted years in power? Did he prepare to preside over anybody?
It became a wonder of correspondence when another man in prison, who never ran any electioneering campaign nor went through any conventional regulation of security examination, won the election into the Senate in Nigeria. He won his votes while in Agodi prison! This is publicly confidential and may not be good to discuss here, but you can ask Sen. Iyiola Omisore.
The man left the Senate only to become a preyed species sought after by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC
Why would his Ife political constituents issue a query for non-performance to the gentleman of no fundamental principled distinction for party ideology? Did he plan for any lawmaking in the Senate?
Let’s move up. Nigerians knew how Chief Olusegun Obasanjo installed the late Mallam Musa Yar’Adua as his successor. Through the latter’s holy confession, we noted truly that the results of the election upon which he was sworn in to rule Nigeria were flawed. It was a near-fetched intelligence that Obasanjo only installed an accolade, paying the piper insofar as he would call the tune.
Though the late Yar’Adua scratched open some promising indications for populist governance, not much of it was noticeable to score him as a prepared president before his eventual death after two years in office.
Then came a man whose luck was legendary. The trailing history behind his name has been a bold revelation that confirms the spiritual strength in a name: Goodluck Jonathan. Not everyone, especially non-Christians, can tell what Jonathan as a name means, but nearly everyone knows good luck is the opposite of Bad luck or misfortune.
True to his name, Goodluck Jonathan became favoured as political functionaries ranging from a state commissioner to deputy governor, governor, vice president, and President. He became the President according to the law after the death of his principal, Yar’Adua, not according to his prepared intention.
When he lost to Gen. Muhammadu Buhari in the 2015 presidential election, he would have been seen to have shown some height of personal preparedness for the job. Buhari benched him off the show. But before Jonathan left, there were common apprehensions that the country might be recolonized for fear of his (Jonathan’s) seeming lack of mental and physical muscles to preside over Nigeria. Why not? Did he plan to rule anybody?
Buhari won the majority votes appeal to the gross ecstasy of most Nigerians whose throats had almost been slit from the pains of Jonathan’s misgovernance. The nation was happy to welcome a recurrent administrative manager in Muhammadu Buhari.
Buhari eventually wrested power from his predecessor after his (Buhari) fourth attempt. He got the baton without controversy. Even when one Orubebe was acting a drama in public glare to truncate the process of making a new president, the will of God and the masses stamped him out.
The Daura cattleman, Buhari, mounted the saddle for an uninterrupted eight years, as did Obasanjo, only to leave the country with wrong apprehensions of heartbeats. Mention it. Bad and if not ‘bader’ state of the economy in such a way that the Naira became a barren entity, truly in the global economy.
Buhari left the country with a murky slate of insecurities, clipping all aspects of national existence. He left some fine records of infrastructural development, though he aptly represented all imaginable woes betide a nation.
Buhari didn’t set a priority, thus exposing himself in a visible state of mix-ups as a careless and confused index of nepotism. All praise is due to Pastor Tunde Bakare, who told us in his sermon to his Church congregation that the sacred confluence of voices spoken to restructure Nigeria for a good economy, security, physical appropriations, federalism, and so on only resonated in Buhari as staccatos of rebellion to his reign.
Buhari did well in his career, and he was appointed a military commissioner in the earliest responsibilities of his duties. He was sure a performer when appointed a military governor of Kaduna State. He was sure a fine, patriotic, and corporate Nigerian military man when he was invited to take charge as the head of state in 1983.
In the days of despot, Gen. Sanni Abacha Buhari was appointed the chairman of an important board, the Petroleum Trust Fund Development Board. He got there on merit and merit, too; at an old age, Nigerians voted him their President, making him the steward of public governing authority. But sadly, he crashed out of goodwill from Nigerians as a failed president at an age when he may never have the opportunity to redeem his image ever again.
In the Bible, Jesus’ disciple, Paul, describes authorities as having been “established by God…as an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer” ( Rom. 13:14).
Whatever interpretation we may give it, we are all witnesses to the fact that Buhari disappointed Nigerians, and almost every corporate heritage became dislocated in his hands before he left.
Now comes Bola Tinubu’s magistracy as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. He is expected to do many things before he leaves one day. Tinubu needs to create institutions that organize relationships among people and all other elements in Nigerian society.
It is uninformative to advise the new President to set priorities in his projects. Which priorities? Tinubu is here to give simultaneous attention to the general absolute dislocations that his predecessors denied absolute attention to.
Tinubu will be concerned with many things at the same time. Everything falls into the priority category now. He will give attention to those born in a royal palace or a beggar’s hut. It is nothing different from ambivalence when anyone is talking about the priority for President Tinubu now. It is nonsense.
But then, while obedience and support to government are commanded, they must not come before obedience to God. John Stott, an Anglican teacher, confirms this. Citizens are to respect the state and, within limits, submit to it, but they will neither worship it nor give it uncritical support; it may covet. This government is reinventing those old traditions for good governance, and Nigerians shall begin to see this at the turn of the times.