Truth often comes from the most unlikely places, and when it comes it is as refreshing as a glass of cold water in very hot weather. A fortnight, or so ago, the standard bearer of the All Progressives Congress, in the forth coming 2023 Presidential Elections, Bola Armed Tinubu, gave his verdict on the stewardship of his party in the last seven years. His language was so refreshing because, unlike other times, he did not sugarcoat the current state of the country under Buhari. He was blunt, just the way our elders in our villages are; and he refused to equivocate when he said: “Nigeria is rotten under President Buhari.” His verdict was in stark opposition to the drivel of the likes of Festus Kyamo, when he tried to score cheap political points by suggesting that the Peoples Democratic Party has an undismantled pipeline for corruption.

It was a case of the kettle calling the pot black. Interestingly, he doubles as the Minister of State for Labour, as well as the Spokesperson for the Tinubu Campaign Organisation. I believe that Nigerians are eager to hear his spin on the verdict of the Asiwaju on the Buhari administration, of which he is a cabinet member. Among the Ijaw people of Southern Nigeria, there is a common saying that the fish begins to rot from the head. By extension, Senator Tinubu has indicted no less than President Buhari himself.  He has frontally accused him of running a rotten government. Of course, there is no gainsaying the fact that the fruit tells of what variety of tree it has come from. A rotten tree will definitely produce rotten fruits; in our case corruption, insecurity, injustices, lies, rank nepotism, and the like.

Incidentally, the tree called Buhari’s administration was planted by no other than Senator Bola Armed Tinubu himself, and he has told everyone who wants to listen. In fact, in the period leading to the primary elections, when it seemed like there was a gang up against his presidential ambition, his trump card was his role in President Buhari’s emergence as flag bearer in 2014. He reminded nay-sayers that he single-handedly brought Buhari out of retirement and made him president. The former governor of Lagos State cannot extricate himself from the baggage of the bad product he sold to Nigerians in 2015. He must carry the barge of one who sells rotten, or expired products.

Ordinarily, if Buhari were to be a material product in the Nigerian market, the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) would have arrested Tinubu and his co-travellers since 2019. On another level, his statement tells us everything we need to know, so as not to cast our vote for the APC, and for him in particular, come 2023. Around the world, we have seen how heads of government and global CEOs stood out and led from the front against a barrage of global headwinds. These leaders have confirmed the words of the foremost leadership expert of our time, John C. Maxwell, when he observed that everything rises and falls on leadership. A recent case in point is the war in Ukraine, where a President, a former comedian has risen to the occasion in defence of his people.

For instance, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has been able to stand up to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin; a former KGB agent who has been in the presidential saddle for more than two decades. He has been able to rally his people to fight for their motherland; he is only 44 years old. But President Buhari, a retired general has been fiddling for seven years, while the country burns. Meanwhile, the amount of money spent so far on security, and the provisions in the 2023 appropriation bill show how inept, incapable, and corrupt Tinubu’s expiring product has become.  The rottenness in Buhari’s government has expanded what we have now come to know as ungoverned spaces in the North. Earlier on in his administration, he prided himself as one who dislodged Boko Haram, from every territory. But that was all a lie. Residents of Maiduguri know the terrorists live with them and do business with them, and the government is also aware.

The rottenness in the military championed by Buhari, has given Boko Haram new siblings. It was under this government that banditry was redefined. Instead of going about their criminal enterprise, bandits now acquire surface-to-air missiles with the capacity to bring down jets.  Under this rotten administration, the security architecture of the South East was completely undermined, giving birth to the unknown gunmen phenomenon. In the past seven years so many innocent Nigerians have met their untimely death in the hands of these faceless men of the underworld. As curious as Tinubu’s assertion may be, it is nothing new. It is even suspicious of him to be making such statements concerning Buhari at the twilight of his administration. For most Nigerian voters, the Jagaban of Bugu was only playing to the gallery.

The smell of political and administrative rottenness cannot effectively be removed by parting oneself in the back as Buhari did a few days ago. At this point, the challenging question on the minds of most Nigerians of all stripes and political affiliations is, “what is the degree, and where is the epicentre of the rottenness?”  But we also know the answer, that the country is very rotten in every sector, starting from the gates of Aso Rock. Recall that one of President Buhari’s cardinal policy thrusts was fighting corruption, but seven years later,  instead of improving on the global corruption index, Nigerian has continued to decline. Some cases of corruption under Buhari are nothing but mind bugling. Like the claim that hundreds of millions of naira was spent on school feeding programme, during the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas schools were closed, and children were at home. Or, consider the dirty fuel saga that some billions of Naira were used to clean up; no one has been held accountable to date. Or should we challenge President Buhari on his position regarding the petrol subsidy in 2014?  How he asserted that the whole subsidy regime was a scam, and how much he has spent on subsidies in the past seven years.

In fact, in the cases of subsidy, the former Emir of Kano, and former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido, in a recent event at Kaduna questioned if Nigerians were drinking the fuel. He challenged NNPCL’s consumption projection. Sadly, if the 2023 Appropriation Bill is passed as proposed by Buhari’s government, it means that fuel subsidies will gulp a whopping N3.6 million which  is equivalent to about 20 per cent of next year’s budget. Bear in mind that Buhari has been the Minister for Petroleum Resources since 2015 Before Tinubu’s recenter outburst, if I may use that word, many others within the ruling APC have voiced the same concern. In an interview on Radio France International in April, a member of the Police Service Commission, Mrs Najatu Muhammed, blasted the President for pardoning two former governors, Joshua Dariye, and Jolly Nyame of Plateau State and Taraba State respectively. Mrs Muhammed interpreted it as representing a systematic failure in the country. she lamented that the rot in Plateau State’s education, health, and infrastructure may have been caused by looting by Dariye.

She then went further to accuse the President, saying: “the president does only what serves his interest or that of his lieutenants at the detriment of public interest. Buhari was elected to fight corruption,  sadly, he is now the person committing this atrocity. Buhari has proved that he is untrustworthy and unreliable. Buhari has failed all the promises he made to the nation, especially the northerners who lost their lives and property because of him. He has not fulfilled a single promise he made. Buhari’s administration is the most corrupt government ever in the history of Nigeria. The level of stealing is unprecedented. Everybody commits crimes with impunity.” In conclusion, Tinubu should hold his peace, or come up with other sweet nothings with the hope that Nigerians are still gullible. Nigerians are living in the midst of the rottenness under Buhari; and they also know that he, Tunubu, was the chief architect of  Buhari’s second coming.

By: Raphael Pepple