Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, has faulted President Muhammadu Buhari for saying he is eager to leave the presidency.
President Muhammadu Buhari had on Monday, through a signed by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, Buhari described his seven years in office as “tough” saying “I am eager to go”.
The Secretary-General of Afenifere, Sola Ebiseni, in a statement made available to Journalists in Akure alleged that the present administration led by Buhari has virtually become a ghost of itself with the players so deflated of the air of legitimacy.
The statement reads: “It was not clear the real import of President Muhammadu Buhari’s statement when he described his seven years in office as tough and that he was eager to go. If it were before the parties’ Conventions when it was thought that there was a hidden agenda to perpetuate his tenure beyond the constitutional limit, it would have been right to suggest that the statement was an assurance to Nigerians and the International community of his commitment to honouring his departure date.
“His assertion of the toughness of the assignment is rather amusing for a man that has seen it all both as a military ruler and democratically elected leader of his people. Like he has done in the last seven years on vital national issues, the President merely lamented the six months strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) without proffering any solution or giving any assurance on how soon the youths of this country would return to school.”
The Yoruba group alleged that it is Buhari’s stock-in-trade to merely lament mass killings of the people by terrorists who have become most emboldened and unruly in his 7 years so far.
“Notwithstanding, the laughable self assessment of surpassing his predecessor in the provisions of infrastructures and the somewhat juvenile nostalgia of having not visited his hometown in one year, the Daura lamentation is both an admission of incapacity and failure, the natural consequence or effect of which is to take a bow and relieve himself of further torment by a duty of mutual disaster to the labourer and more so to the farm owners.
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“The call, only two months back, for a Government of National Unity, or for the resignation of the President would have no doubt found justification in this admission. Yet the situation today is quite different from the factors that made such suggestions then plausible.
“For what it is worth, the nation is frenzied by the electoral activities which in itself suggest that Nigerians are more eager than Muhammadu Buhari himself to see the end of his most uninspiring if not disastrous tenure. Besides, this government is virtually now a ghost of itself with the players so deflated of the air of legitimacy that even the most vibrant Deputy has lost steam having been tricked into a disastrous popularity contest within the ruling party constituted only by a few Nigerians.
“In other words, there is no one better hand than the President left in this Government to be invested with the destiny of Nigerians”, Afenifer stressed.
Accordingly to the group, “In spite of the obvious darkness which heralds the twilight, the sun in the horizon is still hot enough to get the clothes dry. Rather than chicken out, Buhari could still, within the remaining months, rally his government, including the distraught National Assembly members, many of whom have been rejected even by their parties and of whom will certainly not eventually return, to leave last minute legacies that will temper the harsh verdict of history.
“The greatest problem confronting the nation, the dimension under Buhari of which is unprecedented, is insecurity. Well meaning Nigerians and drawing from experiences particularly in other federations have recommended federalisation of its solution through multi level security architecture typified in the instrumentality of State Police.”
It noted that all the instruments and facilities to make the country work are present in the reports of the 2014 National Conference and the El-Rufai Committee on True Federalism but the President refuses to implement them.
“It takes the Herculean spirit and ingenuity, which he summoned by diverting the course of two Rivers (Confab and Rufai Reports) to clear it in one day. In the contemporary world, it took Jawaharlal Nehru 3 months in 1953 to get the Indian Parliament to resolve the Indian nationality question and less than one year in 1990-1991 for Mathew Kerekou in the Republic of Benin.”
