By Steve Nwosu
Anyone who dispassionately followed the facts that emerged from last week’s two-day ministerial performance review retreat, put together by the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, would, no doubt, award the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government a pass mark for its stewardship over the last five years.
At a point, I was even tempted to up the score to a B- – what with all the landmark achievements in the areas of road, rail, aviation, education and health (especially, in its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic) as well as the impressive post-pandemic economic recovery plan (including all the monetary and fiscal policies articulated by the Central Bank and other relevant agencies), Second Niger Bridge, the AKK Gas Pipeline, Security, the anti-graft war and all.
It was understandable, therefore, that President Buhari could thump his chest and say he is proud of (and satisfied with) the administration’s achievements. Who wouldn’t be?
I too would be just as satisfied, if, like the President, I’m buffeted and bamboozled with so much PowerPoint and theoretical colourations of success. The tendency would be to forget that what is on ground is not always the same thing as the PowerPoint presentations and textbook growths claim.
The reality on ground is that many of us are worse off today than we were five years ago. Hunger is gnawing at our intestines. Of course, that is not saying we might not have gotten to this point if PDP were still in power. It is just that all this is happening while the APC that promised us a better deal is in power. But, partisanship apart, the fact remains that more people than used to be the case have fallen into poverty. We are now the poverty capital of the world. And the situation is so dire that even officials of the administration have begun differentiating between ‘poverty’ and ‘extreme poverty’.
That we have not poured out into the streets in protest might not be because we’re happy with you. Rather, it is because we’re too hungry, wearied and wary to even put up a fight.
However, dear President, it would do your legacy and our survival a world of good if you begin to look beyond the rhetorics to the realities.
Yes, the rails have come alive, and we can say, without fear of contradiction, that Transport Minister Rotimi Amaechi is one of the few aides of yours whose rhetorics before you match the reality they have on ground. But, even then, the quantity and quality of the coaches are nowhere close to nearly enough.
Of course, I wouldn’t want to ask the question, ‘at what cost?’ because that would drag us into the controversial Chinese loans. We wouldn’t also want to go into the equitable spread of the rail and other projects across the six geo-political zones – lest we would be touching the sore spot of nepotism, marginalization, and outright abandonment of certain parts of the country.
Dear Maigaskiya, before you join them in celebrating our handling of the Covid-19 situation, based on the humongous amount you approved for palliatives, have it at the back of your mind that the bulk of the money got lost in transit; that many of us who qualified to receive the conditional cash transfer are still waiting for bank alert. That the joke of the much trumpeted lockdown school feeding is still on you.
As for the grains you cleared to be released from the strategic games reserve, the same people troubling your already weary ears with figures of distributed grains have probably opened rice supermarkets for their wives and concubines with the wholesome batch.
What they eventually distributed to the ‘lucky’ few of us were the contaminated bags in our Customs warehouses, which you had long declared unfit for human consumption, and ordered that they be taken out and destroyed.
Nothing probably captures the gulf between official rhetorics and reality better than the pranks the banks are playing with us. While genuine manufacturers and the real sector, for lack of access to credit facilities, are daily closing down their businesses and throwing family breadwinner out of employment, by their thousands, the banks are chasing after merchants and large-deposit customers with loans they don’t need, or have any plans of ever paying back.
Meanwhile, small businesses are deliberately fenced off credit facilities with impossible pre-qualification requirements. The result is that the proposed N2.3 trillion government response to reflate the economy from the covid-19 induced meltdown would just disappear into the wrong pockets, with no appreciable impact on the economy.
As for the war against corruption, it would appear that a major ‘Mumu button’ of the president’s is the trophies that come from the anti-graft war.
So, the smart Alecs around PMB regularly load his platter with the severed heads of a few yesterday’s men of power, garnished with the entrails of one or two out-of-favour presidential aides.
The president thus contentedly distracted while deals, more heinous than Malabu and P&ID scandals, are carried on right under his nose. And it would seem the ring is so carefully woven to ensure the president never gets the luxury of a counter narrative.
This, largely, has also been our lot with the worsening insecurity in the country. While it might be difficult to fault the fact that this Buhari administration has devoted more attention, and committed more materials and resources to the fight against insurgency and terrorism, PMB might do well to look beyond the rhetorics of the military high command as to how we have liberated all the local government areas under Boko Haram control and continue aerial bombardment of the insurgents’ bases.
He should view this against the backdrop of how, despite having routed the insurgents, indigenes of such liberated communities are still stuck in IDP camps, with the military insisting it is not safe for them to return to their villages. How then are we claiming that we’re winning the terror war?
Or are we planning to put the liberated villages to other use, while their original inhabitants permanently roam abroad landless? Why do we continue to get this impression that some people, for some reason, do not want the war to end?
And, while we are still at it, my dear President, you may also want to look beyond the now tired rhetoric of communal clashes and farmer/herder clashes in the situation in Southern Kaduna, Benue and much of the North Central states – and now spreading to the Southern parts of the country.
The narrative of ‘bandits’ and ‘cattle rustlers’ might look temptingly acceptable for the situations in your native Katsina, Sokoto, Zamfara and other adjoining states, but it is increasingly not providing all the answers to the questions arising therefrom. I know these explanations are straight forward, more simplistic and less-tasking on the brain than such strange terminologies as ethnic cleansing, state-sponsored terrorism and artificial demographic re-engineering, through the instrumentality of open border emigration from West Africa and the Maghreb, but time has come for us to explore new narratives for the realities that confront us today.
Mr. President, in the spirit of separating reality from rhetorics, you may also need to look beyond the narratives of field commanders who are clearly desperate to bring home a trophy in this unending war against terror and insurgency, as you seek to unravel what actually happened in Benue State last week regarding the death of that state’s most wanted criminal, Terwase Akwaza, a.k.a Gana.
Do take a second look at the counter narrative coming from Gov. Samuel Ortom, his predecessor, Sen. Gabriel Suswan, and other leaders of Benue State. Resist the temptation to swallow hook-line-and-sinker, the tale that Gana, was working hand in glove with the political leaders in Benue – who, for now, happen to be in a political party opposed to your ruling APC.
Ask for explanation on how and why Gana got to be where he was when the army killed him. How could an unarmed man engage soldiers in a gun battle, where he now got killed in the gunfire?
Your Excellency sir, you may also ask to see the special gun that our police and soldiers use these days. Special guns which fire knives instead of bullets, and inflict machete cuts and not bullet wounds on targets. For it appears to have been the same ‘gun’ used on the notorious kidnapper,
Boborisky, who was apprehended in Port Harcourt at the weekend. In that instant too, while the police said it engaged the kidnap kingpin in a gun duel, it also confirmed that the kingpin and his driver died from machete cuts and bullet wounds.
The simple truth, sir, is that, rather than interrogate arrested criminals and use them to lead to other gang members, our police and soldiers regularly resort to the extrajudicial killing of these suspects – usually with machetes and other such crude weapons and cudgels.
The result is that we never really get to the root of any criminal gang, or crime, to completely uproot it. We just treat the symptom, while the disease continues to fester – resurfacing again a short while later.
Mr. President, Sir, I’m particularly interested in this Gana matter because it reminds me of the killing of Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf in July 2009.
Yusuf who was arrested, unharmed and unarmed, and handed over to the police for proper processing and transfer to Abuja, was suddenly said to have been killed while trying to escape from police detention.
Yes, a handcuffed, unarmed and even shirtless so overpowered our heavily armed police formation that the officers and men had no other option than to shoot him dead. Not even demobilizing with a shot to the leg, if a shot ever needed to be fired.
Clearly, somebody somewhere was too scared to allow Yusuf his day in the open court. For if he were to ever open up on the how and why of Boko Haram, a few big names might have had to run for cover.
My fear, however, is: like it happened with Boko Haram, where the elimination of Yusuf paved the way for the emergence of a more bloodthirsty Abubakar Shekau, and ultimately yanked the leash on the insurgents out of our control, I pray that we have not taken out Gana to hand control of his militia to a new leader who might not be as enamored by the proposal of ‘amnesty’ as Gana appeared to have been towards his last days.
So, Mr. President, before rhetorics lead us into celebrating pyrrhic victories, let’s for a moment flip over the coin to see what the reality really is. Checkmate!
