"I talked about Class ‘A’ Buharists and I called them
Buharists of my ilk. Maybe we should start from there."
Class ‘A’ Buharists are those persons who considered retired
Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, a good material to be President of Nigeria since his
first coming in 1984 all through to now. Our position in 1986 remained that it
was corruption that fought and removed him from power. Although we did not
campaign for him in 2003, 2007 and 2011, we voted for him all through and
everybody knew where we stood.
It was in 2015 that we rolled out the little resources we
had to support the campaign for his emergence. We are not partisan politicians
and we didn’t campaign for any party.
Fortunately, CHANGE was a convenient and
ingenious mantra of his party and it suited our objective. I do not know any
Buharists of my ilk that knows General Buhari in person. I have never met him
and I may never meet him one-on-one.
The need to campaign against Dr Goodluck Jonathan came when
some persons went on television very early in 2014 ahead of campaign season to
liken GEJ to Messers Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Lee Kuan Yew, and
Barrack Obama. The remaining is history.
We dismantled our apparatus when it became clear that the
election was over and governance under a different party had become certain.
“Our next station is to support the new government when it
gets sworn-in. We should do this by marking the Government stud-for-stud,
leg-for-leg, and demanding accountability all through. If the new government
builds, strengthens, and energises our public institutions and makes them work,
they will find the job easy. But if they think they will only just pocket the institutions to do their own bidding the way we have seen in the past five
years, they will find us waiting for them at every bend”.
That was in my post “Nigerians Have Spoken” on March 30,
2015 immediately it became clear that Gen Buhari had won the election. For me,
campaign had ended and governance was to resume.
Unfortunately, Buharists of all genres have not believed in
my sermon. To many of us, the way to help the President is to support him
blindly and take whoever talks ill of him as enemy. Many think sniff-nothing,
see-nothing, say-nothing is the best way to support him. I disagree with that
option.
I know many Nigerians who are incorruptible just as
President Buhari is. But I don’t know anyone who is sufficiently angry with the
Nigerian corrupt system and who is also ready to lead Nigeria the way Gen
Buhari had consistently offered himself. That is what qualifies him to be
President in my rating. I don’t rate Gen Buhari 's skills highly on economic
management neither do I see him as a President that will take Nigeria to the
moon. He is one that will deal decisively with corruption which all of us have
agreed is our major enemy and hopefully he can take us to a cruising level
before we headhunt another material.
You cannot tell me that a President who took six months to
assemble a cabinet does not need to be advised that he is slow. And when an
understandably angry President is about to rule in anger, he needs to be
moderated by those who love him. Could it be we do not see anything wrong in
our President always stepping out of Nigeria for us to know what important
things go on in his mind? And if a President is toying with religious
insensitivity at a time when corruption is about to start fighting back we
should not tell him he is toying with fire, lest he plays into enemy’s hands?
Eh, you don’t play with matches, lest you start a fire you can't control.
Some argue that what is wrong with Nigeria cannot be fixed in nine
months. That is not the argument. The argument is that in nine months, a clear
direction should have emerged. We see our President shutting down NCC (which
technically the Board of Commissioners of NCC is) and going overseas to woo
investors. That is not productive. No world-class investor wants to trade in a
market where the Regulator is not independent or, as in this instance,
non-existent. Buharists are in the best position to advise the President on
issues like this especially as the opposition is so weak and disorganised it is
non-existent at this time.
It will not be productive for supporters of the President to
pretend that all is well when they are not, just as it is thoughtless for the
inconsequential opposition voices to reach the conclusion that because we point
out his errors then we are saying our President is unfit.
Granted, the President may have performed above average but
we need a class A performance for him to be on top of the game.
*Contributed by a telecom engineer and broadband evangelist, Engr. Titi
Omo-Ettu, Chief executive officer, Telecom Answers Associates (TAA).
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