I watched Buharis campaign speech yesterday
and I left feeling like I was listening to my father
speaking to me- and that’s sort of natural afterAll
he and my father are about the same age. Buhari
is an awesome figure, very impressive in terms of
what he stands for as a person . Indeed i must tell
a story – way back in 1998 during the perennial
university strikes I was in kaduna during one of
the perennial fuel scarcity episodes. I was at the
ungwar Rimi filling station and had been on a line
for 3 hrs or so waiting for my turn to buy fuel.
And if you can recall those days, fuel lines were
like military camps and people were violent if you
tried to jump the queue unless you were a friend
of the petrol station manager or a soldier And
Buhari drove into the area in his 505 looking for
fuel and somehow people saw him and all of a
sudden people started moving their cars out of
the way to allow him drive up to fill his tank.

This people did without compulsion-it was out of
sheer respect of him, the man, the father figure-
that was Buhari(pre -PTF).

If Buhari was going to be allowed to run the
country based on his ideals alone, I would
probably change my mind ( after I get past the
age factor) But honestly speaking , governance is
not strictly about a single personality- it’s a series
of conversations around different interest groups
and institutions and walking the fine line between
your decisions based on personal interest or
moral values and / or public interest- which
usually means a politicized decision.

I feel that a Buhari presidency though well
intended will not achieve much due to the fact
that he will try to purge Nigeria via old school
methods which are no longer practical. He will be
the face but the real machinery will be run by
some of Nigeria’s most “pious” politicians –
people like Tinubu, Amaechi , Atiku ,etc. The
question is will they allow him to stop the
business as usual environment they have
benefited from to their detriment?

When he spoke about sharia a few years back
which was seen as very inciteful and how it was
necessary in Nigeria, he spoke as a devout
Muslim that he is- but the statement was so
politically incorrect especially since you know that
same Sharia implementation led to the death of
thousands of man and women in kaduna state
alone in the early 2000′s This led to the division of
southern kaduna from northern kaduna and the
relocation of the people to Barnawa and beyond
due to religious intolerance.

When it comes to elections, I personally feel that
we are asking a man who’s ways and actions are
set to suddenly become dynamic and new and do
so with the support of leaders who were not just
part of the PDP rot but were key players in it.
Suddenly the are born again and old things are
passed and have become “new”…

Goodluck is far from perfect but I see him
continuing to make steady inroads especially in
the area of the economic advancement of young
people because the cliche is true – the youth are
the future but the future is now and here!
Has he done well? In some areas yes but in
security no. That’s the fact. I won’t go into the
reasons why not but we should note that the rot
in the army started many years before Jonathan
and the insurgency only opened the cankerworm
that was hidden because the need to protect
Nigeria hadn’t arisen in over 39 or so.

About corruption having worked around
government for almost 3 years I now understand
things I never quite understood. Most of the
corruption in Our country is usually attributed to
government and the civil service which is true but
we forget that they need collaborators in the
private sector to successfully perpetrate these
crimes. The best way to fight corruption is to
build institutions and use technology to fortify
them so they can reduce incidences of
corruption- that’s the truth. You can’t tap an MTN
line like we used to tap the box telephones at
home in those days. You can’t pass the Lekki toll
gate without paying 120 at the automated gates
but the politicians can set up companies to
surreptitiously buy the company that owns the
gates( hope you get my drift) and that’s done at
top level. You can’t also fight corruption if you tip
a policeman at every checkpoint instead of taking
the day off and ensuring you get your drivers
license so wecan stop the extortion – yes that too
is corruption.

Why is budget implementation so poor?because
the National Assembly unduly politicizes the
process leading to late passage of the bills ( in
2013 it was in July / August same as 2014) so
when projects don’t get delivered its mostly
because of slow passage of the bill.

The other reason is that the appropriations
committees can tamper with the budget how they
like that’s why a project like the perilous Lokoja -
Abuja road which led to the death of many
Nigerians took over 10 years to be completed
because the amounts appropriated by the NASS
was simply inappropriate to adequate fund the
completion. It was only when Sureprogramme
intervention came that the road was fast tracked
( as most can testify) same with the railways ,
roads and bridges etc- why?because the SUREP
funds were better insulated from tampering
unlike many other projects approved for
completion. There are now policies being put to
change this to make execution more effect off of
the lessons we learnt via Surep on a federal level.

But I digress, I agree that GMB is a fine
gentleman and leader but I also believe that if I
did vote for him I would be doing so nostalgically
not realistically because there’s a new Nigeria
where people are earning a living off their talents
and passions and creating a new middle class
which was virtually non existent post GEJ and
that’s the Nigeria I want to be part of…Agriculture
is becoming the new sexy and his administration
has pushed it even more than Obasanjo ( a
renowned farmer did). No matter how I explain
FB or Instagram or the global economy to my dad
now he may not fully grasp it as a person below
35 would and I fear that I would rather move
forward imperfectly than go back to the past in
search of Utopia.

This is just my view of things and I have taken
time to state it and not berate GMB – it’s my vote ,
it’s my choice, some will say that I vote for hm
because of SUREP. But honestly I do so because
in him I see a man who is imperfect, struggling
with his imperfections to make things better and I
see room for improvement and change….in all
fairness we are all sort of like that trying to get a
better report card and improve on poor subjects
of last semester. In the latter I see an upright man
of integrity and high discipline who doesn’t yet
realize that one of his disciples may yet betray
because they don’t stand for the same ideals.

www.newswirengr.com/2015/01/14/chocolate-city-boss-audu-maikori-tackles-apcs-muhammadu-buhari-in-this-must-read-op-ed/?utm_source=&utm_medium=twitter