For this whole week, I have been inundated with messages bemoaning the impending Muslim-Muslim ticket that Bola Tinubu is expected to unveil, many accompanied by prayers of destruction and others in despair.
The news is filled with pundits, Christian and Muslim, bemoaning the implications for Nigeria should this happen, while those who have already set Nigeria ablaze keep stoking the flames in the hope that they will be the deputy that will succeed Tinubu, who they expect to quickly ‘follow Yar’Adua’s footsteps’.
And the question on my mind is “why?”. Why worry who Tinubu chooses?
To worry about Tinubu or his running mate, whether a nominal Christian or Muslim, indicates that you are already planning to vote for him. Ditto with Atiku Abubakar. Are Nigerians, Christians and Muslims, so stupid that they cannot decide that this time, if the rotten cabal that has brought Nigeria to its knees can impose two of the most unacceptable politicians in Nigeria as their presidential candidates, they can equally tell them to go to hell by totally boycotting them and focusing on the only potential candidate that can dislodge them – Peter Obi?
Worrying about the two bad candidates of the APC, whose manufactured age, certificates and corruption-riddled reputations are rotten, means that Nigerians, Christians and Muslims alike, have accepted them in advance. That is a shame.
It is true that Atiku is a member of the Cattle-Rearers Association (MACBAN) and will likely continue the extreme protection of cows over humans practiced by President Buhari if he gets into office. His asinine response to the barbaric stoning and burning of Miss Deborah Samuel has already given Nigerians warning of how he will respond to the continued loss of human life that started under Buhari, just as Buhari’s history of autocratic rule and brutality towards Nigerians during his first incarnation as Head of State should have warned Nigerians before they ushered him in for ‘Change’. The only people enjoying the ‘Change’ are the murderous Fulani terrorists that have stopped Nigerians from farming, travelling, or sleeping at night.
Those who still sing Buhari’s praises despite the misery he has imposed on the majority of Nigerians whereby Nigeria is now the poverty capital of the world, will vote for him no matter what. As for the rest of his former supporters, especially the indigenous Hausas who have suddenly found themselves to be second class citizens to the settler Fulani in Nigeria, I ask, why on earth will you continue to be second class citizens in your homeland? Wake up. If Buhari had helped you, why are you worse off now than in 2015? Look at his appointments – count Fulani versus Hausa and you will cry.
As for Tinubu, Lagosians already transliterate Bourdillon (the street where Tinubu lives) with Bullion. I knew Bourdillon Street in the 90s before Tinubu became governor. I did not recognise the massive edifice I saw again in 2013, the next time I passed through Bourdillon. Indeed, Bullion is a more apt name for it. But aside from the Bullion van reputation, is it the non-existence of any school on his records, or the debunked school records he used to become the governor of Lagos, or the allegations of age falsification that qualifies him? Or is it his vaunted claims that he made Buhari President and now it is his turn? Or perhaps it is his sprightly good health that will see him regularly in London for ‘ear infections’, ‘knee replacement surgery’, ‘eye-replacement surgery’ or maybe flying in pampers for him from the UK? And before people say I am mocking his sickness, if he is sick then surely he should go and rest instead of inflicting Nigeria with another Yar’Adua state of anarchy where Nigerians went months not knowing if the man was dead or alive and wondering who was ruling the country.
With the mess the next leader will inherit, Nigeria does not need a comatose president or one that will open himself to allegations and accusations of being a clone from Sudan by being invisible for the first one year of his term in office. No. All right thinking citizens should free themselves from their chains and the false belief that they must eat anything that is put before them, no matter how rotten. And the APC and PDP plate if full of rotten food. Do not touch either one. They are both poison.
Nigeria and Nigerians need someone who can actually get up at 4:00a.m should there be an emergency and not need to travel with a retinue of medical personnel from Aso Villa to the National Assembly. Nigeria needs someone not tainted with the last seven years of lawless impunity and who has absolutely no connection with the wicked administration that pays lawmakers N1.7million as newspaper allowance while the people they represent don’t even earn N20,000 after tax per month. Nigeria needs a president that will be present in Nigeria not flying from meeting to meeting and being insulted by going to accept a national honour from a tiny country with five per cent of your population and 1,100 per cent of your per capita GDP!
For once, every voter comprising the indigenous people of Nigeria, Christian, Muslim, Animist of every indigenous Nigerian tribe, should troop to the polls in 2023 and tell the cabal that they may have the power to intimidate and destroy, but Nigerians, the owners of the land, have the votes and power to send them all to hell.
Learn from the citizens of the UK, France and every other country, use your vote to protest the last 24 years of being taken for granted. Throw out all the current Senators and members of the House and vote for an alternative – Peter Obi for president and any other alternative party for national and state assembly.
But, make Peter Obi and your new representatives know that if they do not slash the criminal allowances they pay themselves in the National Assembly and pay teachers, doctors, provide real hospitals and roads and restore security on the roads by removing the invaders in your farmlands and forests and make cattle rearers buy their own land and keep their animals penned like all others have to do, you will vote them out and out and out until Nigerians finally get representatives who will represent the country without bankrupting it.
Use your power. Vote. Vote. Vote.
And if they don’t perform, throw them out!
• Lian writes from London