‘Mr President Sir! Your name is being soiled by these infractions’

Sir, in 2015 when Nigerians casted their ballots and voted your party into power, it was with the aspiration that you would not only give instructions about where Nigerians should “go”; it was equally based on the hope that you would, in the manner of great leaders known to us in history, say “let’s go”. […]

Sir, in 2015 when Nigerians casted their ballots and voted your party into power, it was with the aspiration that you would not only give instructions about where Nigerians should “go”; it was equally based on the hope that you would, in the manner of great leaders known to us in history, say “let’s go”. Sir, in 2015 when Nigerians voted for ‘change’ not ‘transformation’, it was with the aspiration that you and your party would not only inspire ‘change’ but that members of your party would be ready for ‘change’.

Sir, in 2015 when Nigerians voted you into power, they saw in you someone who represented what Nigeria should be and what Nigerians could be. Thus they shouted “Sai Baba; they chorused: Sai Buhari”. Nigerians needed a patriarch who would be like a Prince; a Prince who would take them on to the golden road of Samarkand. Nigerians had the conviction that you would not only do things right; Nigerians were sure that we with you at the cockpit, this “airplane” could be on auto-mode -that you would always do the right things.

Sir Nigerians voted for you in 2015 based on your pedigree not on the treacherous assemblage of characters with whom you had to travel that path. Nigerians wanted a leader who would be a dealer in hope; they thought you were. Nigerians wanted a leader in whose inner room there would be no shenanigans and iniquities; they thought you could be. Nigerians yearned for a government where nepotism and tokenism would be anathemized; in your carriage and candour they invested their aspirations.

Let me remind you Sir. In 2015 when Nigerians voted you into power, your victory was reminiscent of the emergence of Prophet Musa in Egypt among the Jews.  For sundry reasons including their obduracy and predilection for recalcitrant behaviours, the Jews came under the jackboots of Pharaoh. He oppressed and exploited them. He ran and ruined the land of Egypt. Just before you emerged again at the centre of this ‘gravity’, we were under the jackboots of our own Pharaohs too. Yes Pharaohs; not just one Pharaoh. I use the word Pharaoh as a metaphor- a metaphor for iniquity and profanity; a metaphor for rulers who became dealers in mediocrity and infamy. The Almighty describes them in Quran 27 verse 34 as the Muluk; I call them as the fascists; the Almighty refers to them as destroyers of cities, I gesture to them as slave-drivers of nobles and the notables.

Just before you came, Mr President Sir, this group had turned this land to a hungry land; corruption had become a religion, churches and mosques had become cathedrals of the faithless, where Satan had seized the pulpit, where denizens now sing the praise of Lucifer.

Eventually you came.  You emerged as a saviour, the liberator, the guardian angel. It is this antecedent that birthed ‘the season of change’; it is from this ‘womb’ of anomie and hopelessness that your emergence began to instill hope and affiance in the hearts and imagination of millions of Nigerian citizens. Nigerians felt a sense of prosperity in electing you. 

Sir, it appears that not everybody in your cabinet share your strict aversion for sleaze and scum. If someone who embezzled the patrimony of millions of Nigerians, if someone who ran away from the hands of justice could emerge, and suddenly too, only to be ushered into a directorate in an hegemony in which you remain as the sole sovereign, that means something is seriously going wrong in your government.

Sir, the order that you issued for the immediate sack of Alhaj Rasheed Maina, was good; but we want something better and bigger. Nigerians would want all those who facilitated his emergence and reinstatement to have a date in your “presence”; in the presence of the law. They are like ordinary singers who do not believe in the “hymn” of change.

Sir for most Nigerians, your name is too ‘sacred’ to be tarnished by these shenanigans; these are corrupt practices the fight against which was heralded, back in 2015, with the chorus: “Sai Baba; Sai Buhari”. Even now I still say: “Sai Baba” in the hope that you would deal with these questions like the Buhari of “yesterday” would deal with same!!! I say “Sai Buhari” in the hope that you would bear your anti-corruption fangs for all to see. Sir, there are just too many cobwebs of corruption in government waiting for your ‘intervention”.