A group that goes by the name Arewa Youth Leader’s Forum (AYLF) has reportedly described the Bauchi State Governor, Senator Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed’s recent comment on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s handling of the economy as a strategy to divert attention from his (Mohammed’s) failure.
Nothing can be farther from the truth.
The group is angry that Bala Mohammed used the occasion of the flag off of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) local council campaign in the state to slam the Federal Government, in the group’s words, “for implementing policies that are causing pain to our people”.
Ordinarily, we would have wished to ignore the statement as the usual pastime of self-serving opportunists who take advantage of the misfortune of innocent Nigerians to feather their own nests or to feel unconcerned by the situation in the country.
But these are unusual times; times when patriots must rise to be identified.
The gravity of our situation makes sitting on the fence both inexcusable and unpardonable. To paraphrase the words of Frantz Fanon, given the situation of the country today, sitting on the fence is not an option for to do so, makes one either a coward or a traitor.
The President whom the opaque AYLF claims to be defending, has consistently admitted that the policies of his administration are indeed painful, equating them to labour pains that must accompany child birth. So what is the AFLF defending? Either the organisation is a meddlesome interloper or it has not properly understood its brief. But Nigeria of today has no place for such sycophants and hypocrites.
What the people are saying is that the mother, in this case the long-suffering Nigerian masses, could die even before the promised delivery from the noose that the APC has tied round their necks. They want some loosening of the belt. Is that too much to ask for?
Does the AYLF not buy from the same market as other Nigerians who have, in the past nine years, witnessed the systematic erosion of their living standards by the policies of the APC? Do their members buy fuel, garri, tomatoes, rice, drugs, cucumber or beans at concessionary prices? Haba! Do they prefer buying a 50kg bag of rice at N80, 000 to N11, 000 that was the price in 2015? What manner of hypocrisy is this?
It also smacks of callous insensitivity to the unprecedented hardship that Nigerians have been subjected to by the profligate APC-controlled Federal Government whose every policy seems to drag the country into misery, poverty, debt and economic collapse.
The claim by the Arewa Youth Leaders Forum that Bala Mohammed is using his criticism of President Bola Tinubu to shift attention from what the group described as his (Bala Mohammed’s) failure, epitomises the tendency of some selfish Nigerians to elevate sycophancy to the level of an art and prioritize personal gains over the fate of millions of Nigerians.
Bala Mohammed does not need a diversionary strategy to either shift attention away from the performance of his administration or to validate his track record. Unless the opaque AYLF has just dropped from outer space, it should have followed the recognition accorded Bala Mohammed by the APC-Federal Administration. To claim that a state administration that has earned the recognition of being the best in the provision of rural infrastructure (2022) and urban renewal (2024) has failed can only mean one of two things or both: the rating agency, in this case the Federal Government is daft or the accuser is hypocritical. We believe the second is the case.
The good people of Bauchi State who have been the main beneficiaries of the progressive policies of the Bala Mohammed Administration spoke loudly and clearly during the 2023 governorship elections in the state when they gave Bala Mohammed the highest margin of victory ever received by a candidate since the restoration of democratic rule in the country in 1999.
Given that the protests have been attributed to a plot to derail the present democratic dispensation, to suggest that a serving governor like Bala Mohammed is sponsoring it means that he is plotting a coup against himself. That sounds not just petty but outrightly stupid and unacceptable.
It is appalling that the so-called AYLF has descended the same level as those who, in desperation, are fanning the embers of hate, acrimony and disorder by profiling innocent individuals and groups over a situation that is so bad that even members of the ruling APC are uncomfortable. Was Senator Ali Ndume (APC representing Borno South Senatorial District) sponsoring the protests when, a few days earlier, he had warned that the president was disconnected from the people and that the country risked a revolt?
It is shameful, indeed painfully unfortunate that the AYLF is trivialising a very serious situation. Bala Mohammed has discharged his duty as a patriotic Nigerian, a leader and indeed chairman of the PDP Governors Forum by calling on the President to take tangible steps to assuage the anger of the teeming millions of Nigerians whose present and future have been rendered completely intolerable by the macroeconomic policies of his administration.
And for the records, it should never be forgotten that the intervention of Bala Mohammed is typical of his standard practice: to rise to defend the country no matter whose ox is gored. That was why, acting in conjunction with other patriots, he moved the Doctrine of Necessity Motion that stabilised the country following the death of President Umaru Musa Yar’Ardua in 2012.
It is also on record that he has shown patriotic accommodation for the policies and efforts of President Bola Ahmeed Tinubu to the extent of being misunderstood by both some of his party members, friends and associates. To therefore seek to vilify him or any other Nigerian, for speaking out against the present hardship and calling for its mitigation by words and deeds, is a gross disservice to the people and a sycophantic posture that should be jettisoned by any well-meaning Nigerian.
In conclusion, it is misleading to treat the present predicament as a matter between Tinubu and Bala Mohammed or any other person for that matter just as it is treacherous to sacrifice the welfare, unity and progress of the people and Nigeria on the altar of ‘stomach infrastructure’, power permutations or self aggrandisement, as some people are doing.
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Prince Taiyo Oyekola Oyerinde is of the Iresa – Adu Royal House , Ogbomosho .
11th August, 2024.
