“We saw it coming. We warned Nigerians. No one listened. Every nation gets what it deserves.”
This harebrained product of absurd and simplistic reasoning is not hard to come by on social media these days no matter where you look. Disgruntled souls that have stubbornly refused to deal with a loss of over six years still bid their time to dump salt on open wounds. I’ve got news for them though. Goodluck Jonathan never was and will never be a good deal for corporate Nigeria. Aside unleashing the worst form of manmade corruption and ineptitude on Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan’s survival instinct was hinged on Niger Delta militancy. How he placed Nigeria on the trajectory of guaranteed self-destruct cannot be forgotten in a hurry. Clever brains in his cabinet took technical safeguards to protect themselves against accusations of theft and involvement in the grand scheme of mismanagement. The dumb ones stole carelessly and savored the moment of power and glory. Today, Allison Diezani-Madueke is a fugitive while Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is an international celebrity. Jonathan was just a clueless non-starter unqualified to rule a local government.
No doubt, this statement beggars the question “Does Muhammadu Buhari have a clue?”
I will answer with an emphatic “YES”. As opposed to Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari has a very clear idea, where he wants to take Nigeria and what to do with Nigeria. A devilish idea, which, however, does not and can never vindicate Joanathan, in whose downfall a huge part of the problems began.
The threat to dismember Nigeria if Jonathan was not allowed a second term in the presidency, is not a threat that was spoken out loud but one that was displayed and rendered palpable in every action of cronies and surrogates. The overnight emergence of the so-called Niger Delta Avengers blowing up underwater oil pipelines and cruelly sabotaging the nation’s economy and inflicting environmental damages on peasant communities cannot disappear so easily, from memories. They had nothing to avenge but the simple loss of an election. The sudden and coincidental emergence from the blues, of a brainless and mannerless political arsonist leading the so-called Indigenous People of Biafra to set his own region on fire also has a tale to tell that cannot be wholly dissociated from the loss of an election. While the Niger Delta militants ultimately chilled out in reasoned elderly persuasion and intervention, elders from the East reveled in snapping selfies and charting a dangerous course of appeasement until the pan became too hot to handle.
Muhammadu Buhari began well listening to counsels from experienced predecessors and making moves that commenced disciplinary actions on his tribal kinsmen using Dasuki as a generic scapegoat of choice. Launching the Treasury Single Account, boosting the foreign reserves that were depleted by Jonathan, launching an anti-corruption assault on corrupt judges (even though he did not follow it through to the bitter end), and his massive infrastructure drive were and still are very potent signals that heralded his arrival on a cleansing mission. Yet, time has shown that these positive actions were a mere smokescreen and an unholy prelude to a wider, brainless, primitive, and very ill-advised malfeasant agenda.
In spite of the emphasis that he placed on the federal character in assembling his cabinet (even though it took him a sluggish six months to fulfill), subsequent appointments that he made in higher and lower dispositions, were, at the time, the unknown but clearest harbingers of his evil plot and luciferous scheming. No doubt, he was aware of his state of health and the potential collapse that awaited him in the not-too-distant future at the time. Doctors would have intimated him of the journey ahead.
The commencement of Fulani atrocities beyond the former hotspot of the middle belt down to southern states, after the crash in Muhammadu Buhari’s health and the natural aftermath of his incapacitation finally gave those appointees that he consciously hand-picked, the opportunity to perform the surrogate duties for which they were chosen. The airwaves reported tragedies of farmlands being ravaged by cows guided by herders with landowners gunned down by them for daring to stand in their ways. Women were raped and communities terrorized with the power of the automatic rifles that the herders carried with them illegally. Government refused to respond in condemnation of illegal gun ownership, or the atrocities committed. On the contrary, it sought to legitimize and even perpetuate it by asking Southern states to provide land as Rural Grazing Areas (RUGA).
It soon became clear, however, that the government encouraged the influx of ethnic Fulanis from neighboring countries into Nigeria, first, for electoral purpose as the attendance of Buhari’s election campaign in 2019, by Governors from Niger Republic testified. Then comes the suspicion of the clandestine agenda of ethnic and religious domination.
Olusegun Obasanjo, whose counsel Buhari auspiciously listened to after he was helped to power, was the first to voice out the clandestine agenda. Following his thankfulness for all the help in bringing him to power, the time came for Buhari to implement his ethnic agenda and he began by ostracizing all friends that were not privy to the devilish design. He launched a campaign of lies against Obasanjo by whipping misinformed public sentiment and invoking a phantom $16 bn power waste even though he knew the truth.
His surrogates went head-on damning all consequences and making ethnically skewed appointments in his name. Meantime though, the Fulani herdsmen had a free hand in plying their trade of blood and killings. Whenever they are, by any chance, apprehended and handed over to law enforcement by the natives, their apprehension becomes illegal and innocent natives are manhandled and abused to the admiration and applause of many (not all) Northerners, who celebrated the prospect of dominating Nigeria.
When Fulani herdsmen finally graduated into kidnappers and began setting up kidnapping camps in the bushes, the natives had to organize.
Today, agitations are rocking the nation. Killings and counter-killings have become the routine order. It is now a battle of brothers against brothers. The massive juggernaut of hate and crime is cruising downhill at the speed of sound and light with perpetrators in government not having factored in the ferocious reaction when pushed to the wall.
War dances and cries for secession are taking the airwaves. Observer from within and without are writing the country off as a failed state.
Then suddenly, Buhari came back to life again hale and hearty. The cognitive blunders on TV with his Vice President by his side, the articulated blunders on election stage presenting a candidate for his own office etc. are suddenly no more. Buhari can now talk on television, obviously in moments of coincidental sobriety and cognitive sanity. Yet, not without blunders. He talks about local law enforcement panels in communities to enforce the law on Fulani herdsmen and hardly anyone knows what he means. He claims that gun-wielding Fulani herdsmen are not the Nigerian ones but never condemns them or talk about reining in them to restore law and order. Now that lawlessness has taken over the land, he is quick to restore law and order on other regions except on his Fulani murderers. Don’t get me wrong! It is absolutely correct to clamp down hard and brutally, on murderous and disruptive agitators since their actions cannot be justified by the mere fact that the government has not addressed the Fulani menace. Yet, the equation will be half correct if the Fulanis remain left out.
Then the shocker. As an even clearer sign of his inability to condemn any Fulani atrocity no matter how gruesome, the President, who once advocated the establishment of Rural Grazing Areas (RUGA) in the South for rearing cattle – rural ranching so to speak – now suddenly remembers nothing of such. Not even on a limited scope within the North! Now, he wants to find and re-enact the pre-colonial grazing route that spread from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope. The grazing routes of ancient times when no man owned the land. No word on prosecuting murderers, illegal gun owners and kidnappers in jungle camps. No. But he is quick to play the hero to his criminal tribesmen by wanting to uphold their primitive tradition in solidarity with their commonly shared ambitions.
The dream of reenacting the religious but diabolic heydays of Othman Dan Fodio seems very much alive in their thoughts and dreams. Yet, no matter what Buhari says today, no matter what his self-styled “Presidency” says and does on his behalf, they have both wreaked unspeakable havoc on Nigeria and if Buhari lives long enough to see it happen, the day will come when he will be arrested and made to face charges for unleashing Fulani terror on corporate Nigeria.
As religious advocates say, “everything happens for a purpose”. The replacement of Goodluck Jonathan by a disastrous entity like Muhammadu Buhari is a process that was inevitable for the overall good of Nigeria. It had to happen for the advocates of Northern domination of colonial acclaim to understand the grave consequences of their actions on themselves too and thus, understand the limits of their dreams. It helps them to dismiss their long-held misleading notion that they hold the largest landmass of the nation and are, therefore, the owners of all natural resources thereupon. It helps them to disabuse their minds of the notion that they hold the key to blackmailing Southern Nigeria into hunger because they supply foodstuff. A fatal reality that may, arguably, occur if at all, only if they have a Nigeria left to pontificate upon.
Since President Buhari cannot act now being crippled and incapacitated by his own unconditional submission to the Fulani clan, the only option left to him is to quit the scene and leave capable hands to take the stage. After all, this was precisely his own message to Jonathan when Jonathan’s incompetence became unconcealable.
