I want Buhari’s kind of job
Ithink I know why most of us are envious of Sai Baba’s job. Only a few deluded people who think that life would end without their little contribution to its daily flow, many of us would like to have a job like Buhari’s. From sitting in a sparsely furnished office in Kaduna, constantly checking for the pension alert and playing court to a rare audience to getting a few knuckled acknowledgement from those who erroneously believe that in spite of all that has been written and said about you, you are the saviour whose redemption plan was truncated by some overzealous military officers.
You were assured that if the Wizard of Ota could hoodwink the citizenry for eight years, pick a successor and yet get a few hallos here and there for his efforts at ruining the nation; you could do better. With time, you caught the bug, joined a political party believing that the contest would be a walkover. It turned out worse and you were so roundly defeated, not once, not twice but three times that you shed tears.
You cried because you could have died with your myth but would now have an epitaph reading something like the dictator who was flatly rejected thrice by the electorate. You were just a few votes to Aso Rock, the palatial mansion that you have visited with marvel. Your supporters tell you could rise from the ashes of defeat if you would bow to the Emir of Bourdillon. You accepted counsel and on your fourth run, you finally got what you’ve always wanted just by promising to wipe clean the slate of sleaze in a continent where nobody wins without dipping into the pots of corruption. Indeed, the talakawa offered to pick your bill in an unprecedented gesture that saw the poor give up their hallowed bread to butter the bread of a richer man.
Your new job description does not require a physical health check. You don’t have to sign an attendance register every morning and strictly speaking you are not accountable to anyone but Allah, everybody’s supervisor. You could do whatever pleases you and if you did nothing, you’d have done something. I know the reader is bored already - but all of the above is true. Muhammadu Buhari is a beneficiary of a mandate that guarantees four solid years of increase where indolence is the seed that yields multifold increase.
On assumption of office, he promptly announced that he would be cutting down his own salary and that of his deputy. We all acclaimed - all hail mai gaskiya! Who on this earth, earning N3.5 million, N8.7 million in consistency allowance and N1.7 million in hardship allowance would not agree to slash his salary conveniently? Only idiots in whose eyes their zero-heroes are incapable of any wrongdoing - and they are in thousands.
Buhari he does not have to pay rent. His residence puts him in the command of the entire army, the navy, the air force, the police and all other state security apparatchik. Here is an office with power only second to God. Who would not slash their salary conveniently knowing that their wives do not have to go to Wuse or Jankara to haggle over the price of tatashe, tomato and maggi? Who would not slash their salary knowing that no matter how high the pump price of petrol jumps; they would not have to put hands in their pocket to buy gas as long as they are in office?
Who would not agree to slash their pay knowing full well that they do not have to sweat through traffic jams and that a whole nation or any part thereof could be shut down for their safe passage? Well, only those who would shout Sai Baba at rallies knowing that they’ll have bandits to contend with for the pittance they are given after the rally. Personally, I’ll slash my pay if I had one or any or of these perks. So, thanks General Muhammadu Buhari for doing us all this big favour of slashing your salary after returning from retirement to finish the job that was truncated over 30 years ago.
For the rest of us Joneses, if we were ever late to work, a sack could be waiting for us. Muhammadu Buhari was away, on our money, with our plane parked on a foreign runway, wasting precious foreign exchange in parking fees and paying allowances to its crew for over 100 days - without repercussions. On return, the parliament did not call him to order or ask for explanation - we were told he owed us nothing!
Muhammadu Buhari promised to end Boko Haram. Of course we know there is not kill switch to end insurgency, but Buhari has been at that level where the killings of his citizens no longer elicit his compassion - ask victims of Offa robbery. Buhari boasts about his buoyant foreign reserves but a quarter of his employable youths have neither jobs nor future and foreign loans for questionable developmental project mean their future is mortgaged. Naija is at war - from armed robbers, cultists, herdsmen and brigands but Buhari comes to work and public in resplendent robes. He has just declared he would run - four more years. Yes, I want that kind of job!
A more recent addition, the incessant clashes between herdsmen and farmers - only that there is more to the problem than is allowed in the public space, has seen the Army deployed to states in the north central with Taraba in the north-east. The objectives of those stoking the embers of farmers/herders’ crisis is no different from those backing Boko Haram
camps abandoned by herdsmen militia in Gbajimba, Kaseyo and Adagu communities in Benue state as part of efforts to ensure they do not regroup to carry out attacks.
In the preceding months, the successes recorded are not less remarkable, even though a narrow margin of error resulted in some attacks. As humans with the desire for quick healing and recovery from Boko Haram evils, Nigerians want rapid results - perhaps faster than humanly possible under the current circumstances. Criticism of the Army is therefore rife even when in most instances such harsh assessments miss the facts and arrive at inaccurate conclusions.
Beyond achieving the intended objectives their purveyors, distortion of facts ends up distracting the counterinsurgency war. Endless round of energy is dissipated on inanities while the substance remains unaddressed. What we all desire, which is the end point, is to be rid of Boko Haram and other terrorist groups that bent on destabilizing Nigeria. Only such conclusive crushing of the terror group can guarantee that our dear country fully regains peace and security; this defeat must happen not just on the battlefields but also in our collective consciousness.