2017 The Year that Promised Much but Gave so Little
The year winds down as mortal life moves inexorably to the next generation. For every second, the clock ticks towards another end, a life episode unfolds. For some people, 2017 has been a good year. For some politicians, the year has given them so much while for others, it has taken so much from them. Charles Dickens once wrote on the two sides to life: “Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which every man has some.”
From the home to the street, Nigeria and across the world, 2017 has been eventful. US President Donald Trump emerged and changed the language of global diplomatic conversation. Vladmir Putin, the Russian strongman, remains what he has always been: counterfoil to a bullish USA. From Pyongyang, North Korea, the world has been made to sit on the edge as the ‘boy’ who seems to lack the reticence of his father, is hell-bent on standing up to America. Missiles have been fired; weapons of mass destruction tested. The world can do with some little peace. But even that little peace 2017 did not offer a troubled world.
For President Muhammadu Buhari, it has been a journey back from the dead. He saw death but did not embrace it. He conquered infirmity but was ominously reminded of his mortality.
“I have never been this sick in my life”, he confessed to a bewildered nation.
For more than 100 days, he battled life’s greatest decimator, death, in a London hospital. He won. But as the year winds down, Buhari’s son life is in danger after he broke a limb in a bike crash. His deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, to whom he delegated power to while he attended to his health, held the fort. Osinbajo acquitted himself well even when the vultures of power circled his politically naïve head. The same vultures nearly consumed a certain Ibe Kachikwu, the embattled Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, who sang like a famished canary over his ‘mistreatment’ by the head of the nation’s oil oligarch, the NNPC. Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, kept the ruling party busy while his own troubled party tried to sort out its sordid past. Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, emerged as the new power broker while Uche Secondus emerged as the national chairman of the PDP on the wing of the new power mongers within the party. Diezani Alison-Madueke remained in the news with her forced exile, accused of sundry crimes of corruption, allegation has strenuously denied. In this 2017, Benedict Peters breathed life into Nigerian football, lifting it with huge financial package that has seen Nigeria qualify for the World Cup in Russia to the glory of the fatherland.
In Anambra State, Governor Willie Obiano thrashed his former boss, Peter Obi, in a grudge political match and for Tinubu, it is never say die.
In this first part of a two-piece exposition THISDAY looks at the men and women who, in 2017, gave the nation and world something to think about.