Before Aso Rock falls

Sir: As it stands now, there is only one thing holding the government of President Muhammadu Buhari together: the Nigerian Constitution which stipulates a term of four years. Otherwise, we would have been picking the debris of this administration in several parks, bus stops and market square across the country.

To many who understand practical politics, Buhari was no messiah but a disciple presumed to be open to change if effectively sung in his ears. The new turn of Buhari’s government should not come as a surprise, even amongst party chieftains and elder statesmen. The vision of what his administration would be was glaring to all but as human nature holds unto the glimpse of surprise and miracle, many, in spite of open evidences were hoping that either by sheer luck or divine intervention, something else would happen. It was on the basis of this illusion that his aspiration was supported in 2015 and his policies, silence, actions and inactions were supported and blames passed on aides all with the hope that eventually he would come around. Old habit does not just take time to die, in reality, it never does.

The problem with the fall of Buhari is not just that of deception and abuse of trust against the promises made to the people. In one of my articles after Buhari’s emergence, I wrote about my fear on his possible failure as capable of creating a collapse of the federation where citizens get disinterested in the affairs of state and care less on how it is governed.

We hope that Buhari wakes up tomorrow to sack his entire cabinet and tender an unreserved apology to Nigerians for monumental misrule. But in reality, this will never happen. To those who may quickly want to distance Buhari from the sins of his people, please note the now paraphrased saying, ‘show me your cabinet and I will tell you who you are’

Conveniently, the maiden called democracy is expected to take solace under the shed of the two chambers of the National Assembly but that would have only been possible if our men and women in the green and red chambers have not become mere dogs who bark often but rarely bite. Under their garment of purity and legally backed powers to check the excesses of the Executive lies tonnes of rot in budget manipulation and stolen allocations meant for constituency projects. Every investigative committee setup ends as bargaining chip to add more to the next budget and in rare cases when reports emanate from such committees, it is at the gain of bake-beans sellers, fried-yam merchants and hawkers of groundnuts and popcorn.

The judiciary which would have been the last hope has now become a tool in the hands of the Presidency after a series of submissiveness, blackmail and intimidation of judges. Failure of judges to dance to the rhythm of the Presidency or dole out ex parte orders when requested automatically qualifies such judge for DSS visitation or EFCC harassment.

The best we can do in the midst of this political anarchy is to dust our voter’s card, place it under our pillow and pray that our votes count in 2019.

Boladale is a public affairs analyst.