Pendulum: How Buhari Can Avert This Looming War By Dele Momodu

Fellow Nigerians, I know some fanatical supporters of President
Muhammadu Buhari and his ruling party APC will likely dismiss this
intervention as coming from an alarmist or Prophet of doom, but so
be it. History has taught me a lot of lessons and so has Literature
done as well. Anyone familiar with Literary appreciation would have
encountered what is often referred to as “tragic heroes”, an
oxymoron of sorts. Many leaders usually end up as tragic figures
because of their proclivities for obstinacy and obduracy. They are
haters of criticism and truth who see enemies in every critic.

When President Buhari won the election against an incumbent
President in 2015, it was a miraculous achievement. The mandate
handed to him was overwhelmingly national and there was palpable
joy in the land that something new and remarkably progressive was
going to happen. Change was the Mantra and Change was what everyone
including some of those who did not vote for him believed would
happen. Nevertheless, no one expected the President and his team to
perform an instant magic. Things had gone from bad to worse under
the various PDP administrations that we had somehow chosen to
afflict us. It was obvious that the years of decay could not be
susceptible to any quick fix. Many of us were already frustrated
with the rascality and profligacy of PDP. That was why they were
voted out. Despite not expecting immediate solutions from the
Buhari government, we expected Buhari to stabilise the polity and
the nation, not to make them overheated or worse, but alas.

Four years have passed since that landmark victory and the fifth
one is already climbing on top of it. I will not bore you with the
events of recent times gone past. The future has arrived and at
least, for now, or till the Supreme Court decides, for or against,
we are stuck with Buhari, a leader who has turned lethargy,
laggardness and sluggishness into a veritable art form. Anyway.

I’m always willing to give everyone another chance because no
one is perfect. At President Buhari’s age (he is nearer 80 than
70), no one expects him to change his stoic habits much. Indeed,
some of those habits can be for the good of the nation if properly
harnessed and channelled. If as they say, old habits die hard, we
can at least help the President to hear and see what Nigerians and
the rest of the world think of him and why he must have pity on
millions of hapless Nigerians by doing the right things.

Walahi, I don’t believe Nigerians are difficult to govern. We
are a breed of people who demand precious little from the leaders.
Accordingly, the simple things make us happy and satisfied. Most
governments have understood this aspect of the Nigerian psyche and
exploited it. Labour union strikes have petered and fizzled out, in
some cases, even being moribund at inception simply because the
government has offered carrots and palliatives to weaken the
resolve of the people and bring them to a situation where they are
only puppets on a string. The people hardly demand innovation or
creativity. In any event, those qualities are seemingly lacking in
our present leaders.

It is the lack of creativity, and a bit of flexibility, that is
destroying the ruling party APC and by implication the nation. APC
was born in anger, deprivation and hostility. The Party is a
product of division and strife. Little wonder that it appears to be
plunging us towards the abyss that is called war. If APC is not
careful the Party will leave a legacy of having been birthed in
conflict and having lived forever in warmongering. That’s the
biggest tragedy afflicting a party that once held out so much
promise and opportunity but frittered it away. Of all the possible
political afflictions in the world, the worst is the lack of
security, particularly under the reign of a retired Army General,
whose biggest qualification for his present job is the rank and
status he attained in his previous military existence. It is
interesting to observe that on that occasion the country was
involved in a war of attrition from which it has not recovered to
date. The suspicion, mistrust and distrust that the civil war
engendered will take generations to heal. However, we must make
great effort to heal those wounds and ensure that the kind of
debilitating soul-destroying war that the country fought never
repeats itself.

Today, as if we never learnt our lessons, Nigeria is in the
throes of the beginning of another monumental conflict that will
make the civil war pale into insignificance. Many of the people I
know have resigned themselves to fate. They are expecting the worst
to happen, any time from now. But I pray against all evil
machinations against our dear beloved country. No calamity shall
befall us.

Yes, the drums of war are beating loudly. The ill-assortment of
hopeless drummers appear rugged and determined to achieve the
worst. The rest of us seem helpless, hopeless and hapless. The
hawks are flying in their legions, the doves have crumbled and
crumpled and have retreated into their nests. Only one man can stop
the imminent explosion and that is the father of the nation,
President Muhammadu Buhari. No father ever watches his children
perish in fire without making every effort to rescue them.
President Buhari must wake up from his petulance and act like a
true father of all. He must not be peeved or angered by the insults
and abuses that have been hurled at him. When he chose to once more
be the helmsman of this foundering ship, he committed himself to
become a rallying point, a unifying role model. He did not sign up
to be the person who would not only superintend and supervise the
break-up of the country but be the undertaker for the numerous
millions of bloodied bodies that such a ruinous venture will
unearth. President Buhari knows more about the recriminations,
repercussions and heavy price of war as a veteran combatant
himself. Nigeria cannot afford another bloodletting.

I’m surprised that our government can’t feel the pulse of the
nation and see how close we are to the precipice. This could have
been easily avoided if President Buhari was willing and ready to
listen to the voices of reason and wisdom. It is not too late. We
are merely at the brink. We have not yet slipped over. We are close
to being engulfed in the cauldron of irreversible war. We can halt
this push by those who do not mean well for our country, but the
President must lead. He must be the example that others will have
no choice but to follow. There is no benefit, advantage or profit
in fighting wars of egotism, nepotism and jingoism. There are
plenty of gains and increases in unity, peace and stability. And
this is no rocket science to achieve.

How can this be done? The President should make that conscious
effort to see every single Nigerian citizen as his own kinsman. He
should stop the seeming discrimination against certain parts of the
country. He should stop the preferential treatment of some people
above the others. He should not only say that he ‘belongs to no one
but belongs to everyone’, he should show that he not only believes
in it but that he acts and demonstrates it in everything that he
does. This will go a long way to healing the wounds and divisions
that presently ravages the land. Indeed, this is the crux of the
matter. Too many Nigerians today feel extremely frustrated. They
feel, misused, disused and abused. Apart from mass unemployment,
they feel like slaves in their own country. They feel unwanted.
They feel unloved. And they are undoubtedly unprotected. President
Buhari must show them that Nigerians and the nation are safe and
secure under his charge, that the warmongers and warlords will
never have their way and that he is in charge and not just a mere
ceremonial figurehead with bark but no teeth.

Furthermore, President Buhari must restore a sense of pride and
belonging to every Nigerian. The narrative and discourse that we
are all a bunch of useless, lazy, fraudulent, frivolous and inept
people must now stop. Continued persistent use of such diatribe and
tirade can only belittle and impugn the Buhari administration
itself. Any government that has been in power for four years must
have gone to great lengths to fix this perception of its citizens,
by both nationals and foreigners alike. That is not the case in
Nigeria of today and it is one of the reasons that there seems to
be a gulf between our diverse peoples.

It is just unfortunate that we have to find ourselves at this
unnecessary juncture. Nigeria has seriously retrogressed in every
sense and indices since this government came to power. Before the
coming of this government, Nigeria prided itself as the number one
and the fastest growing economy in Africa. That is no longer the
case today. There were pockets of terrorist attacks by Boko Haram
restricted to the North East of Nigeria. There were militant
attacks in the Niger Delta but these were being contained by
various programmes aimed at quelling the restiveness that had given
rise to such militancy. At first, it seems these became degraded
when Buhari came to power, but no one can say with any degree of
confidence that the war against insurgency or militancy has been
won. As a matter of fact, the terrorists have continued to launch
ferocious attacks.

The militants that appear to have gone underground are beginning
to resurface with a vengeance. More worrisome is the new trend of
separationist movements who appear to get more emboldened by the
day as a result of the rapidly unravelling denouement that is
playing out before our very eyes. However, what is worse is another
dimension to the imbroglio added by some bandits and brigands
labelled Fulani herdsman from God knows where. They are now the
bane of our collective existence and unity as a nation. This group
crept upon us like thieves in the night. At first their existence
was like a silent whisper that children would mouth in the recesses
of the dark for fear of being discovered. Soon the rumours took
upon a life of their own and now their existence is no longer a
rumour but cold fact. Indeed, a legend is building around the
destruction that they are leaving in their wake. Nigerians have
suddenly woken from their slumber to discover that marauders are
taking over their land in the name of grazing cattle and the
palpable fear is lending voice and fillip to irridentists and
divisionists. It is true that politicians want to take advantage of
this sorry state of affairs, but this is only because President
Buhari’s preferred solution of molly-cuddling the bad eggs is
untenable and cannot work. It can only encourage those who have
nothing to do but play politics with serious issues to continue at
a game at which they are past masters. If one could not blame
Buhari directly for Boko Haram, it is tempting to throw heaps of
blame at him for his tacit support and pampering of the herdsmen
who are undoubtedly members of his clan.

No one should blame us for this allegation. It is all too
obvious that had Buhari treated these miscreants the way he
descended heavily on Nnamdi Kanu and others accused of treasonable
offences, this herdsman nuisance would have been curbed in its
infancy. Sadly, till this day, it has been treated with kid’s
gloves. If the government is sincere in its classification of the
rampaging herdsmen as rogue elements, then it should do the natural
thing and crush them. We have had cattle rearers criss-crossing the
length and breadth of this nation literally from time immemorial
without any issue or hassle. Those who want to give the innocent
cattle breeders a bad name should be promptly identified and dealt
with in summary fashion. No amount of pandering to the wishes and
demands of devilish and deadly evildoers will ever assuage their
bloodthirstiness. Rather it will merely make them more demanding
and fearsome.

The interest and unity of our nation is not negotiable and is
certainly not subject to the whims and caprices of a small group of
hoodlums masquerading in whatever guise. The Government needs to
act decisively now, instead of pussy-footing around them. They are
a cankerworm, a cancer, that must be excised with military
precision and alacrity. President Buhari has no choice in this
matter. History will be very unkind to him if he chooses clan over
nation. It is not a hard choice to make, but the choice is his and
his alone.