When they barged in on us in 2015, the gulf was exceedingly wide. It was so expected. They made it intentionally so. The two groups were growing speedily poles apart.
And this was moving dangerously at an alarming rate. The reason they labelled some of us wailers, haters, rebels, traitors, et al. They exploited all possibilities to dress us in funny togas.
Then they struggled to deodorise themselves. They elected to christen themselves patriots. But they succeeded in being hailers, flatterers, bootlickers, sycophants, pretenders and pathological liars.
So, their entry into our lives in 2015 was kicked off with discordant voices. It was a close semblance of the biblical Babel of voices. That start-off point was in confusion. That is why we remain in disarray till date.
No more cause for control. The situation is under serious and delicate alarm. Their deadly mission has been accomplished. It’s to their greatest delight, but to our huge detriment.
They deliberately brought us from “top to bottom.” That was their campaign. It was the eerie “change” they promised. It’s the frightening “change” they delivered, full blast. Nothing missing, nothing broken.
But, suddenly, things are taking another dimension. Somehow, something is “cooking.” There appears to be a weird meeting point in the offing. It’s beginning to emerge somewhere. Surprised? It’s cloudy, yet it is taking shape.
Perhaps, the reason all of us are singing the same song. This is curious. Both the hailers and the wailers are but with one accord. Stranger than fiction!
We all agree that these times are particularly perilous. Yes! Friends and foes concur. Even the wailers and hailers are singing differently but the same song.
They confessed all with their mouths: That we have never had it so bad, so worse, so worst in Nigeria. And that is the naked truth. It isn’t hate speech.
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, can’t be missing in all this. He is always at the forefront. It is pleasantly expected. He is not to be seen to do less. And he agreed with the “wailers”: “Yes, the security situation has continued to pose a great challenge.”
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo brought the worst out of Lai the other day. He went straight to the point. He literally held President Muhammadu Buhari in the jugular: “President Buhari has done his best.
“If we are expecting anything more than what he has done or what he is doing, that means we are whipping a dead horse and there is no need…”
Instantly, Lai went wild. He couldn’t hold back his pent-up anger. He spewed up like never before. He beat his chest and swore: “No administration in Nigeria’s recent history has provided the security agencies with the hardware needed to tackle insecurity as that of President Buhari.”
He ranted and raved unabashedly: “President Buhari has done so much, under very difficult economic and social conditions, to tackle insecurity in our country.”
Lai would not give up. That is his character, his usual element: “President Buhari is leaving a legacy of infrastructural development, economic prosperity and social cohesion for Nigeria.”
He is not doing anything out of the box. We wonder aloud. Who created all these “very difficult economic and social conditions” he is complaining about?
The government, of course! Yes. By its policies, actions, inactions and body language. We have become its perpetual prey and victims. We are trapped as a people.
This is how they led us to where we are. That is why they are striving hard to turn the truth on its head. Consider these facts and figures in the last six years. You will be amused and amazed. Courtesy, social media:
“Stamp duty introduced on your savings accounts; VAT up from 5 per cent under PDP to 7.5 per cent; fuel price up from N87 to N165 and exchange rate of the $ up from N180 to N580.
“Debts from $8 billion to $90 billion, all in six years; inflation now stands at 18 per cent up from 6 per cent pre-2015 and unemployment is at an all-time high of about 40 per cent!
“Today, we are number two in the world as the most terrorised country. Welcome to a Buharic nightmare.”
But unrepentant Lai would see things differently. He was very emphatic. Without mincing or mixing words, he vomited:
“I can say without hesitation that, though Nigeria is facing security challenges, the situation is far better than what we met in 2015. There is no doubt that we are much better than how it was.”
And he would want us to swallow his vomit hook, line and sinker. Never! We’re no robots or clones. We have minds of our own. We can see, reason and perceive.
This is how life has become safer and saner under Buhari in 2021 than when he came on board in 2015. These spine-chilling actualities are certainly not my own making.
The facts and figures are everywhere, all over and overwhelming. They ought to be amplified always. That is what I opt to do with great pride and without fear.
I am using the author’s exact words as picked from a platform. Samplers: “In a space of just two days last week, 23 travellers heading to Kaduna were burnt alive in a commercial bus at Sabon Birni, Sokoto State.
“No fewer than 15 worshipers killed as they prayed in a mosque at Ba’are village, Mashegu Local Government Area of Niger State.
“A commissioner in Katsina State, Dr. Rabe Nasir, was gruesomely murdered in his own house at Fatima Shema Quarters, Katsina.
“A housewife, Salamatu, was killed as bandits abducted six others during a raid at Piri community in Kwali Area Council of Abuja.”
The writer was not done yet. He rages on unrestrained: “Welcome to northern Nigeria, circa 2021, where life has seemingly lost its value, under a president voted en masse five times by the same populace.
“A 30-year-old woman watched as her mother, four children, uncle, nephew and niece all burnt to ashes. She died too a few days later. Their attackers, of course, watched in delight as they burnt.
“But the horror and barbarism of these killings is only one thing. The frequency with which these gruesome killings occur and recur is another.
“The Sultan of Sokoto and president-general of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, summed up the sorrow and grief-stricken mood of the region and the nation when he said, shortly after these events: ‘If I continue talking about the insecurity in the North, we will not leave this room. There is no single day that passes without people being killed in the North, especially in the North West now, but we don’t hear it,’ even as bandits continue to kill and maim in parts of Katsina State and elsewhere in the North.
“When Boko Haram militants were busy killing and murdering innocent Christians and destroying churches, these northern leaders kept quiet pretending as if there’s peace in the North.
“But I know the Almighty God is not sleeping over murders! Now, the entire North is engulfed with murderous bandits they have refused to call terrorists!”
On a Friday in October 2015, Buhari was very specific. He boldly gave a timeline to run Boko Haram aground. He was sure of himself then. He was confident and relied heavily on his military prowess.
He told reporters in Abuja: “As soon as the dry season comes, which is by the end of the year, Boko Haram will virtually be out of their main strongholds and that will be their Waterloo.”
Six years down the line, what has happened? The Islamist sect has not only festered, it has turned even more deadly. It is now in the mould of terrorists.
Killer Fulani herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers also made the list as cousins. The hailers see all these as saner than 2015.
They keep on feigning acute and total ignorance. They falsely stick to their guns. They insist they have decimated insurgents by their crude estimation and reckoning.
Yet, Lai & Co. submitted: “Yes, the security situation has continued to pose a great challenge.”
The more you look, the less you see. It has become that worst.