Muhammadu Buhari is making history. Some would argue that he is turning history on its head, but bottom up or heads down, Buhari is making history. Already he holds the record for a living president to spend 100 days on his sick bed, rumoured dead only to resurrect from an undisclosed ailment. He spent six months selecting a cabinet he was in pains dissolving last week – or did he? Of course he has scored another first – the only president civilian or military to take an oath of office without a word to his citizens.
Who needs a speech, whoever wrote those fiery 1980s speech did not make it to the Villa this time around. And boy, were we relieved that nobody bored us listening to a national harangue that all stations are encouraged to hook up to. There are still people who love to spend time listening to these boring speeches but gladly, Buhari happily disappointed them.
In town, the excuse is that, having finally shifted the goalpost of Democracy Day from May 29 to June 12, a speech would be made on that date to show Olusegun Obasanjo that no-one could permanently turn history on its head. That gives the guys at NTA several weeks to gum and paste together the end-material that finally gets to us on June 12. Besides, where there are no speeches, there are no timelines. You can’t whine over inactivity where nothing is promised.
Nes Lebu is activated, but what does it hold for us? First, blessed are those who expect nothing, for the mercury of the meter of their disappointment would hardly flick. As it stands, Buhari answers only the questions posed by his mind than those asked by carefully selected interviewer in a heavily choreographed ‘chat’. As the scriptures say, speeches come from the abundance of the heart, and no man can give what he doesn’t have.
The starting point of the Nes Lẹbù was the bow and go screening of the central bank governor. Alhaji Emefiele passed through the vetting process in the irrational Assembly better than a camel through the eye of the needle. Nobody in that assembly heard the so-called confessions of this unelected governor to some huge sum of money said to have missed from the vaults of the CBN. Nobody expected them to have heard it. For under the Change regime, no accusation levelled against a loyal servant shall stand, and every tongue that rises in judgement against a Change agent is easily condemned. Those in doubt should ask Abdullahi Ganduje.
Cyril Ramaphosa, needs to return to the Buhari school of experience. Only a boy in office gets a cabinet in one week. What more only a presidential neophyte pollutes his cabinet with women. Ramaphosa even dashed a slash of the ministerial pie to the opposition. These political trainees are not learning from Buhari and they would soon fail because we say so.
Nobody expects a ministerial list, even a refurbished one if a speech surfaces on June 12. Easy is the motto of this Nes Lẹbù. It is the last lap of four years by Africa’s anti-corruption poster ancestor. If he still remembers his name by the time its over, Buhari would not be worrying about who succeeds him, so, there’s no need to rush. Slow and steady never loses his place.
As we stand on June 12, one thing is as constant as the northern star, our brand new second-hand petroleum minister would be – General Muhammadu Buhari. We would be paying more for petrol, because come to think of it, too many of us are making needless trips. This is why so many die needlessly on the roads. Those who fail to find death on the roads court it in the desert and many have crossed Trump’s line into the Canadian prairies.
We’ve all heard that our president was hard-pressed to let go of the most hardworking cabinet since Lugard lowered the union joke. From that proclamation, those who expect anything different have lost touch about the reality that front or back, a currency’s value remains the same. The Nes Lẹbù cabinet should have a minister for death, diseases and funerals. There should be one for holiday announcements and jollification. We should see one in charge of kidnapping, ritual killing and population reduction. We should have one for the expansion of the frontiers of almajirci, illiteracy and closed schools. We should get one for unemployment and barrenness. Indeed, we must get a minister for offence without defence, one for deportation and welcome of deportees.
We should have a minister for court manipulation and dispensation of semblance of justice. We should get one for mines as well as power to steal development and another for the closure of industries. Naija has never lacked a minister for darkness but that ministry deserves to have a unit for umbra and penumbra. A propaganda ministry is always a constant and in this Nes Lẹbù, we should appoint a minister for pencil development and eraser manufacturing. We would have a minister for inferior, one for no fly zones and one for morality of the FCT.
With party loyalists waiting to fill these posts, Nes Lẹbù is set to be another history maker.
