“Here’s the smell of blood still. All perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh.”...CONTINUE READING
Macbeth V.i.48-50)
The words in the quote above were uttered by Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth after she had murdered King Duncan who visited her husband, Macbeth, in his castle in Inverness, to congratulate him on his prowess in the battle against invading armies—one from Ireland, led by Macdonwald, and one from Norway…..CONTINUE READING
Obviously in deep distress, Lady Macbeth was plagued with fits of sleepwalking in which she bemoaned what she believed to have been bloodstains on her hands.
Constantly carrying a candle and walking about, she muttered the evil deeds she and her husband had done by murdering King Duncan, Banquo, and Macduff’s family, among others.
The doctor hired to diagnose Lady Macbeth’s problems declared that he could not cure her of her disease and that she needed divine intervention, not medicine, for healing.
Finally, Lady Macbeth died and her death is never clear, but suicide is suggested.
The tragedy of Lady Macbeth came to my mind when President Muhammadu Buhari, in the lead up to the expiration of his tenancy in Aso Villa, hosted the Abuja residents who paid him the traditional Sallah visit.
Buhari has been the tenant-in-chief of the all expense paid palatial residence, superintending the affairs of Nigeria for almost eight years. During the visit, which marked his last Sallah celebration in the villa before exiting the palace for another occupant, the president thanked Nigerians for the honour to serve for two terms, 2015-2023.
He said he had gathered all his belongings for the return to his Daura country home in Katsina State and thanked Nigerian for giving him “what I had wanted.” Although he did not expatiate what he had always wanted, I guess he had all along been longing for compensation and rehabilitation after he was forcefully ousted in a military coup on July 29, 1985 by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and co. And he got it, everything and in abundance.
Before his final departure, the president asked Nigerians to forgive him, knowing full well that he had wronged them while discharging his duties.
“I can’t wait to go home to Daura. If they make any noise to disturb me in Daura, I will leave for the Niger Republic. I deliberately arranged to be as far away as possible. I got what I wanted and will quietly retire to my home town.
“God gave me an incredible opportunity to serve the country. We are all humans, if I have hurt some people along the line of my service to the country, I ask that they pardon me.
“All those that I have hurt, I ask that they pardon me.
“I think it is a good coincidence for me to say goodbye to you, and thank you for tolerating me for almost eight years,” he said.
Although the president was not specific about his wrong doings, but what readily comes to my mind is the bloodbath in Benue State, Southern Kaduna and Plateau State which has been a daily occurrence while he sits pretty in Aso Rock and does little or nothing to stop or curtail it. Let’s look at the case of Benue for instance.
I expected the president to embark on a thank-you visit to the states to appreciate Nigerians who had graciously given him “what I wanted.” And the first port of call, to me, would be Benue State. Instead, he chose to spend the last few months globetrotting, seeing his dentist in London, attending weddings, birthday parties, coronation ceremonies.
He even travelled to Liberia to give a lecture on security, free and fair elections and respect for rule of law, three commodities he cannot give to Nigerians.
Since President Buhari came to power in 2015, every part of Benue has turned red, no thanks to daily bloodshed carried out by killer herdsmen who are believed to be the president’s distant kinsmen from Mali, Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Senegal, Mauritania and Futa Jalon. Since 2015, there is no day that blood is not spilled in that agrarian north central state. Regrettably, not one of the killers has been apprehended and prosecuted despite the security report that the perpetrators of the heinous crime are foreign Fulani herdsmen.
For eight years, the state governor, Dr Samuel Ortom, has pointed fingers at Buhari’s brothers but the president would merely condemn the atrocious act while promising to “bring the perpetrators of the heinous crime to book.” Fullstop.
At the height of the crisis in 2018, President Buhari directed then IGP, Mr. Ibrahim Idris to relocate to Benue to restore order and forestall further attacks on villagers by suspected herdsmen.
The directive followed the January 1, 2018 massacre of over 70 villagers In Logo and Guma local government areas of the state.
Idris flew to Benue in cozy police helicopter, landed at Makurdi Airport, inspected a guard of honour mounted by a detachment of the police force and flew back to Abuja and went straight to a five-star hotel where he whiled away the time with a flame.
When President Buhari later visited Benue in March of that year and learnt that Idris did not spend time in the state, he said “I’m not aware that the inspector general did not spend 24 hours in the state as directed by me, I am getting to know in this meeting.”
What followed was Buhari’s attempt by the reward Idris with tenure elongation after he had spent 35 years in the civil service but widespread condemnation put paid to that.
I think the president needs to ask the Benue people directly for forgiveness. And even when they say “we have forgiven you, our President” they would, like Malcolm be careful that “this murderous shaft that’s shot/Hath not yet lighted” for the blood hounds are still lurking away, waiting for nightfall so they can strike.
He also needs to be forgiven by the people of Southern Kaduna and Plateau State who are constantly given the Benue treatment by herdsmen. On Tuesday, May 16, herdsmen massacred 85 people in Fungzai and Kubwat villages in Kombun District of Mangu Local government area of Plateau State.
I also expected Buhari to personally seek the forgiveness of the parents of Leah Sharibu, the lone Christian girl from Government Girls’ Science and Technical College (GGSTC) Dapchi, Yobe State, who has been in Boko Haram captivity since February 19, 2018 when she and 109 of her colleagues were whisked away by the terrorists.
On March 21, 2018, the terrorists released everyone else save Miss Sharibu who refused to convert to Islam. For five years, Buhari failed to rescue the girl despite several promises on the anniversary of the abduction.
About 97 schoolgirls abducted from a school in Chibok, Borno State, are still in Boko Haram captivity while many others are still being held hostage by terrorists many years after their abduction from schools in Kaduna and Zamfara states. The president has paid lip service to their freedom. He needs special forgiveness from the parents of the students.
We will forgive but will not forget that Buhari’s administration has ended up like the quote of a Greek author, Aesop, who said: “When all is said and done, more is said than done”.
In 2015 Buhari’s led APC government increased fuel pump price from N87 to N145; 2019 from N145 to N162; 2020 from N162-124 and 2020 from N151-N162 per litre. Between February 2020 and February 2023, the price of fuel rose from N145.41/litre to N263.76/litre.
We will forgive but we will never forget that just yesterday, Monday, Mr. President was joined by many other African heads of state to commission a 650,000-barrel per day (bpd) Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical in the Ibeju-Lekki area of Lagos but for eight years, Mr. President who is also the minister of petroleum resources, has neither built a modular refinery nor revitalised the existing four – two in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, one apiece in Kaduna and Warri with a cumulative refining capacity of about 445,000 barrels per day. Regrettably, none of these refineries has refined a tablespoonful of crude in eight years of the Buhari administration despite the billions of naira spent annually in turn around maintenance!
Funnily enough, the people in government still recruit their kith and kin into the refineries yearly. The monthly pay of the lowest ranking worker in the moribund refineries is a grade level 8 officer’s annual pay in the civil service!
Mr. President, the Niger Delta people will forgive but will not forget the fact that you did not complete the East-West Road project that crisscrosses all the oil producing states, while the 284 kilometre standard gauge rail line from Kano to Maradi in Niger Republic at the cost of $1.96 billion is very dear to you.
Therefore when you made your famous japa statement of giving up your Nigerian passport “if they make any noise to disturb me in Daura” and rejoin your kinsmen in Niger Republic, the Niger Deltans, nay, Nigerians, are not fooled that you simply want to see some of the projects your administration executed in Niger and to ride in one of those exotic cars worth N1.4 billion which your administration bought to that land-locked country.
Mr. President, we will forgive but cannot forget how, in Nigeria, under your administration, one ethnic nationality is more superior to the others. Obasanjo alluded to this when he accused you of executing a Fulanisation agenda. Nigeria has been more divide along ethnic and religious lines under your watch.
“Our famous, if that is the word, fault lines of ethnicity and religion have considerably and dangerously widened in the eight years of Buhari’s watch. Our country is more divided than it ever was. The ethnic and religious champions are at the public arena of our national politics, beating the harsh drums of ethnic and religious rights and deafening rational thoughts on what ails us as a nation rather what each group feels entitled to from the Nigerian state,” a columnist with The Guardian, Mr. Dan Agbese, said.
We will forgive but will not forget one instance of hi-tech corruption in the ministry of humanitarian affairs, disaster management, and social development, where the minister, Sadiya Umar Farouq, announced in August 2020 that the federal government spent a whopping N523.3 million on school feeding programme during the coronavirus down.
According to her, about 124,589 households benefited across the FCT, Lagos and Ogun states. A lock-down was in place as a result of COVID-19; schools — primary, secondary, and tertiary — were shut down, even the private sector only ran skeletal operations. How did the minister and her officials determine and access the 124,589 households in the FCT, Lagos and Ogun states? This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Recently, the EFCC arrested a former minister of power, Mr. Mamman Saleh for alleged conspiracy in the theft of N22 billion from the accounts of the Zungeru and Mambilla Hydro Electric Power projects; former accountant general, Mr. Ahmed Idris, was arrested for his alleged involvement in a N174 billion fraud; N6.8 billion fraud at the National Health Insurance Scheme, the multi-billion naira fraud in the anchor borrowers’ programme, N-Power, TraderMoni, etc.
Little wonder the outgoing governor of Zamfara State, Mr. Bello Matawalle has warned the EFCC against embarking on selective war against corruption but to beam its searchlight on the presidency officials and ministers.
Mr. President, we will forgive but we will never forget that it was during your eight-year tenure that Nigeria overtook India as the global headquarters.
According to a recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) over 130 million Nigerians, from an estimated 200 million population, are multi-dimensionally poor. No thanks to the poor management of the economy.
“Our national economy continues its steady match towards the south, blurring all hopes that sooner rather than later, another country will feel more entitled than ours to wear the global crown as the poverty capital of the world. Buhari promised to take 100 million out of poverty in ten years. It was a promise he could not keep – and he knew he could not but he also knew that unrealistic political promises never fail to garner insensate public applause.
“Under him poverty escalated, pushing some 138 million people below the globally recognised poverty line. Remember it was under his keen watch over the economy that Nigeria toppled India from its perch as the poverty capital of the world in 2017. He could not fix the economy.
“I wish the late President Shehu Shagari would rise from his grave and say to him, “how now?” In 1984, he said Shagari hopelessly mismanaged the economy. But in eight years, he demonstrated no capacity for economic management. He merely borrowed money from wherever to shore up the economy. And he leaves N77 trillion debt burden on the nation. It, indeed, is a heavy burden and one this nation ought not to be saddled with.
“But to be fair, Buhari made room for the emergence of new millionaires from either federal government favours bestowed on them or by the commanders and the foot soldiers of the anti-graft war looking the other way as the rats took over the barn under protection. Gleaming private mansions and expensive housing estates in Abuja and other towns and cities tell the unnerving current story of money-miss road and of a nation caught up in the web of the poor and the rich living in two countries in one,” Agbese wrote.
We will forgive, but we’ll never forget…..CONTINUE READING
