Buhari and Apparition of Change - By Emmanuel Ogbeche

I am persuaded to state without equivocation that we have become too distracted by our partisanship, sometimes masked as constitutionality, to notice that President Muhammadu Buhari has upended not only our social cohesion and geography but has frittered away our sovereignty.

It has become a pathetic norm for some people to ask, ‘what law has the president breached since he has handed over power to his vice?’ It is instructive to stress that as a people of faith –Christians, Muslims, traditionalists and even those who believe in nothingness – that not all things are written in our Articles of Faith.

Take for instance the issue of masturbation and smoking as well as marrying four wives. There is no express passage that forbids masturbation except the general notion of sexual perversion that the Bible talks of. Ditto for smoking. But there is a near-uniformity in Christendom that self-pleasuring and smoking are ‘sinful.’

What of the matter of four wives which Islam permits a man? Simply because the Quran does not explicitly say if the man should be a man of means becomes a guarantee for even those who cannot fend for the four wives and the eventual brood marry that number?

I wager that as a reasonable man and one governed by common sense, it would do well not to marry such a number but I understand that not all men are wont to see things in such a simple way. No wonder we have the most number of diseased, homeless, out-of-school and hungry children in the world in Nigeria!

My obvious take is that not all things that are constitutional are moral. It is for this reason that governments make mistakes of executing people that ordinarily should not face the gallows. But the distinguishing factor is that societies that are progressives admit to such errors when it comes to light and make atonement. Fundamentally, morality is embedded in every constitution that is why there is always the talk of the “letter” and “spirit” of a constitution.

If Buhari has not breached the constitution for the 101 days and counting of his medical sojourn to London, can we for decency ask, who is the Vice President because the constitution did not envisage a situation where both offices will be held by a single individual for over three months?

Can we squarely look at the propriety of having the “sovereign” of our country domiciled in another sovereign for this long and count the cost in terms of foreign capital and respect?

These are desperate circumstances aching for honest answers as to whether Acting President Yemi Osinbajo is truly in charge. This is no time to say he is constitutionally in charge. In the power matrix, the occupant of an office might not necessarily be the husbandman of power. This is a truism for those who justly are scholars of power and governments.

While the Presidency and its devotees insist that Osinbajo is at the helms of government, Buhari has severally ‘issued statements’ condoling with victims of one tragedy or the other; he has sent Sallah message to Muslims as president though we are told he is a “private citizen,” he has accepted African Union appointment as Corruption Ambassador amidst a legion of other such interventions for president that has done right by the constitution.

Without a doubt, amongst Nigerians there is a quiet desperation of dying spirits who are increasingly becoming too tired to dream anymore. The All Progressives Congress promised to reverse the “locusts years” of the Peoples Democratic Party, but what it has done is to laugh Nigerians to scorn, to deride the citizens’ right to ask questions of its government, to besiege the people on all sides so much so as to lose the will to demand accountability, transparency and good governance.

If Nigerians are still in doubt of how disorganised the APC is, they need not look farther than the party itself. For a party that cannot hold NEC meetings, conventions and its top echelons at war with themselves, do Nigerians expect that the operatic character of the party can engender the change they promised? That would be waiting for godot, and the outcome is predictable.



Ogbeche, an  editor of The Abuja Inquirer and writes from Abuja

~Orderpaper.