NIGERIA@57: Buhari lost another opportunity - Ozekhome

PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI'S NATIONAL DAY BROADCAST:

YET ANOTHER GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY LOST
The entire national day broadcast by PMB on the occasion of Nigeria's 57th independence is quite  disappointing in all ramifications.It was very unpresidential and unreconciliatoty.

PMB left the real issues and pursued triffles.

The speech was bereft of nobility of  statesmanship,and devoid of a calm grasp and appraisals of the dire straits Nigeria is currently in.

The broadcast was rabidly narcistic, parochial, nepotic and clanish,as it failed to see anything wrong with the blatant and well reported threats by the Arewa youths to quit fellow Nigerians from their domains.

The speech followed his now well worn out fixation of perceived hatred for the Igbo race,whose leadership he needlessly and needlessly scurilised and lampooned,for allegedly being behind IPOB and other  agitations.

I doubt hear him mention anything about gun wielding herdsmen that literally vanquish citizens in their own  homesteads across Nigeria.

The president celebrated mediocrity and edified his government's non performance two and half years down the line.

I genuinely wondered if he was discussing the same country, Nigeria,that I am in, or another utopian planet Mars.

The beautiful picture of a peaceful country he painted so  glowingly and artistically with the paintbrush of breathless satisfaction is quite different from the stark reality on the ground,which every beleaguered Nigerian labours under.

His speech writers either wallowed in utopian mystic of redemptive mesianism,or in crass fraud and grand deception. But, Nigerians are no fools.

 Did I hear PMB say this is the first time a government at the centre is losing the governorship, senatorial and Houses of Assembly's elections to the opposite at the state level?

 No sir,wrong.Whoever gave Mr President  this false electoral history has done him incalculable disservice and great damage and  ridicule.

Few examples: Remember Ondo state (Labour Party), Osun and Edo states (AC), Anambra(APGA), etc? Not only did the ruling PDP party lose the elections to those opposition  parties, the then president, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan actually rolled out the drums and congratulated the new governors, Senators and House members.

Peter Obi won the Anambra state governorship election in 2010 for the second time,on the platform of APGA. Obasanjo was president at the centre under the PDP party, just as Bola Tinubu won the Lagos state governorrship seat twice under AD and ACN, with Obasanjo as president under PDP at the centre.

Buhari lost yet another golden opportunity to balm bruised nationalities' ego and cement Nigeria's yawning cleavages, hate and and divisiveness.

Must everything be predicated on falsehood,force,threats and gun boat diplomacy, viet armis? It didn't ever work. When he applied such excessive force and threats to the Niger Delta militants, i counseled then it would not work.

The marginalised youth picked up the gauntlet,serially blew up oil  pipelines,tore up  Nigeria's oil jugular into smithereens. Crude oil output plummeted to about 700 thousand barrels per day from 1.5m barrels. It took the then Acting president Yemi Osibanjo's shuttle diplomacy to the Niger Delta region to quell the strife. It was Napoleon Bonarparte, a French General and Emperors (1769-1821),who was famously declared:"do you know what amazes me more than anything else?

The impotence of force to organise anything".PMB sir, allow Nigerians  enjoy the full bloom of democracy and its inbuilt mechanisms for conflict resolution.

Chief Mike Ozekhome,SAN,Constitutional Lawyer and Human Rights Activist.