Why buhari wept

If we want to improve our standard, we need total change, and by that, I mean, attitudinal, behavioural and political change.

Would you say politicians have a hand in the problems bedeviling by the country? Even they affirm it. You find them telling Nigerians from time to time, directly or indirectly, that they are the problem of the country. The ruling party will be accusing the opposition and the opposition will be counter-accusing the ruling party of negligence or directly or indirectly sponsoring or helping insecurity. So, who do we blame?

They have to come together and change the narrative. You said in one of your recent sermons that President Muhammadu Buhari met Nigeria a united country and that he should restore it to that state or else he faced the wrath of Allah. Were you saying he was not doing enough to unite and secure the country? I am not the one saying it. The situation is speaking to everybody in Nigeria. Even the blind can feel it. The common man that was ready to die for him is feeling it now.

People are feeling the impact of the failure. Nigeria is not moving in the right direction. The unity of Nigeria was kept at a manageable level before he came and our assumption was that he was going to cement the unity; that he was going to deal with insecurity. But what we have today is that some people have hijacked some parts of the country. Bandits have hijacked some local government areas in Zamfara State. They are also doing what they like in parts of Sokoto State.

We have a situation whereby a serving governor is telling the citizens to protect themselves and a state House of Assembly calling on the citizens to protect themselves. What is the situation telling us? I am not the one saying it; it is the situation on the ground. Are you not going against what Islam says? But if there is such a school of thought, it is a hypocritical school of thought. Hamad ibn Hambali, Abu Hanifa and some other leaders died in prison. Ibn Tamiyyah was imprisoned because of the way he spoke against bad governance.

Who will speak for those school kids that are in the hands of bandits? Who will talk for those victims of circumstances who died and whose families are suffering? If Islam cannot speak for them, who will? So, we should just condemn small criminals stealing fowls and chickens and snatching phones but keep quiet about leaders that are negligent of their duties? What school of thought is that? It is a hypocritical school of thought. I would say that he should first identify those who are behind these atrocities and have them punished.

If you punish big criminals, the rest will take a cue. Singapore used poor because of corruption. But the Prime Minister of that country was prosecuted because he went on holiday at the expense of one company which paid for him. He was arrested for that. So, he Buhari should prosecute some highly placed people that are behind these current atrocities. Let him, as he said during his campaigns, draw the line. Had he drawn the line and looked at his government, he would have caught those committing atrocities inside his government.

He should then look at those who are negligent of duty in his government, those who are performing poorly. He should remove them and bring them to book. That is what he is supposed to do. You have to be ruthless to some extent but operate within the ambit of the law.

The terrorist group, Boko Haram, have made people feel that they are fighting the cause of Islam. Are they truly fighting the cause of Islam? If I believe they are fighting the cause of Islam, I would have been with them but I know that they are fighting the cause of Satan. The cause of Islam is to protect the common man. The cause of Islam is to fight injustice. The cause of Islam is to promote unity, harmony and social justice.

Is that what they are fighting for? Are they not destroying the common man? Are they not killing women? Are they not attacking children? They are totally working for Satan. Their cause is satanic cause. God had shown me in a vision that General Buhari still had a role to play in stabilising Nigeria.

That step, together with the efforts of other progressive Nigerians, led to the eventual formation of the All Progressives Congress APC. However, in , as our nation prepared for general elections, the interplay of social, economic, political and military headwinds came crashing on our national foundations and exposed the fault lines in our nationhood. As the two major political parties, APC and PDP, and their candidates locked horns, our nation was deeply divided along ethnic, partisan, religious and sociocultural lines.

Furthermore, oil prices plummeted across the globe, an economic recession loomed, and severe hardships lay in wait for the Nigerian people. As drum beats of war reverberated across the landscape with threats to national stability coming from various political interest groups, Boko Haram terrorists held sway over vast swathes of territory, and two hundred and seventy-six girls from Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok were abducted and held in captivity.

In the midst of that chaotic climate, the general election was the preoccupation of the political class. I identified some of these foundational problems to include our faulty and lopsided governmental structure, unresolved historical grievances, unreconciled historical differences, fierce disagreements around identity and population dynamics with a census in view, gaps in the structure of our economy, and the many aberrations in our constitution.

Furthermore, I warned that a mere change of government without the definite resolution of these foundational questions of nationhood would amount to putting the cart before the horse and could lead the nation to a catastrophe. I then advocated pausing the elections within the confines of the Constitution so as to resolve these issues and stabilise our nation before proceeding to the polls. However, when the nation disregarded wise counsel and insisted on building on faulty foundations, I stepped into the terrain as a nation builder.

I worked behind the scenes in close collaboration with the two leading candidates, President Goodluck Jonathan of PDP and General Muhammadu Buhari of APC, to ensure that our nation was not swept away by the floods of disintegration.

On past occasions, I have told the story of how my efforts at mediation earned the commendation of Dr. Upon the commencement of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, on various platforms, from the pulpit to the podium, from State of the Nation addresses such as this, to lectures at various fora, I pointed out to Nigeria the way out of the dire situation we are in as a nation. Furthermore, I engaged the government on several occasions, including direct engagements with the president, because of my desire to see President Muhammadu Buhari actualise the dreams of a great Nigeria we had committed to.

As I told the president in some of those engagements, his success is my success, and his failure is my failure. It is why I remain committed to seeing him succeed.

Nevertheless, I have laid a historical background as an introduction to this address because it is time to speak out. I am compelled to speak out because this is not the Nigeria General Muhammadu Buhari and I had dreams to create when he invited me to be his running mate in I am compelled to speak out because the state of the nation does not represent the Buhari I knew when we took that solemn journey towards rebuilding Nigeria.

I am compelled to cry out because of the intent of the president as contained in his tribute dated October 14, in honour of my 65th birthday. May the ideas germinate fully, proliferate and give us the country of our dreams. I am indeed compelled to speak out because Nigeria is in a state of emergency. Those underlying conditions have resurfaced and our nation is now in a critical state.

Her survival is hanging in the balance and she has been rushed to the emergency room. The diagnosis indicates that a surgical procedure is unavoidable; the longer it is postponed, the more she stands to lose and the longer it will take for her to recover.

The purpose of this address is to present the facts of this diagnosis and point a way out of our current crisis even as we approach a critical juncture in the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

The Second Term: A curse or a cause? FELLOW Nigerians, before I present this diagnosis, I would like to state that this evaluation has become all the more necessary as the year ushers in the second half of the second term of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

In conducting this assessment, therefore, I am reminded of the prayer of Moses, the foundational leader of the nation of Israel.

This assessment is, therefore, imperative because it aims to bring to the consciousness of the present occupants of the seat of power the transient nature of political power, so that they may become circumspect and commit to redeeming the time they have left in office.

Ronald Reagan: re-elected in , then hobbled by the Iran-Contra scandal two years later. Bill Clinton: re-elected in promising to build a bridge to the 21st century, then impeached by the House of Representatives for lying under oath. George W. Bush: re-elected in , only to see his job-approval rating plummet amid scenes of violence in the streets of New Orleans and Baghdad in and a financial crisis in the fall of Although some analysts question the notion of a second-term curse, the historical facts speak for themselves.

History suggests that the so-called curse is due to overconfidence and loss of focus by leaders during their second terms in office. According to The Wall Street Journal:. There is a classic explanation for this supposed curse, summed up in a single word: hubris. The re-elected president overestimates his mandate. He ignores opposition and pursues goals that prove to be beyond reach. Freed of the need to seek re-election, isolated by the perquisites of office, he plunges ahead—only to fall off a cliff.

In support of this position, The New York Times argues that: Overwhelming victory can often lead to second-term hubris, persuading a president that the country thinks he can do no wrong.

It may interest you to know that this phenomenon has proved historically relevant in the Nigerian context. The First Republic was toppled during what was more or less the second term of the Tafawa Balewa administration, following allegations of corruption, patronage politics, the overbearing reach of the centre, the draconian incursion by the central government into regional governance, and the resulting political instability.

In like manner, the Second Republic ended abruptly during the second term of President Shehu Shagari. Addressing the nation as the Shagari administration was overthrown, his successor, the then General Muhammadu Buhari, made the following statement as military head of state:.

However, in the case of Nigeria, its impact was aggravated by mismanagement. We believe the appropriate government agencies have good advice but the leadership disregarded their advice. The situation could have been avoided if the legislators were alive to their constitutional responsibilities. Instead, the legislators were preoccupied with determining their salary scales, fringe benefit and unnecessary foreign travels, et al, which took no account of the state of the economy and the welfare of the people they represented.

As a result of our inability to cultivate financial discipline and prudent management of the economy, we have come to depend largely on internal and external borrowing to execute government projects with attendant domestic pressure and soaring external debts, thus aggravating the propensity of the outgoing civilian administration to mismanage our financial resources. These excerpts of the December 31, speech by the then General Muhammadu Buhari told the unfortunate story of how the administration of President Shehu Shagari had succumbed to the so-called second-term curse.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Dr. Frank Nweke Jnr. It was hard to imagine the level of implacable and intractable obstinacy disguised, concealed and buried inside that seemingly frail figure. I later went ahead to contest against him and President Goodluck Jonathan and others. We both lost. The retired army General was devastated and blighted. I even read somewhere that he wept and vowed never to contest again. But something would happen to change his trajectory forever. By , the PDP had held power for 16 solid years.

And it was normal for the principle of diminishing return to set in. Apart from the assumed and acknowledged recklessness and profligacy ascribed to the party, President Jonathan faced his toughest challenge in the total collapse of security in some parts of the North East of Nigeria. The mass kidnap of young school girls at Chibok, in Borno State, further exacerbated the tense situation.

The next party to consider realistically was APC. And Buhari was its candidate. On the other hand, it was obviously very risky to exchange this wobbly party which was an amalgamation of strange bed fellows. The decision to embrace the Change which APC promised to deliver through its enigmatic flagbearer would haunt us for a long time to come.

I cannot in good conscience say Buhari has not done anything good in over six years since he returned to power but his lack of attention to uniting Nigeria has obliterated whatever good he might have recorded and achieved so far.

It seems that the President and his men became arrogant and power drunk and could not be bothered about leaving a legacy of dynamism, development and progress. Now, as the President and his men and women inch closer and closer to the finishing line, I can see a palpable sense of desperation. It is obvious they would love to rewrite the history and narrative of this terrible season and reverse the clock if possible.

I believe, this is the main reason for the manner APC has been on a poaching spree of recent. To some Nigerians and other friends of our country, it may appear strange and bizarre that so many people are rushing and running to a party that deserves to be shredded, trashed and disposed off into the dustbin of history for setting Nigeria back by decades if not centuries. But to keen observers and participants like me, such is standard practice here.

The rationale for the wholesale desire to forsake and renounce any remaining iota or modicum of decency and morality has been the perception that the odds of winning an election in this country doubles when you participate as a member of the ruling party.

Shame and propriety are absent in our lexicon. Worse still, we lack a sense of history. Once upon a time, some politicians worshipped General Sani Abacha and plotted to make him a life President.

Where are they today? Gone with the winds! The giddiness that has taken over the bodies and souls of the APC apparatchiks is neither justifiable nor sustainable in reality and in the long run.

Many leaders had tried in the past to enslave Nigerians and convert our system to a one party but they failed spectacularly. I have no doubts in my mind that this latest experiment and exploration too will fail.