National Issues
A Problematic Peregrination To The Past -By Ike Willie-Nwobu
Nigerians are not exactly a people of history. The country’s unsavoury past doesn’t bear much nostalgia. However, there are some politicians who have perfected the art of hoping to the past at will and playing with the memories of Nigerians to score cheap political points.
Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu’s declaration that the current administration inherited a bankrupt country, continues a disturbing and frankly disgusting trend.
As one inept administration has given way to another, blame games have inevitably become the favourite pastime of Nigeria’d public officers. In engaging what has become their best refrain, they unwittingly sharpen the knives to be used on their backs.
After the tumultuous elections in February, and well before a fateful Supreme Court decision in October, Nigeria experienced a change of guard for the first time in eight years when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took over from MuhammaduBuhari.
It was a momentous, even if muted occasion because for the first time since 2015, Nigeria had a new president.
The Tinubu presidency has not exactly started with a whimper, but to say that Nigerians have been reminded of everything that makes their country such a difficult space to live in would be putting it mildly.
The stratospheric surge In the cost of fuel has jerked everything up with it. When added to the grinding poverty and scandalous insecurity in the country, the stage is set for a truly hellish life.
As he has struggled to lay out his blueprint for the country, if any, and begin to fulfil what few promises he made to Nigerians when he was campaigning, those employed by the Tinubu administration have designed a favourite strategy for short time respite. The strategy is to blame the administration of Muhammadu Buhari for about the country.
History says that this works in a country where people are as gullible as their memory is short. Buhari himself, having found himself quickly overwhelmed by Nigeria’s many problems, spent a large part of his eight years in office blaming the administration of Goodluck Jonathan for the problems in the country.
For Ribadu, it may not so much be a case of nostalgia as it is of survival. He featured prominently as the Chairman of the EFCC during the administration of Olusegun Obasanjo during which the foundation of the country’s many difficulties were laid.
He was nowhere to be found between 2007 and 2023, which saw him register multiple failed attempts to be governor of his state of Adamawa.
His return as the National Security Adviser was widely welcome. What is unwelcome is the attempt to divorce the current administration from all the shenanigans of the All Progressives Congress, especially the eight-year-long presidency of Muhammadu Buhari which was midwifed by the APC.
His revelation that they inherited a broke country has failed to do that.
There is a link that runs really deep. In the eight years that the APC has been the ruling party, things have gone from bad to worse.
The party which promised Nigerians a new dawn has effectively superintended over one of the darkest periods in the country’s history. While poverty has soared, driven by mounting inflation and poor government policies, insecurity has surged, leaving vulnerable communities and families perched on the precipice.
In the face of all these, the response of the ruling party, its party members and the governments it constitutes across the country is often a mix of confusion and aversion.
It Is also under the APC, of which Ribadu is a prominent member, that the whatever little faith Nigerians reposed in the country’s institutions like the judiciary and INEC has been lost, perhaps irredeemably.
Yet, Ribadu speaks of the Buhari administration and Nigeria’s bankruptcy as if the apple ever falls far from the tree. In deed, it has become an overarching theme for some supporters of the previous administration to blame its teething problems on an administration that had since faded into the obscurity of Nigerian infamy.
But there must be more responsibility, accountability, and transparency on show. Nigeria’s ship is now firmly in the hands of a President Tinubu even if Nigerians do not agree that it should be, and he must rise to the ocassion.
Policies must be clear as is the political will to drive change. To continuously lament the legion failures of the previous administration is to risk confirming fears that it was never bringing anything to the table.
Nigerians are not exactly a people of history. The country’s unsavoury past doesn’t bear much nostalgia. However, there are some politicians who have perfected the art of hoping to the past at will and playing with the memories of Nigerians to score cheap political points.
Nigerians must be wary of such politicians and their expired messages which are deployed to cause nothing but mischief.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
