Remi Oyeyemi’s piece published on SaharaReporters’ news portal with the above title (except the question mark) was a rejoinder that was triggered by Tunde Fagbenle’s piece, an ace columnist that had the same title.
I read both articles but in reverse order with Oyeyemi’s being the first that I ‘ran’ into. Oyeyemi unleashed his literary venom on Fagbenle right from the beginning of his rejoinder. For a starter, he declared that he couldn’t resist not replying Fagbenle because his piece, to him, was “not just interesting but also annoying.” After reading both articles, I found it irresistible to just keep quiet about the viewpoints of both men, more so because of Fagbenle’s disillusionment with Buhari and Oyeyemi’s obvious hatred of the chief of state that they both cleverly tried to pass off as a referendum from the Nigerian people on the Buhari presidency. I also found both articles interesting but not annoying.
Fagbenle apparently became disenchanted with Buhari when he declared that Nigerians’ “woes are multiplying by the day” because “there is the disconcerting, questioning, look on many a face of what is happening” and that “the old stock excuse of having met a ruined economy left by the departed government of Jonathan has become stale and boring in the ears of the people.” He went further by saying that this worldview was brought about “more from seeing no real action, no systemic dislocation of seismic proportion observed in the status quo ante, than it is from expecting any manna from PMB.” The central theme of Fagbenle’s attack on Buhari, which he probably deliberately hammered upon knowing that it would resonate across socio-cultural, economic and political divides was the country’s intractable and epileptic power supply which he rightly claimed improved relatively significantly almost immediately after Buhari was declared the winner in the last presidential election only for it to return to its default setting of constant blackouts across the land nine months into his presidency.
As far as Fagbenle was concerned, “PMB seems overwhelmed by the enormity and complexity of the problems at hand” while he cleverly appeared that to be staying on the same side of the fence that he had just jumped from by adding that “the problem of Nigeria is not Buhari” but that “the problem of Nigeria is Nigeria.” The other leg on which Fagbenle’s piece rested was his deployment of some carefully selected but useless anecdotes from faceless public affairs commentator, a radio personality and even a foreigner about Buhari and the current political dispensation under his leadership to buttress his disillusionment. He deadpanned that “Buhari is of the old conservative mold” that the country doesn’t need at this particular historical juncture.
One would have thought that Oyeyemi would have been so excited to have shouted Halleluiah that Fagbenle, a significant member of what he called the Yoruba intelligentsia who was also among the “water careers” of President Mohammadu Buhari as well as a “part of the group who sold the idea of Buhari as President hook, line, and sinker when in fact they knew he has not the intellectual wherewithal to captain the ship of Nigeria” to have finally experienced his own Pauline conversion and welcome him to the “Nigerian Association of Wailing Wailers (NAWW).” Instead, Oyeyemi came out swinging so ferociously at Fagbenle.
Rather than for him to have thrown a lavish party for Fagbenle that not a few of the looters of our collective patrimony would have been too willing to pay for, he stood at the barricade and prevented him from gaining entrance into the Nothing-Good-Can-Ever-Come-Out-of-Buhari movement. He excoriated and dismissed this big ‘fish’ that willingly swam into a small pond in search of its own kind. He was annoyed with him for denouncing the “Buhari sainthood so soon” and found it “interesting that Mr. Fagbenle is not willing to wait until at least one year anniversary of the tragic day (italics mine for emphasis) when President Buhari’s second coming took off.”
He seemed very suspicious of Fagbenle’s conversion and probably thought he could be a mole if he was admitted into the club of Buhari naysayers, having expressed his misgivings that Fagbenle could take them for a ride once again that he has seen the light “when this is not the case.”
Oyeyemi was not in the least impressed. He was even more annoyed that Fagbenle had the audacity “to come out with the article under reference that he is surprised by the incompetence and the concomitant collapse being manifested by President Buhari” and stressed in no unmistakable terms that it was “an insult to those who have been reading him.” Oyeyemi was unwilling to give Fagbenle the benefit of the doubt that he truly may have expressed an epiphany by reminding him that he---in association with his group of Yoruba intelligentsia---dressed Buhari “in deceptive drapes of inadequacy, insisting that he is ‘”the man for the job’” when “they knew that his trajectory did not justify the confidence with which he was being invested.” What is more, Oyeyemi thought it was “weird that someone of Mr. Fagbenle’s erudition, intellect and circumspection could not figure out that someone such as Buhari who could not produce his certificate for the West African Examination Council (WAEC) would be able to correct all the anomalies in Nigeria and save the country.”
It didn’t matter that the Nigerian military which became slavishly subservient to then President Jonathan---having been willingly corralled and got fully embedded into the corruption fiesta where it not only fed fat on the blood of Nigerians but on the ‘intestines’ of its own members (both literally and figuratively) that is now known to the world---had admitted that it had deliberately kept the said certificate in another very desperate attempt to reduce Buhari’s chances, if not completely prevent him from being elected. His annoyance with Fagbenle was legion in the piece under reference.
The other strand on which Oyeyemi’s rejoinder was precariously hinged was his warped belief that the Yoruba Nation sunk into its lowest ebb in its political history (a sort of a double-dip) by the active participation and the unflinching involvement of the progressive elements of the geo-political region which became the critical link that culminated into the inevitable emergence of Buhari as a president in a democracy. It didn’t matter to Oyeyemi that this is the very first time in the country’s history since the civil war that the teeming everyday Nigerians now have a government that they can truly call their own, in line with the vision of the political progenitor of this geo-political region, as will be presently addressed.
Fagbenle’s views on Buhari, as simultaneously interesting and disturbing as they are---one must admit---speaks to the complexities and the contradictions that are inherent in the human condition. Granted that a preponderate of people in any given society would most probably reduce any promise of “change” by a competing political class for power on assumption of office to that of “bread and butter” before any consideration for improvement in their general well-being, one is befuddled that Fagbenle was unable and/or unwilling to rise above the pedestrian thoughts he displayed in his piece, more so when his “erudition, intellect and circumspection” should have afforded him to have a greater understanding of the monumental plunder into which the country was subjected for close to a quarter of a century. Does Fagbenle believe that Buhari is a “Professor Pella” (apologies to my ‘uncle’ Mr. Femi Orebe) incarnate?
Why did he display such a crass and lethargic thought process by not understanding the fact that a nation whose trajectory has always been dependent on the direction of the wind that this uncomfortable reality became unbearable that a former Minister of National Planning quipped that Nigeria probably never had a National Plan by which to base and measure her growth and development? Why was Fagbenle unwilling to have a deep appreciation of the socio-economic and political decadence of unimaginable magnitude that President Buhari must first clear out and as a necessary condition before any meaningful and sustainable upward socio-economic mobility can be achieved? What makes him think an administration that is less than a year old, more so when it’s now very obvious that there’re centrifugal forces---from the National Assembly to the judiciary, some of them very lethal (which covertly coalesce under a common goal of stopping Buhari by any means necessary)---for the preservation of the corrupt status quo that Buhari must contend with, should have turned Nigeria into an El Dorado by now?
What was the point of quoting a “friend on a radio interview [who] analogized that the fearsome dog (PMB) of months ago is now nothing but a tame, lame dog that no one fears anymore and can be safely patted on its head even by strangers” other than to portray the president as a weakling in the same league with former president Jonathan. Why portray President Buhari as if he started as a bully when he said in his inaugural speech that Nigerians have nothing to fear but only those who should worry about the consequences of their actions as we’re currently witnessing on a daily basis? Why must Fagbenle dignify his piece with that “I told you so look of cynics who had forecast doom for the new government and gloom for the country [that] hurts [him] by the day” when there are enough facts on the ground for those willing to see that rubbished this viewpoint?
One must wonder about the soundness (no disrespect) of Fagbenle’s thought pattern that sent him down the downcast path because a friend he quoted in one of his columns shortly after Fashola’s appointment was announced that his being loaded “with three portfolios…was a ploy to set him up for failure now laughs in [his] face,” rather than expose the senselessness of this base viewpoint that for Buhari to intentionally set Fashola up for failure is just as tantamount to setting himself and the government he heads for failure. Even the deranged late Idi Amin Dada would not have contemplated such madness.
Why is it so difficult for Fagbenle to see that for President Buhari to have saddled Fashola with three ministerial portfolios is most probably indicative of the president’s confidence in him as a high achiever, and by extension a mark of the respect and appreciation of the president for the more pronounced socio-economic growth and the futuristic inclination of not only Lagos under Fashola’s watch, but also the Southwest geo-political region that was, and continues to be spearheaded by its progressive elements in line with the political philosophy of their progenitor?
Buhari probably would have remained in Fagbenle’s good book if the president had adopted a bandage approach just like his predecessors in attempting to solve the multiplicity of the nation’s woes of which their existence was never due to any policy deficiencies that can readily be identified and corrected by another policy, but woes created by the whims and caprices of the nation’s chiefs of state over decades. Not enough patronage to go round for the ‘boys’ to feast on? Buhari should have created several Commissions and Agencies even unknown to any law of the land to accommodate them. Is the nation short of money to pay the salaries of workers of these commissions and agencies including their ghost workers? Buhari should have sent one of his cabinet members to the Central Bank of Nigeria with “Ghana Must Go Bags” to pay them. Did I hear somebody say what about appropriation? Well, that one might as well go jump in the Lagoon or hit his head against Zuma rock. Is the Naira falling under the weight of the recklessness to which it had been subjected for decades? Devaluation is the panacea. And who want to make sacrifices but the fools? These are some of the requirements to have in order to belong to the “Wailing Wailers” club.
It’s pointless trying to draw Fagbenle’s attention to the unprecedented war on corruption with its resultant positive effects on the nation’s economy, which may never be seen again after Buhari exists the political stage---a war that had exposed even his own military constituency---since the ace columnist have now joined the “Na corruption we go chop?” group. Does it not make sense to Fagbenle that real growth and development, and improvement in the well-being of the people can only take place in an atmosphere of peace and security? Yes, the Boko Haram terrorists that almost sacked Borno and Yobe states before Buhari became the president, having overran all the local governments areas except a handful in these states, may be difficult for Fagbenle to relate to because he’s shielded from their atrocities by virtue of where he resides in (or outside?) the country. But does the curtailment of the terrorists not indicative that something is working?
Does the resuscitation of the country’s refineries and repositioning of the NNPC in order to significantly cut down on our petroleum importation not an attestation that something is working? Is the people-centered 2016 budget that gave 30 percent to capital expenditure (unprecedented in the country’s budgetary history) not an indication that we finally have a government that is genuinely committed to doing the right thing by the Nigerian people? Was this therefore not a testament that something is working? Did the Buhari government not cry out that its budget had been padded, which forced the various committees of the National Assembly to do their jobs when they otherwise would have secretly demanded and given their own shares from the padded amount as has been the case for the past 16 years? Was this not an affirmation that something is working? Is the clean-up of Niger-Delta due to start in a few days after years of deliberate neglect by previous administrations not a sign that something is working?
It’s equally of no use to attempt to draw the attention of someone like Oyeyemi that one can safely conclude as having a pathological hatred for Buhari and had made up his mind that nothing good can ever come out of him, which is perfectly acceptable in a democracy, to the fact that significant things are working in this administration. Oyeyemi even went ballistic that Fagbenle didn’t have enough nerve to drive his literary dagger deep enough to rip open Buhari’s heart. Hear him: “It is not true that “’All of A Sudden Nothing is working,’” as Mr. Fagbenle posited. The fact of the matter is that nothing ever worked since Buhari has taken the reins of power. Nigeria is in comatose. Hunger is all over the land. Food is getting costlier. Petrol is getting scarce. Schools are dysfunctional. Hospitals are slaughter slabs. People are dying. Investors have fled the country. The Naira is in free fall. Kidnapping is on the rise. Boko Haram is still a threat. Buhari is denying all the promises he made during his campaign. Corrupt elements filled the crannies of his government. Under his nose, the 2016 budget was corruptly padded.”
Phew!
For all this to have happened in less than a year since the president was sworn-in, Buhari should be expected to make the Guiness Book of World Records. With this glaring hatred, one only need say that if Jesus could have His Judas and Caesar his Brutus, then Buhari should have his Oyeyemi. The only sure thing is that Oyeyemi will fail where Judas and Brutus succeeded.
What should not be allowed to pass without being interrogated, however, is Oyeyemi’s disingenuous ploy to also poison the minds of the undiscerning that the Yoruba Nation never had it so bad with its participation in the Buhari administration that the progressive wing of the geo-political zone played the decisive role in bringing to fruition. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just in case Oyeyemi had forgotten or he chose to have selective amnesia, a sage once happened upon the land by way of the Southwest who warned that Nigeria would begin to move in the right developmental trajectory only when the progressive elements of the Yoruba Nation join hands with their Northern counterparts. As much as he tried to bring about this political cooperation for the betterment of Nigeria in his lifetime but failed because he was grossly misunderstood, it is to the eternal joy of the Yoruba Nation that the sage’s dire warning, which was also some sort of prayer, has come to fruition.
There’s no geo-political region on whose shoulders the success of the Buhari administration rests more than the Southwest, considering the critical portfolios for the rejuvenation of the country’s growth that are accorded the able men and women from the region. It’s not only indicative of the president’s desire that the progressives have the chance to prove themselves since they had consistently complained that they were never given the chance to add real value (not the political philosophy of “obtainment” that the region’s conservative wing added through “mainstreaming”) to the Nigerian Project at the federal level, but a demonstration of the respect and appreciation of the region’s progressives who has evidently transformed their immediate environment along the line of the vision of their political progenitor.
Those of us that recognized this fact will always continue to support this government to succeed---and it will---because it’s only when the Buhari administration succeeds that the Yoruba Nation can lay claim to having succeeded. Contrary to Oyeyemi’s position, the Buhari government has competent hands. It has the required know-how and the president is a man with a plan; a man with a vision and a man with determination. Those of us who are die-hard supporters of Buhari (and we’re the everyday Nigerians that voted for him) already recognized that he’s the best that ever happened to this country in her democratic history. And we feel better about this. We only want to plead with Oyeyemi to appeal to his backers in the National Assembly, the judiciary and those Nigerians that stole our collective patrimony to stupor to desist from obstructing the president, using the ruse of law and their so-called fundamental human rights that the president has really bent over backward to respect in this democratic dispensation.
Femi Odere is a media practitioner. He can be reached at [email protected]