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By Mideno Bayagbon
Suddenly, 2019 election campaign starts on us like a hot slap in the face. It throws on us a bunch of clowns spitting and pissing and defecating on our faces and daring us to do our worst. Nigeria’s peculiar macabre dance of stupidity is on us, and we are down the road to infamy, again.
Let’s blame women affairs minister, Aisha Al Hassan, who could not keep her lifelong loyalty to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to herself, who could not keep her trap shut, but rather dared to throw it in our faces. What was she thinking? Did she assume the cabal in Aso Rock and the bullies in the social media do not understand Hausa, the language she spoke in or that they don’t tune in to BBC Hausa service?
What insufferable nonsense. Now she has unleashed on us, the national association of sycophants, of rogue politicians, whose eyes are fixed firmly on the god of their stomach and pocket, on their personal 2019 interests: not on Buhari’s or Nigeria’s. And truly, it behoves us to roundly condemn her for starting us on the road to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. As the world regrettably knows, if Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans must all die for Mugabe to remain president, so be it!
And then there is the Atiku Abubakar angle, throwing salt on our collective, national economic and social injury. Could he too not have kept his mouth shut? Does he never learn? Did he not learn from his 2002 to 2003 misadventure, when impatience robbed him of becoming president in 2007 and thereafter? That he is the most prepared Nigerian today to be president should be no excuse to begin to whine, and to stamp our stupefied faces deeper in the mud of shame and anger.
If he cries so shamelessly about the supposed neglect he has suffered after joining others to invest their resources and time on enthroning General Muhammadu Buhari president, what does he want the rest of us, Nigerians, who invested so much hope on Buhari and this government, but are now left hungry and angry, to do?
In the current race to annoy us, two loudmouths stand out. Governors, Ibikunle Amosun and Nasir El Rufai. They lead the pack of twisted sycophants who want to enthrone their greed on Nigeria. Let’s not get it twisted though.
Second tenured Governor Amosu attempts to hoodwink us, that his friendship with Buhari should be elevated above the national interest. He lies and probably wants to supplant vice president Yemi Osinbajo.
El Rufai, former president Obasanjo and others have told us, is loyal to only one person: himself. Have we forgotten the underground moves when confusion over President Buhari’s health reigned?
Even if we do, we can’t forget that he is about the most ambitious of the sycophants who want to be president. It is not hard to see beneath the veil of his avowed interest to return Buhari to Aso Rock in 2019. It is a badly shielded decoy.
The current noise from the diminutive “accidental public servant” is a mask, an attempted wool over Buhari’s eyes; a possible ploy to get Buhari to anoint him to succeed him. In common parlance or street jingo, it is opportunistic positioning. It is a “just in case” strategy, as we all believe Buhari is too patriotic to subject Nigeria to another round of this rudderless presidency his ill health and poor understanding of the economic times has punished Nigerians with.
What the President Buhari-must-run campaigners have not told us is why we should mortgage our lives for another four years, if what we are going to get is the same dashed hopes of the first two years plus of this regime.
Why should we vote Buhari again? What have been the achievements of this government? Are we better off as a people and a nation after almost two and half years of this government in all the critical indices?
Are there signs that the lot of Nigerians can be transformed appreciably in the remaining lifespan of his first tenure for them to desire that Buhari should continue for another four years? Or can this government continue to blame Jonathan and corruption and expect Nigerians to buy its stories as why it has continued to perform abysmally?
That is why one cannot fail but agree with Professor Wole Soyinka who says it is imbecilic to even begin talking about 2019 elections now. Yes, It is too early; it is too provocative to mount such a campaign now. For the question must be asked and answered, by Nigerians and not the mouthy sycophants: What have we got to show for the last election and those we invested power with?