I write to straighten history. Mangled history. I write to prevent historical revisionists and modern day turn-coat “Messiahs” from rewriting the immediate past history of the Muhammadu Buhari locust years as president of Nigeria. He bled Nigeria. Buhari put Nigeria on life-support oxygen. He asphyxiated Nigeria economically, socially and politically. He deepened and widened with alarming precision, Nigeria’s divisiveness. Under Buhari, ethnicism, sectionalism, clannishness, tribalism, favouritism, prebendalism, cronyism and mediocrity were enthroned, celebrated, glorified, nurtured, watered and held aloft as “Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy”. Buhari did not care. He did not bother. He simply winced, wringed his hands, or laughed heartily at the befuddling troubles of Nigeria. He persistently and unapologetically feigned ignorance of the anger, melancholy, disillusionment, poverty, penury, sweat, pains, pangs and blood that besotted our beleaguered country, Nigeria. He turned his erstwhile austere, Spartan-like life into one of opulence and unrestrained grandeur; wearing well-ironed designer babanriga and sokoto national dresses. He hardly appeared twice in the same dress. The once lean-looking retired Major General became plumpier and healthier than he was when he took office. All the aircraft in the presidential fleet which he had vowed during campaigns to trim if he became president were not only retained, but increased and expanded; all with suffering and agonizing taxpayers money. Nigerians begged for crumbs that fell from the master’s table. Many resorted to garbage dumps for survival. PHCN increased its tariff astronomically, even as darkness enveloped Nigeria. Inflation galloped away like a wild hungry horse. Government propaganda increased, making Adolf Hitler’s Goebel green with envy from his 1945 cold grave. Many a time, I actually wondered whether the false, fake and illusory statements and claims from the government’s amplified megaphones were from another planet different from this our mother earth where we live. Did you not also wonder? Nigerians became Ayi Kwei Armah’s “walking corpses” and “The Living Dead”. They trudged on aimlessly, somnabulistically. Today became bloody. Tomorrow became a mirage. Life became colourless. Ha! Buharocracy!!
As Nigerians died in droves in the hands of reinvigorated deadly Boko Haram, ferocious kidnappers and blood-letting armed bandits, Buhari and his coterie of cronies, hangers-on, bootlickers, fawners and ego-masseurs, increased and blossomed. Presidential aircraft were parked unused for weeks, at times for months, awaiting Buhari’s recovery in British hospitals during his many medical tours abroad. Aso Villa clinic into which billions of naira were poured remained empty of drugs and doctors. Buhari increased cost of governance, rather than reduce it. Lip service was paid to democratic dividends. Our national ethos was further bastardised as men and women of questionable character were either openly decorated with national honours, or were permitted to take honorary doctorate degrees, the latter practice of which had been banned by his predecessors. All these are part and parcel of the new concept called BUHAROCRACY. The concept is drawn from my OZEKPEDIA neologism. I will still give more later on Buharocracy, as it is a very wide and elastic undemocratic concept which I have just introduced into our political lexicon.
Unlike many other Nigerians who failed to speak up, or reclined in self-imposed cocoons, I have been speaking up. I did not just wake up today from a deep slumber to start xraying, critiquing or criticising former President Buhari. As I earlier showed in Google links in part 2 of this dissertation, I had never relented. Read more today, continuing from 2019, having already treated 2014 to part of 2019.
