On Wednesday April 18, 2018, some thugs invaded the Senate Chambers in Abuja, seized its symbol of authority-the mace, and escaped from the National Assembly premises. I have visited the Senate on a few occasions and I have an idea of the level of security checks anyone would have to endure before entry and exit therefrom. The next day, the Nigerian Police returned the mace to the Senate claiming to have recovered it from a spot under a flyover close to the Abuja city gate! The Senate, its House of Representatives counterpart and the media all understood the gravity of what had just occurred!
THISDAY Newspapers titled its front page report on April 19, “Disbelief, Outrage over Theft of Mace, Attempted Coup in Senate” opening the report thus, “There was widespread disbelief and outrage in the country yesterday when thugs believed to have been led by Ovie Omo-Agege, the senator representing Delta Central Senatorial District in the Senate and a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) stormed the Senate and carted away its mace…”Omo-Agege is the “pro-Buhari Senator” who was suspended by his colleagues for the manner of his opposition to the National Assembly’s attempt to change the sequence of elections in 2019, which the presidency opposes and vetoed. Many analysts discern a link between the election sequence matter and the attempt to intimidate and overawe the Senate, and truncate its proceedings! President Buhari is not known to have made any comment on the issue!
While Nigerians were trying to absorb the implications of this shocking development, the president who was away in London made comments same Wednesday which precipitated another huge controversy-Buhari said in relation to the country over which he presides, “…more than 60 percent of the population is below 30. A lot of them haven’t been to school and they are claiming, you know, that Nigeria has been an oil-producing country and therefore they should sit down and do nothing, and get housing, healthcare, education free…” In response to Buhari’s unfortunate remarks, twitter hashtags#LazyNigerianYouths and #LazyNigerianPresident emerged with young Nigerians rejecting the notion they are lazy, and affirming they were working hard against significant odds erected by Buhari and his generation of failed Nigerian leaders!
Some sycophants around the president and paid and unpaid hacks of the “Buhari Media Office” tried unsuccessfully to mitigate the damage-the English dictionary meanings of Buhari’s words indeed translates to “lazy”…and worse-uneducated; idle and indolent; irresponsible and with an unrealistic and undeserved sense of entitlement. Our president was speaking on European soil where the average young person gets benefits far in excess of what any Nigerian youth could imagine, except those of Buhari’s generation who got state sponsored education and jobs,and have lived on the Nigerian state since the early 1960s! My tweet of Friday April 20, 2018 was typical of the reaction, “Actually Buhari was describing himself-he didn’t get a good education and has no certificate; he’s lived on the Nigerian state all his life; he doesn’t like work; and he’s fixated on Nigeria’s oil…”
In truth, Buhari has not presented evidence of completing secondary school-in all the elections he contested, including in 2015 he tendered affidavits to INEC and has declined to perform the simple task of providing his school certificate; since he joined the army in 1961, he has been a “ward” of the Nigerian state and served in multiple states as military governor, as Minister of Petroleum and Chairman of NNPC board under illegal military regimes; he was himself an unconstitutional military head of state; he was Chairman of Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) under the despotic and thieving dictator, Abacha; and is now back as civilian president. In his current position, he insisted on retaining the oil minister portfolio and installed his Chief of Staff as member of NNPC board! Buhari has a long and well-deserved reputation of abdicating administrative duties to other persons, whether as a military officer, politician or chief executive. That trait is also evident in his current tenure!
What should be really worrying to Nigerians and our foreign “partners” is not the answer Buhari gave, but the questions he was asked (!) which raise concerns around his faculties of comprehension, reason and lucidity – I have carefully reviewed the video and it is not clear how his comment related to questions centering on development of the North-East and the African Continental Free Trade Zone (FTZ). Some commentators have noted that perhaps it was the word “free” in FTZ that set our president off! However talking Nigeria down has been a perennial Buhari attitude since he took office and perhaps reveal his real bias and resentment of not just our enterprising and vocal youth, but indeed our educated, middle class, Westernized populace and our secular constitutional democracy. Having seemingly squandered goodwill of most youths, he may also have an incentive to discredit that constituency!
In any normal society, there would be no possibility of re-electing Buhari, but then Nigeria has strange politicians and a peculiar elite! I expressed my views in this regard on WhatsApp last weekend, “Any country in which its elites consider re-electing a president like Buhari just as thousands of citizens are murdered across the country with not a single person arrested; a president who cannot make an intelligent conversation on any policy or global issue with other global leaders; a president whose EFCC and DSS engage in open confrontation; a regime which crippled the economy and relies on cyclical movements in oil prices as its sole economic lever; a regime under which 10 million jobs are lost; and key accusations against top officials are treated with levity; just as the regime appears complicit in the invasion of its senate by thugs and seizure of mace…such a country is in serious trouble, that is if it isn’t doomed. May God protect Nigeria from these type of elite who condone crass incompetence and even mass murder because of contracts, appointments or even possibility of appointments or contracts, or because someone is a fellow church member…God really has to save Nigeria!”
There certainly are some persons sitting idle and living off Nigeria’s oil, and it’s not our youth! I pray our elite,marginalized youth and suffering masses will rise up and rescue this troubled nation.
Opeyemi Agbaje
