The other day, Festus Keyamo wrote, rather unnecessarily, to justify his acceptance to be spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election campaign and, with such conceit as if he was doing us any favour by taking the job, he said “millions of Nigerians have never seen (him) in the mould of partisan politics.” But, that was a lie.
From inception, Keyamo has been an active member of the APC on which, hoping to harvest political capital from activism, he had tried to contest for two different positions as he declared, himself, in August, 2013:
“I had my eyes on the Governorship race whilst I was mobilizing the Delta Forces United to join the APC. However, the Senate seat presents a unique and humble opportunity for me. That is why I am running for the vacant Senate seat in Delta Central.”
Nigerians have commonly come to understand, as noted on that occasion by one Fejiro Oliver, his fellow constituent, that “behind that seemingly dogged appearance lays an ulterior motive, activism will end up with political ambition.”
That was how Adams Oshiomole bamboozled Nigerians with labour activism with eye on Edo State Governorship after which, not only did he abandon the Labour Party, but even Edo workers never enjoyed the ideals of workers welfare he pretended to promote while in the NLC.
Though Keyamo struggled to invoke the spirit of Gani Fawehinmi in bid to sway Nigerians to continue on the Buhari misadventure, we recognize that Gani stood in a class of his own, retaining the title of “Senior Advocate of the Masses” into his demise while succeeding activists are now driven by mercantile partisanship. It is therefore self-delusory for Keyamo (SAN) to still think that Nigerians will be fooled to count his personal political pursuit as altruistic.
In the said letter, Keyamo said what matters is the leadership, declaring that his conviction to support Buhari is because he is “an approximation of the lofty values (he) cherish and have fought for all (his) life.” This should mean that we have mistaken Keyamo for real all these years because whilst he appeared to have been on the side of democracy and rule of law, Buhari has represented the very opposite all his life.
After the military led us into civil and managed to return civilian rule in 1979, he directly toppled the second republic government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1983 and, when other Generals like Olusegun Obasanjo and Shehu Musa Yaradua criticised Abacha on the usurpation of the MKO Abiola mandate in 1993, Buhari, again, betrayed Nigerians by endorsing Abacha’s government in consideration of the percusses of PTF chairmanship. It didn’t matter to him that Abacha killed Yaradua in the process.
On rule of law, we saw how he wickedly framed up virtually all the second republic governors for corruption and denied them lawyers of their choice to defend them; how he bundled all of them into jail unjustly; how he deprived Nigeria of the good services of that whole generation of civilian leaders with proven commitment and competence for nation building. Had Buhari not destroyed the likes of Sam Mbakwe, Ambrose Ali, Lateef Jakande, Adekunle Ajasin, Bisi Onabanjo, Solomon Lar, Abubabakar Rimi et al, Nigeria would not have been in this sorry state. We would not have gone through the rigmarole of General Babangida and Abacha and the return of Obasanjo and Buhari at this time in our history. This time around, it has been attacks on judges and lawyers.
On anti-corruption values, Buhari has only deceitfully projected himself through propaganda as “Mr Integrity.” Then and today, we have seen the farce of this false image in his sly silence and, sometimes, defence for clear cases of corruption around him.
With the legendary Abacha loot and Buhari’s claim to sainthood, it agitates the mind how he shamelessly dared to tell Nigerians that Abacha was not corrupt, saying it was “baseless” to say Abacha stole because “ten years after, those allegations remain unproven.” Ironically, on assumption of power, he tweeted through “@NGRPresident” in August 2016 that “Nigeria is awaiting receipt from Swiss Govt. of $320 million, identified as illegally taken from Nigeria under Abacha.” Same Abacha he exonerates.
In the present dispensation, we are seeing how he is turning blind eye to and covering rampant revelations of corruption – from the allegations against Buratai and Magu, to Babachir’s bush clearing scandal, to the attempt to re-absorb Maina of the pension fund looting infamy back to service through the back door, to Ibe Kachikwu’s alert on illegal contract awards running into over $20b by the NNPC GMD, to the recent allegation of his Attorney General wanting to use Buhari’s former CPC lawyers to fleece the nation of about N6b as legal fees which had already earlier been paid for negotiations of return of Abacha loot, to the current hearing by the National Assembly on the award of allegedly unappropriated $462m contract to a possibly non-existent company for the purchase of helicopters from America.
Nigerians know that the so called anti-corruption programme lacks integrity, running only with moonlight stories of recoveries, name calling and kite-flying of lists and counter-lists in the budding electioneering propaganda. It was with same propaganda style that Obasanjo flew lists to intimidate various other politicians into submitting for his third term agenda.
Interestingly, many of politicians who were properly indicted for corruption by different federal and state agencies are serving under Buhari, and Keyamo advocates that they should be “considered” for joining the APC and submitting to the leadership of Buhari.
Seeing the recoveries from Abacha loot, it is common knowledge that much of our nation’s wealth is held by various other officers and friends of past military administrations. It is therefore curious how, against popular opinion, Buhari has shamelessly refused to cast the anti-corruption probe beyond the immediate past administration, saying that it is a waste of time. If Abacha, alone, could steal that much, there can be no doubt that his functionaries with whom Buhari served in that government must have also stolen in different measures.
Speaking for the AC then, Lai Mohammed had described the double standard in the refusal as “a disgusting case of revisionism, of self-preservation rather than patriotism.” Laughably too, having joined with the CPC to form APC and having attained power, Lai Mohammed and his group no longer think so.
We do understand that Buhari isn’t going to be sincere to genuinely extend the anti-corruption probe back to the Obasanjo, Abdusalam, Abacha and Babangida regimes for reasons of esprit de corps, but he needs to stop deceiving Nigerians with empty self-righteousness.
It is needless to say that if Buhati’s boy had not been involved in a luxury speed bike accident, we would still have been in deception that he and his household live in spartan austerity while they actually live in fantastic opulence.
While we know that government is not magic, the least the electorate can do is to assess any regime by their experience of delivery on promises made and, in this, Nigerians have seen that the Buhari government is an unending spiral of facades and falsehood.
Nigerians remember how we were led to protest in Ojota over increase of petroleum pump price from N67 to N97, how Buhari promised that it shouldn’t be more than N40, and how he arrogantly turned around to raise fuel price by over 200% to N145. We know that, then, a bag of rice sold for N12,000 but it is now between N18,000 and N22,000. We know that foreign exchange was at about N200 to $1 but it is now about N360 to N$1 after it got to about N500, making it extremely difficult to sustain businesses and inducing galloping unemployment. While they reel out meaningless statistics to say inflation has dropped, Nigerians know that actual market prices are harsh with the Q1 2018 Consumer Confidence Index at all time low.
The most mystifying part was having us believe government has removed subsidy on petroleum, necessitating the increase in pump price but we have been told that payment on subsidy, now technically called “under-recovery”, has even tripled as the Deputy Minister of Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, revealed that “Nigeria presently incurs over N1.4 trillion as under-recovery or losses on the importation and sale of petrol.”
Curiously, in December 2017, the NNPC reportedly said we consume 28 million litres with subsidy at N726m per day, amounting to N261.4bn per annum, but within a year, the GMD, Makanti Bello, has turned round to say we now consume 50 million litres per day.
As Femi Falana has pointed out, “assuming without conceding that the story of smuggling is true, the total volume of fuel consumed by Benin, Togo, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Ghana is said to be less than 250,000 litres per day (for each), this does not explain the difference of 32 million litres per day between the consumption rate of imported fuel in December 2017 and March 2018.” The guess is yours.
Nigerians remember Fashola’s promise that a responsible government should fix electricity in six months. It is now three years with him as Minister of Power, Housing and Works and darkness remains upon the deep. Needless to talk about housing.
The most frightening dimension is not only in the failure to check the incidence of herdsmen killings across the land, but even more in Buhari’s insensitivity to the seriousness of the matter, the reason why a Commander-in-Chief can shamelessly tell us he didn’t know his IGP did not obey his orders to go to Benue, and that the killers are from Libya after he had told us that we should accommodate them as our fellow countrymen. And, the killing continues.
Keyamo tried to excuse Buhari’s poor performance with his analogy of an over-heated vehicle, admitting that we are not moving but because Buhari is effecting repairs. While that is merely speculative, Nigerians know that they have never suffered this abjectly as under Buhari, and even his top functionaries admit that they inherited effective programmes from the previous administration.
For instance, on agricultural reforms towards food sufficiency for which Buhari wants to claim credit, the Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbe, submitted as follows: “GES scheme was an agricultural support programme by the former President Goodluck Jonathan administration where registered farmers in the country paid 50 per cent cost for seeds and fertiliser. Adesina had a good intention for the agricultural sector with some of his policies and that is why we are going to continue with the same programme after a review. We are indeed proud of the work the former minister left behind, we do not intend to do policy somersault but continue with some of the programmes he left behind.”
Nigerians know that there were several other programmes and projects in rails, roads, aviation, health, education, revival of the automotive and other industries for job creation activated in the last administration at different stages of progressive success towards rebuilding the nation.
On the economy, everyone knows that Nigeria’s fortunes revolve around the rise and fall in international crude price and the issue has been about saving for the rainy day while also trying to diversify. We witnessed how the last administration tried to establish the Sovereign Wealth Fund, to save proceeds of crude oil sales, petroleum profit tax and oil royalties, and how the noble move was frustrated through reckless politics of the opposition Governors – Fashola, Amaechi, Oshiomole and co – of the APC, who insisted that everything must be completely shared all the time. The consequence of their irresponsible action played out when oil prices fell and affected both the last administration in its last days and drove us into recession in the early days of this administration. The boast that we are out of recession is only because crude price has gone up, not because the Buhari government has done anything innovative in economic management.
Referring us to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Keyamo is aggrieved that Nigerians are pointing to Buhari’s age as not encouraging to return him. While no sane citizenry will wish for a Mugabe, even Buhari himself testified that he is weak.
“I wish I became Head of State when I was a governor, just a few years as a young man. Now at 72, there is a limit to what I can do”, he had said. Now, he is 75.
Further to his duplicity, Buhari spent the better part of 2017 in hospital in London, exceedingly the duration of absence allowed by the constitution, contradicting his declaration that “this administration will certainly not encourage expending Nigerian hard-earned resources on any government official seeking medical care abroad, when such can be handled in Nigeria.” Thought good leadership should be by example, practicing what it preaches.
Even at that, assuming his undisclosed ailment couldn’t be handled here, what has he done to strengthen the health sector to attain the needed capacity? As I write this, the hospitals are under lock and key with federal health workers on strike over unpleasant working conditions.
Keyamo expressed worries that criticisms against Buhari are intended to de-market him ahead of the coming elections, but Nigerians know that it is Buhari who consistently de-markets Nigeria and its entire citizenry each time he is abroad. The latest is the foul charge against struggling Nigerian youths as unschooled and lazy. Nigerian youths?
It is known that the break up of the PDP, leading to Buhari’s emergence, had mostly to do with Jonathan’s indiscretion to re-run which would have meant the South would have held power for eighteen years while the North would have had only two years since the return to democracy in 1999. Today, Nigerians are in consensus that the presidency should still reside in the North but, given the proven incapacity of the Buhari administration, it has become a matter of national emergency to substitute him with another sound, truly civilian, Northern leader as they declare their interest in the coming weeks and months ahead of 2019.
