Looking at the KPIs for leaders of nations, tailored after the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDIs), it is obvious to any independent and objective analyst that the Buhari/Osinbajo-led APC Government that has been in the saddle in Nigeria at the federal level and in most states across the federation since 29 May 2015 has failed monumentally to justify the confidence reposed in it by the Nigerian electorates. Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rted) has become the global poster boy for what a national leader isn’t supposed to be with his I-Don’t-Care/laissez-faire attitude to governance as exemplified by his picture, taken in Aso Rock, where he sat down like a lazy man with leg(s) placed on a table while picking his teeth.
APC CANNOT win the 2023 Elections if the elections are NOT RIGGED. No electorates, anywhere in the world, except in Banana Republics, where the institutions aren’t independent and functional but only existing on papers, will reward a political party that has brought them pains, sorrow and tears with electoral victory in subsequent election! “No be juju be dat?” Why should Nigerians reward APC with another 4-year reign on the Aso Rock Throne of our fathers? Is it for taking security of lives and properties of Nigerians and non-Nigerians living in the country to an enviable height? Are the Nigerian electorates going to reward APC with victory in the Presidential Election for “taking millions of Nigerians out of poverty”? The fact is that the Buhari-Osinbajo leadership team, twice-helped by Master-Fixer Asiwaju Bọla Ahmed Tinubu to win the Presidency, has expanded and depeened the poverty brackets in Nigeria!
What exactly will the Nigerian electorates be rewarding APC for when casting their votes in the 2023 General Elections? Is it for ensuring stable academic calendars in the government-owned tertiary institutions? Are we expected to vote in Asiwaju Bọla Ahmed Tinubu to “build on the legacies of the Buhari Administration”, quoting BAT himself? Legacies of nationwide pains, sufferings, kidnappings, mass killings/pogroms by Islamic terrorists, and comatose economy?
The national and international opinion on the Buhari Administration in the current democratic dispensation in Nigeria is that it has FANTASTICALLY FAILED in the critical areas of governance. The 8 years of Buhari as a democratically elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria are the newest addition to our wasted years as a people with shared national destiny!
I am not a happy Nigerian. I hate the possibility that my children may grow up in a USELESS country I grew up in. I started having keen interest in public governance and national issues since my days as a JSS Two student in Methodist High School, Okitipupa, Ondo State in 1988 (my 12th year on Earth) because it was my duty to pick my father’s newspapers from the vendor’s shop during the long break. So, I had plenty time to read them. This opportunity to read happenings in my country as reported by seasoned, fearless and fire-eating journalists, coupled with access to my father’s library containing magazines and newspapers published in the fifties down to the early eighties, and several hours of discussions with my Awoist father, even before I became a teenager, enriched my understanding of the complexities and ironies of the Nigerian nation.
I am keenly aware of the frustrations that living in Nigeria entails. I am yet to experience a GOOD GOVERNMENT in Nigeria in the last 34 years of my life (26 May 1988 – 26 May 2022). I was there in the days of SAP debates. I withnessed Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s maradonically toying with the destinies of millions of Nigerians. I heard about the theft of a big chunk of the Gulf War oil windfall (over $12Billion as later established by the Pius Okigbo Panel of Enquiry) by one man. I was there when we wasted PRECIOUS AND SCARCE ECONOMIC RESOURCES of Time, Human Capital and Billions of Dollars to democratise our polity from the Ward level to the highest office in the land, only for one ANIMAL to cancel the June 12 Presidential Election with a stroke of the pen, and pulled down the whole democratic edife! Nigeria is a nation cursed with ANIMALS IN HUNAN SKIN as holders of strategic positions in governance. I am careful not to refer to national actors like Gowon, Obasanjo, Shagari, Ekwueme, Buhari, Babangida, Abacha, Abdusalaami, Goodluck Jonathan and those with whom they RUINED the chances of Nigeria becoming a Superpower in the last 56 years (July 1966 – July 2022) as LEADERS. They don’t qualify as one!
The way forward for us as a nation is to return to the 1963 Republican Constitution, to be robustly amended to accommodate the present six Geo-political Zones as six Regions Viz Middle Belt Region (North-Central), North-East Region, North-West Region, South-East Region, South-South Region, and South-West Region. These Regions must have equivalent POLITICAL and FISCAL autonomy as the defunct Eastern Region, Mid-Western Region, Northern Region, and Western Region that were in place on Saturday 15 January 1966 when the nationalistic middle-rank military officers struck to arrest the drift of the Nigerian nation to pettiness of political witch-hunting, territory-reduction, and political rival obliteration of Tafawa Balewa and Nnamdi Azikiwe targeted at Obafemi Awolowo.
The Republican Constitution has been progressively bastardised by a series of military juntas, mostly Nigerians of Northern Nigerian extraction and of a particular religion, and suspected to be loyal to the Sókótó Sultanate, founded by Sheikh Usman dan Fodio! The 1999 Constitution (As smended) is a fraud that CANNOT guarantee peace, unity and cohesion among the federating nationalities in Nigeria. It is UNACCEPTABLY pro-North/pro-Fulani!
Until we return to the political structure that was rigorously negotiated by our founding fathers in the Constitutional Conferences preceding our Independence in 1960, we are only applying lipstick 💄 to a fatal injury. Nigeria WILL EXPLODE one day if the current unjust system of “Baboon dey work monkey dey chop” is FORCELY maintained by the North, which has effectively taken over the apparatuses of LEGITIMATE VIOLENCE in Nigeria: Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy, Nigerian Airforce, Nigeria Police Force, Department of State Security, Directorate of Military Intelligence, Nigeria Immigration Service, Nigeria Customs, EFCC, Nigeria Intelligence Agency, and the rest.
Most of the 36 states are not financially and economically viable. Not more than 6 out of them can exist without handouts from the “Almighty” Federal Government. Almajiri (Beggarly) constitutional federating units WEREN’T the intention of our founding fathers, but the creation of those who captured and assassinated Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi on Friday 29 July 1966 MAINLY “to return POWER TO THE NORTH”. Believe me sincerely, Northern Nigeria is REALLY IN POWER! Who possesses the ownership rights to the oil wells? Mostly Northerners! Who are in charge of NNPC and other strategic institutions in the Nigerian federation? Northerners! These are people who, most of the time, have to be given ridiculous cut-off marks before they could be admitted into OAU, UI, UNILAG, UNN, and others, but they have now become the brightest human capital assets of the Nigerian nation! Yeyenatuism at its peak! Ondo State, my home state cannot even pay its personnel their uneconomic salaries as at when due. It owes the civil servants salary arrears for upward of 3-4 months!
The state is literally sitting on gold that exists as UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES, but the Managers are not motivated enough to roll up their sleeves and go to work real good in an attempt to turnaround the fortunes of the state. They can always run to Abuja with caps in hands like glorified school prefects. Except, may be Lagos State, Rivers State and Kano State, how many of these 36 states are economically and financially viable?
RESTRUCTURE Nigeria NOW, or RETIRE her!
Thank you.
Comrade Adéwọlé Ọmọ́seébí Ẹ́gbọdọ̀fo is a Labour Party Chieftain from Ondo South Senatorial District of Ondo State, and a tax-paying resident of Lagos State.
+2348037199056
Monday 23 January 2023
