Ill-will as campaign

If wishes were horses, Buhari trip to the UK last week would be via air ambulance and not through a commercial airline. So desperate was Nigeria’s ruling party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) that some of its operatives rumoured that Buhari was being flown abroad for medical help. That lie was in line with their […]

If wishes were horses, Buhari trip to the UK last week would be via air ambulance and not through a commercial airline. So desperate was Nigeria’s ruling party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) that some of its operatives rumoured that Buhari was being flown abroad for medical help. That lie was in line with their earlier fib that Buhari was terminally ill; they had gone to the extent of forging a hospital laboratory report. When Nigerians dis-covered that it was all a grand fraud, their disgust with Candidate Jonathan revved up a couple of notches.
Truth be told, some Nige-rians actually have reason to dread a Buhari presidency. They will either have to leave town or hide in the most rural of rural areas where they would melt into the landscape and pray that no one remembers their past misdeeds. Everyone, including his opponents, agree that one national malaise that Buhari would tackle headlong is corruption. And since the cankerworm has virtually destroyed every aspect of governance, it is clear that life can no longer be the same for those who are perched atop empires of filthy lucre.
Last week, Candidate Buhari gave a taste of the stuff he was made of when he joined the queue at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport to board a British Airways flight to Heathrow, London. Fellow passengers deferred to him and made way for him to go straight to the screening counter but he declined, telling someone: “If I don’t follow the queue today, how can I tell others to follow the queue tomorrow?”
The general took his turn. Fellow Nigerians exchanged knowing glances as if saying, “This man is the real deal”.
And while Fayose was campaigning that Buhari had checked into a hospital in London, the internet came alive with photographs of Buhari beaming with smiles beside the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair with whom he had just had a meeting. Then came the news that Fayose was personally going on Buhari’s trail in London. And one begins to wonder about Fayose’s mental state. We have had bitter campaigns in Nigeria before but this is the first time a ruling party’s strategy is based entirely on libel and ill-will believing that the only way Candidate Jonathan can beat Candidate Buhari is if the latter is somehow removed from the ballot. They’ve gone from rumour to libel, litigation to demonization; religion to ethnicity, ‘Afenifere’ to Arewa, Ohaneze to Egbesu, all to no avail.
In fairness to them, they have cause to fear a Buhari presidency. Things cannot continue the same corrupt way if Buhari was in charge. Those politicians bleeding the country to death know that the bazar will soon be over. As Buhari himself noted in his interview with one of the foreign networks, “We must kill corruption; if we don’t kill corruption it will kill us”.
Anyone who still doubts the extent to which corruption has destroyed this country should critically examine the analysis of former US Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell on why the fight against Boko Haram seemed so difficult before the recent intensification of efforts to battle the terrorists.  
John Campbell runs the Nigeria Security Tracker for the Council on Foreign Relations. According to his findings, arms and ammunition are budgeted and paid for, but they don’t always reach the front lines, either because they are diverted to the black market, or because the money actually went into a procurer’s pocket. Value of loot: between five and six billion dollars!
Now that the military is being re-equipped and the assistance and cooperation of neighbouring countries secured, we are all witnesses to how our troops are bringing back hope to a hitherto hopeless campaign. Some of us had said ab initio that the problem was not with the troops but with the leadership and the corrupt system of turning everything – including the acquisition of sensitive armaments – into contract for the boys with no guarantee that those arms would not end up in the wrong hands as the Americans and other possible suppliers had feared.
In the midst of all this, the national currency is lying prostrate in the foreign exchange market. Even if the Jonathan administration continues to delude itself that it owes no one apologies for the way it has run the economy aground, I think we owe the former governor of the central bank, now Emir Sanusi, an apology for turning deaf ears to his warnings. Sanusi warned us about the sleaze in NNPC; he warned us that the Naira would lose value if we didn’t curtail the ongoing stealing and mismanagement. Only the other day, Chukwuma Soludo warned us but, as usual, government officials insulted him.
The Madam controlling the economy has begun to sound like a broken record – “short term, medium term, long term… on the one hand, on the other hand”. She has so thoroughly demystified herself that her bosses at the international financial institutions whence she came won’t ever touch her with a flagpole going forward unless she still has a pot of Nigerian honey to dispense – and God forbid!
The current fall of the naira (today, $1:N215) is partially tied to the postponement of the presidential elections. More money is being brought out to bribe voters, distribute ‘stomach infrastructure’ and oil the Dirty Tricks Department, including the iron fists of uniformed and plain-clothed thugs.
It appears that the fall-back position of the PDP when everything else fails (as it has already done) is to use the military and other security agencies to rig the election since Buhari has refused to die.
Has the army commenced investigations into the role of Brig-General Momoh in Ekiti following the revelations of Capt Sagir Koli? First the dramatis personae denied their voices on tape. Now they admit those voices were theirs but insist they were not plotting to rig the elections. This is not a tragicomedy. This is tragedy unfolding by instalments before our weary eyes.

LENTEN ADMONITION
In this season of Lent, John Q. Adams’ admonition recommends itself to our politicians: Show “charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.”