Skip to main content

Of Buhari’s Friends And Fiends By Remi Oyeyemi

July 13, 2015

Meanwhile, as we wait for President Buhari to get his act together and get into high gear, the least we can do is to call his attention to possible pitfalls along the way, so that he could avoid them. To this end, President Buhari has to have his antennae out there and pay attention to his environment and the people milling around him.

Image

“He who betrayed once, will do it again,” -Motto of the Bologna Socialist Party

I still have concerns with the way and manner Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari has responded to various issues since his assumption of office. Especially, I am of the view that he is allowing corruption and its apostles to seize the initiative from him. But we have been admonished to give him some time to get his act together. It has been contended that there was too much mess on the ground and he needs to clear them to be able to move forward effectively. Though, one disagrees with this school of thought giving the fact that he has been contesting for the presidency for more than 12 years now, one is willing to acquiesce for the time being. This is because whether we like it or not, twenty years would soon pass in a jiffy.

Meanwhile, as we wait for President Buhari to get his act together and get into high gear, the least we can do is to call his attention to possible pitfalls along the way, so that he could avoid them. To this end, President Buhari has to have his antennae out there and pay attention to his environment and the people milling around him. 

Around him are a lot of friends and fiends. Among his friends, some are sincere and really wish him success. Also among them are insincere friends only angling to use Buhari and his presidency as a stepping stone for their turn at the presidency. They really do not care how Buhari’s fate turns out eventually, as long as they are able to achieve their own selfish ambitions. Then there are the fiends who are evil through and through. There are also the oligarchs who sees Buhari’s presidency as an opportunity to reclaim what they believe is theirs.

The first category as pointed out above consists of the sincere friends of President Buhari. They are ambitious, enthusiastic, determined and have their fortunes tied to the success of President Buhari at all costs. They believe in helping the people while they help themselves. They have their dreams tied to the apron of Buhari’s touted dream of turning Nigeria around and giving genuine hope to Nigerians. This category of Buhari’s friends had invested everything to ensure that the path led to this point and place. This group, even though not squeaky clean themselves in terms of corruption, appropriated Nigerians’ disgust and disdain for it and used it as the platform to campaign and pushed him to Aso Rock. They are organized, confident but countrified. They are jejune, impulsive and patsy. They are unduly enthusiastic, careless and trusting.

This group in question consist the brains behind the coalition that emerged. They are the strategists. They are the architects, the pathfinders, and in many ways, the financiers. They are smart, intelligent but politically unsophisticated. At best, some of their acts suggest that they a political neophytes. They made a lot of sacrifices and gave up a lot in goodwill, money, energy, time and other variety of resources. They are the brains behind the greatest propaganda in history of Nigeria as a country that turned around the image of President Buhari around from a loathed erstwhile military dictator to a “beloved politician.” Their fate and fortune are tied to the success of President Buhari. They are really determined to give Nigerians a taste of something different via what I characterize as “enlightened self interest.”

The second category of friends is the insincere ones. Like the sincere friends of Buhari, they are selfish too but insalubrious in their own selfishness. They are as ambitious as the first group with some tinges of morbidity. These friends are the fair-weather ones. They were not there at the beginning when the foundation was laid and the party was built to be a good home to accommodate others. They came after the bread was baked and were invited to partake. As record shows, some of these friends were even reluctant to join the APC after they were invited because they were not sure if their ambitions, which to them were more paramount than the fortune of the country could be realized. 

Now, milling around Buhari, they have schemed to gain the confidence of President Buhari and try to call the shots from behind the curtains to sideline those who really built the house. This category of friends do not care whether Buhari succeeds or fails as long as he is good enough to provide the condition that would enable them realize their own ambitions come 2019. They are very well aware that the failure of Buhari would provide the template for them to build their campaign for presidency either as members of the APC or a different coalition in 2019, with appropriated machineries of the APC.

This group of friends knows that if Buhari fails, he would carry the blame alone. They are willing to use Buhari as a sacrificial lamb for their end goal. And that is exactly what they want to pave way for their own diabolical plans. They really do not care if Nigerians benefit from the Buhari presidency. They have a lot of resources from what they have stolen from under the nose of Olusegun Obasanjo-Onyejekwe. Some present and past governors belong to this group. They are generous to a fault and are ardent believers in Babangidaism – that everyone has a price and could be bought! They will spend any amount of naira, pound sterling, dollar and euro to win and achieve their objective. They are crass opportunists. The leading lights of this group have international criminal records and are pariah from some Western countries.

In an environment where poverty is pulverizing the people, because of its unlimited resources, this group is more than lethal. It is lactiferous. Its members are malicious, malevolent and miasmic. They are very organized and have well oiled machines and tentacles across the country. They have solid presence in the media. They are mean, cold and calculating. They are cunning, crafty, and clandestine. They are ruthless, merciless and desperate.  They are laser focused on 2019.

The third category consists of the fiends. They are bold, bogus and gaudy. They are vainglorious, pretentious and shameless. They have no scruples whatsoever. Their temerity, effrontery and audacity know no bounds. They are bandits blatant in their debasement. They are rapacious, predatory and plundering. They are ferocious, voracious and furious. They are marauding, murderous and mendacious.  They are deceitful, deceptive and duplicitous. They don’t give a damn about Nigerians or Nigeria as a country as long as they are able to loot without let or hindrance. They covet and chase power by all and any means necessary to be able to impede the long arms of the law and protect their loots.

These fiends have no loyalty to anyone, friends or family. They would disgrace their fathers, sacrifice their mothers, humiliate their sisters, blackmail their blood brothers and betray their friends. They are unrepentantly perfidious, treacherous and traitorous. In their books, nothing matters except their ambitions. They are not just Judases of our generation; they are also the Brutuses of this era. To them everybody, no matter how close and intimate, no matter how influential, powerful, connected or lowly, is usable and dispensable. To them everything, no matter how valuable and precious, is disposable.

Then, there are the silent soldiers of the caliphate, who sees President Buhari as the ticket for the reconsolidation of their hegemony. They are powerful, rich and desperate too. They are ruthless and merciless too. They are found all over the facets of the Nigerian Federal Government and have recently ventures into influencing their sentries to take over local leadership among other ethnic nationalities. They present the real threats to the Nigerian nationhood. They have as their sentries traitors from every tribe and ethnic nationality in Nigeria. They also believe in Babangidaism. They are willing to spend any amount of money, give up any position to their sentries to make them play ball. Their only objective is to control the Presidency at all costs, by all means and at all times. Their modality is to hide their bigotry and cocooned racism by spreading the crumbs around the nation and present a confusing picture of ONE NATION, ONE DESTINY, when indeed it is actually ONE NATION, MANY DESTINIES.

If President Buhari is to succeed, he has to pay attention to his environment. He has to pay attention to and study the people around him. He has to always have a second look at the advice they give him. He has to be able to evaluate and make the right judgments. He has to watch his back and monitor everyone. He has to be decisive, deliberate, introspective and fair. He has to be a true father of the country and not allowed himself to be used as an ethnic instrument by the predatory oligarchs. He can be the father of a truly new Nigeria where every person is equal before the law regardless of the ethnic or religious background. He should not allow himself to be turned against those who truly love him and want him to succeed. He has to constantly be on the lookout for possibility of treachery. He must be conscious that he would be undermined. He must be aware that not all who praise him in public or to his face actually wish him well. If he makes the mistake of putting his fate in any of the last three groups, he would be doomed beyond redemption. A word, they say, is enough for the wise.

 

 

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.” - John F. Kennedy, in his Inaugural Address January 20, 1961

 

Please, follow me on Twitter@OyeyemiRemi

Topics
Politics