Bad governance – It’s all in the party
The year 2015 is just five lunar years away although it looks and feels like light-years gone. Remember, we were in PDP paradise. The god of politics has never blessed Nigeria as it did those halcyon PDP years of the locust. The economy was in full bloom. The Naira was kicking the greenback black and blue. Unemployment was leaking the plate after the meal was over. As the holy books said, what the locust has left, the cankerworms and the caterpillars of change have destroyed.
Indeed, one recalls that when an unemployment fair was set up at the Abuja City Stadium, joy caused a stampede and a few disposables were stomped in it. Security was high except for our global share of terrorism. An accident happened at the Federal Secretariat and MEND claimed responsibility. Not satisfied, Goodluck Jonathan, our Commander-in-Chief and MEND sympathiser denied MEND’s involvement; very unlike Muhammadu Buhari who won’t reign-in his tribal herdsmen.
Not many of those guilt-shaming us into confessing our roles in toppling a good man and foisting Muhammadu Buhari and the APC train on a hapless nation recalls these beautiful events. Recall bombs going off in holy and unholy places. Long before #COVID-19 was hatched to threaten religious gatherings, there were was bomb blasts at worship places!
Did you just read ‘bombs’? Scratch that please, and add crackers. Organisers of the national cracker exhibitions had them blowing up at mosques and churches.
One recalls the beauty of an ‘accident’ in Nyanya. Those were the days when Goodluck Jonathan, our captain reminded us that such accidents were common with our neighbours in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan and that we should stop making mountains of molehills. To lift our spirits, a day after the Nyanya blast, Jonathan was in Kano, dancing azonto with overjoyed members of the ruining party. Boy, that was fun to watch when people die!
We could have continued with such progress except for some of us, who bought into the change lemon. We are guilty of sponsoring an electoral ‘coup’ to torpedo the most progressive government Nigeria ever had and now we die of nostalgia.
The horse has bolted from the stable and we are looking for the padlock. Yes, PDP ruined us for sixteen solid years with unparalleled conscientiousness. Nigeria could have beaten the UAE, America and Europe in beauty and planning.
Recall, not once did our refineries break down, working at full capacity. We wouldn’t believe Buhari’s promise of building one refinery for every of his first fouryear term. We were buying fuel at rock bottom prices, the benefit of being number six on the black gold production index?
Back then, we took electricity for granted as every village and hamlet was penned down for connection to the national grid. Saint Obasanjo, one of the pioneers of the ruining party had sunk in over $20 billion to banish the darkness once and for all with incredible results. In return, we experienced midnight.
Cash was flowing from the global oil boom and we were in Father Christmas mode. Jonathan even had a Santa Dasuki whose job was throwing money on people and projects. Such a wonderful time it was to be alive before we agreed to spoil it.
It’s the fault of those who reasoned that such paradise under an ‘unbeliever’ is worse than hell under the guidance of one of ours. Let us confess our guilt before the earth spews us out. Life was better before we bought change and transformed to the next level of chicanery and cant.
Evidently, the best run states in Nigeria are those that saw through the subterfuge of the change mantra. They have better things to show for it than the Sheikhs have done with Dubai. Those who propped the worst transition are responsible for the freedom we have lost and the eggs are on their faces.
Our current president of the senate was a lawmaker with a litany of laws attached to his name. He brought bad luck upon himself when he crossed the floor. Now he has wiped off that history of goodness from his records. If he were in PDP, NASS would have rejected brand new cars when the world was locked down. Nigeria would have beaten Russia to a promising vaccine against #COVID-19.
We brought this retrogression on ourselves. Edo is a case in point as a strategy for national survival. A man once called unworthy of leadership potential is now the rejected cornerstone. The rallies are boisterous and Edo is on the path of progress. After all, nothing induces the dream of change better than a forgotten experience. A nightmare is soon forgotten when the scared dreamer wakes up to a warm embrace.
If you want to measure progress, the states that are well run. You will find a seal that says – run by the PDP. While in control at the centre, the PDP never increased the pump price of fuel except to our advantage; the Naira was on its way to upturn the dollar as the global currency of exchange. Shame has kept protesters out of the streets. We were warned.
Anyone cured of everything but selective amnesia remembers the sweet taste of the garlic and cucumber meals we ate under sixteen years of PDP before we arrived at the straits of APC’s Kadesh Barnea.
Before 2015, our country was on the path to fame and fortune. We had grains in abundance. We roamed free like cows on a meadow and fed fat on the green grass of hope. We were promised fresh air but we chose tear gas. We need to return to the party that brought us there and all other things shall be added unto it for us.
This nostalgia brings to mind the parable of the man accused of attempting to spend a fake bill (not George Floyd you suckers!) The cashier passed his bill through a fake-bill-detector and the alarms went off. He told the fraudster ‘sir, the money is fake’. The man stood stoic, looking unruffled and calmly responds ‘it looks fake because you placed the fake side up, the other side is genuine’.
If we had not lost paradise in 2015, Boko Haram would have been defeated. All those killed by herdsmen would still be alive just like Nyanya bomb victims because GoodJoe has no cows in Otuoke. Chibok girls would be here because they never disappeared in the first place. The Naira would not be sliding at N500 to the greenback; we would have totally and finally eradicated joblessness.
We wouldn’t have borrowed a Yen from China. We’d be managing our robust foreign reserves and by God, this beautiful paradise that APC and Buhari have destroyed would be a tourist and business destination. PDP’s agricultural revolution was on the way to making true the acronym, RSVP – rice and stew very plenty.
In Buhari we got the worst thing that ever happened to leadership; in the APC we got the worst thing that could happen to global party democracy. We have lost paradise but thank God all is not lost. In 2023 we could return to the PDP and reset our march to progress and all our troubles would be forgotten. As for our part in advocating for the lemon called change and the next level to misery, we plead guilty. Please forgive us.