Buhari, Mbaka deserve each other, Nigerians deserve better

WERE Nigerians not occupied by cyclic tragedies that surround their daily existence, the unfolding drama of public disagreements between sworn friends – President Muhammadu Buhari and Rev Father EjikeMbaka -would have got more attention. The increasing admission of those who egged on Nigerians to accept Buhari six years ago, that Buhari was an avoidable disaster has improved nothing.

Mbaka is a late arrival to that destination. Buhari continues to confirm himself as an uncaring ruler who is not affected by rampaging bandits, resilient kidnappers, conflicts in the North East, or protests over his unmistakable proclivities to favour certain Nigerians over others even where lives are involved.

What Mbaka took him so long to realise that Buhari was not a friend in deed or indeed? Mbaka worked for Buhari’s success in 2015. He has just been told he was not among those considered fit to benefit from a government under which insecurity is spiraling.

Buhari opts to play the victim in his relations with “fellow Nigerians”. He blames us for his unmitigated failures. Regurgitations of those tales of successes of his administration remind us what a disaster he has been.

In Mbaka he has a former ally who would not be drowned in the allegation that his angst was over a failed bid to win contracts for his foreign partners. Was Mbaka wrong to have expected to be rewarded for the work he did? As Mbaka asked, did Buhari not reward his fellow believers in the Buhari project?

The Presidency’s low blows ricochet badly. Who cleared three foreigners (white men, as some called them) to visit Aso Rock without knowing they were contractors? Mbaka said they were security contractors. Like Mbaka’s unclear intentions, was their mission in Aso Rock also unknown? Did they get clearance as members of Mbaka’s prayer band?

Responses the Presidency – the President by proxies – offers do not illuminate the darkness and pale Buhari has cast on the country by his presenteeism. The duels with anyone who speaks fill the country with more feelings of uncertainty, repression, and the same tendencies that Buhari promoted as a military ruler.

Buhari and Mbaka deserve each other. If there was a way to leave Nigerians out of their tango we would have attended to more telling facts of our lives. Government looks away as kidnapped students remain in captivity. Threats of havoc are tolerated if the anointed ones issue them. Anger, hunger, diseases, and more deprivations are the lot of Nigerians in the midst of the country’ worst insecurity.