IT is all going to happen within four days. Four
days to the great national revival and renewal.
Four days to the rejuvenation and restoration of
the Nigerian economy. Four days to the great
“changi” we have all been waiting for. Four days
to the arrival of the Nigerian messiah,
Muhammadu Buhari. I am sure we all can hardly
wait.
In four days time, there will be an end to the
problems of Nigeria. Corruption will be killed.
NEPA will be reborn. Youth unemployment will
be a thing of the past. The international oil
market will stabilise. The naira will find its level.
Petrol will sell for 40 naira per litre.
The Boko Haram will lay down their arms. Fulani
herdsmen will stop their killings. Our cotton mills
will roar back to life. The groundnut pyramids
will reappear. Our cocoa farmers will laugh all
the way to the bank. Our hospitals will stop
being consulting clinics. Our universities will
once again become ivory towers of learning.
Hallelujah
We will achieve all this “changi” because
Muhammadu Buhari will make a transition from
president-elect to president of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria. May 29th will no longer be
known as Democracy Day. It will henceforth be
Buhari Day. On Friday, we will finally bid goodbye
to the PDP, and usher in the APC who will rule
Nigeria for the next 60 years! I can hear vice-
president-elect Osinbajo saying: “Let everybody
shout hallelujah!”
However, the hallelujahs have been dying down
lately. The “Amen and Amen” are getting few and
far between. Believers are becoming uncertain.
Cynics and skeptics are beginning to come out of
the woodwork. The Buhari brigades are fast
losing their mojo. Indeed, if the election were to
be re-held today, many would not even bother to
vote for their Daura favourite-son. Not much is
heard anymore of “Sai Buhari; sai Baba!” The
wedding is on Friday, but we are not even sure
anymore whether the bridegroom will show up.
Buhari’s supporters are no longer as bullish as
they used to be. They are no longer sure if there
will be “changi” after all. Some now hasten to
insist they did not vote for Buhari; they voted
against Jonathan. They are now likely to point
out that Buhari is not a magician. They would
have us know that Rome was not built in a day.
But nobody bothered about these truths during
the election campaign. Then, Buhari was
presented as the answer to every question. He
was sold as the solution to every problem.

APC Joint Leadership Meeting: From left, National
Publicity Secretary of APC Alh. Mohammed Lai,
National Chairman John Oyegun, National Auditor
Chief Morgan, Senatorial Candidate of APC, Hon
Dino Melayi and APC Presidential Campaign
Organization and River State Governor Rotimi
Amechi discussing during APC Joint Leadership
Meeting held in Abuja. Photo by Gbemiga
Olamikan.
By Femi Aribisala
IT is all going to happen within four days. Four
days to the great national revival and renewal.
Four days to the rejuvenation and restoration of
the Nigerian economy. Four days to the great
“changi” we have all been waiting for. Four days
to the arrival of the Nigerian messiah,
Muhammadu Buhari. I am sure we all can hardly
wait.
In four days time, there will be an end to the
problems of Nigeria. Corruption will be killed.
NEPA will be reborn. Youth unemployment will
be a thing of the past. The international oil
market will stabilise. The naira will find its level.
Petrol will sell for 40 naira per litre.
The Boko Haram will lay down their arms. Fulani
herdsmen will stop their killings. Our cotton mills
will roar back to life. The groundnut pyramids
will reappear. Our cocoa farmers will laugh all
the way to the bank. Our hospitals will stop
being consulting clinics. Our universities will
once again become ivory towers of learning.
Hallelujah
We will achieve all this “changi” because
Muhammadu Buhari will make a transition from
president-elect to president of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria. May 29th will no longer be
known as Democracy Day. It will henceforth be
Buhari Day. On Friday, we will finally bid goodbye
to the PDP, and usher in the APC who will rule
Nigeria for the next 60 years! I can hear vice-
president-elect Osinbajo saying: “Let everybody
shout hallelujah!”
However, the hallelujahs have been dying down
lately. The “Amen and Amen” are getting few and
far between. Believers are becoming uncertain.
Cynics and skeptics are beginning to come out of
the woodwork. The Buhari brigades are fast
losing their mojo. Indeed, if the election were to
be re-held today, many would not even bother to
vote for their Daura favourite-son. Not much is
heard anymore of “Sai Buhari; sai Baba!” The
wedding is on Friday, but we are not even sure
anymore whether the bridegroom will show up.
Buhari’s supporters are no longer as bullish as
they used to be. They are no longer sure if there
will be “changi” after all. Some now hasten to
insist they did not vote for Buhari; they voted
against Jonathan. They are now likely to point
out that Buhari is not a magician. They would
have us know that Rome was not built in a day.
But nobody bothered about these truths during
the election campaign. Then, Buhari was
presented as the answer to every question. He
was sold as the solution to every problem.
Illusory change
I am a Nigerian who lives in Nigeria. It is in my
interest for Buhari to succeed. I am the potential
beneficiary of every Buhari success. But I don’t
see him succeeding because APC told too many
lies in order to get him elected. They built up
expectations to unrealistically high levels. They
are not going to be able to tamp down those
expectations now. They are simply going to be
left to drown in them.
There is an expiration date for the current
penchant to blame the PDP for everything. That
date is May 29, 2015. The blame-game has
served its purpose. It has secured APC the
certificate of occupancy to Aso Rock. What
Nigerians need to know now is what the APC has
to offer. Alas, in that department, Buhari and his
cohorts do not seem to have a clue. They are
now just holding conferences at this late hour in
order to put together a road map. By all
indications, that road map leads to nowhere.
“Power must return to the North. Power must
return to the North.” We have heard this chant
for the better part of six years. Congratulations
are now in order: power has returned to the
North. Now what is the North going to do with
this power? Will this power be used to revamp
the Nigerian economy? Or is it merely fulfilling
the imperatives of “Turn-by-turn Nigeria Limited?”
Will the power now light up our home and
industries? Will it be used to overwhelm the Boko
Haram?
Not likely! Those who wanted power to return to
the North are now calling for amnesty for the
cold-blooded Boko Haram killers. Could it be that
their insurgency has fulfilled its purpose? Those
who insisted power must return to the North
certainly did not make this demand in order to
make Nigeria great. They made the demand
because they are hungry. They want a Northern
lion share of the national cake. Anti-corruption is
anathema to their agenda. In the anti-corruption
campaign, Buhari is on his own. He is a lone-
ranger. He cannot even secure the unflinching
support of members of his own APC party.
Corruption incorporated
One of the myths of the last presidential election
is that it was won and lost on the platform of
anti-corruption. Nothing could be further from
the truth. The APC and the PDP are yin and
yang. Neither party is anti-corruption. As a
people, Nigerians are definitely not anti-
corruption. From the mechanic to the plumber to
the dentist to the policeman to the Senator;
Nigerians are corrupt. In Nigeria, we live and
breathe corruption.
The new class of 2015 in the National Assembly
is not anti-corruption. One of our Senators-elect
is already wanted for drug-smuggling in the
United States. These people cannot be expected
to fight corruption. What is likely to happen is
that they will fight Buhari’s pretensions to anti-
corruption to a standstill.
In my youth, there was the story of Ali Monguno,
a federal minister from the North-East, who was
hated by his people. Their angst against him was
that he was not corrupt. His people found it
unacceptable that while other ministers were
corrupt; their own representative was foolish
enough to be upright. They wanted to be fully
represented in the corruption at the national
level. They wanted a representative thief for
Borno in Lagos.
Buhari does not understand this propensity. As
long as we continue within the current federal
framework where the centre controls far more
resources than all the states combined, the issue
of corruption will remain with us. As long as
Buhari sits in Abuja with 55% of national
resources to which he and most Nigerians are
abstracted, so long will there be corruption in
Nigeria. As long as the whole point of
government is the allocation of resources deemed
to belong to nobody and to everybody, even so
will the emphasis be on dividing the cake rather
than on baking it.
If you steal the money of cocoa farmers, you will
have to answer to cocoa farmers. But if you steal
Nigeria’s oil wealth, you are the man. To deal
with corruption structurally, you have to deal with
Nigeria’s lopsided federal structure. But the issue
of fiscal federalism does not feature at all in
Buhari’s anti-corruption road map.
Political dynamite
In any case, any attempt by the in-coming Buhari
administration to address the allegations of
corruption under Goodluck Jonathan is bound to
be problematic. Out of 55 years of Nigeria’s
existence, the South-South has only been in
power for five years. You cannot prosecute
corruption in the five years of South-South rule
without being accused of ignoring corruption in
the 50 years of North-West and South-West rule.
In many respects, South-South corruption while in
government is justifiable in view of North-West
and South-West corruption while in government.
Since the oil is from the South-South, the geo-
political zone is entitled to its own oil billionaires
as those of the North and the South-West. Why
should Theophilus Danjuma and Folorunso
Alakija be oil billionaires when the sons and the
daughters of the Niger Delta are not? These
questions will continue to haunt any and every
attempt at addressing past corruption in Nigeria.
Anti-corruption is good public relations, but it is
no substitute for a viable programme for
economic growth. In the final analysis, it is all
sound and fury signifying nothing. Making a
difference means ending the petrol shortage. It
means increasing electricity generation and
distribution. It means providing jobs for
unemployed youths. It means providing social
security for the teeming poor. In these practical
decibels of government, the APC is at sea. It
simply has no idea what to do.
Running against time
Buhari has just 100 days to make a difference.
After that, all bets are off. With the same
measure the APC used, it will be measured back
to it. APC used social media masterfully to defeat
PDP. They will now come to understand what it
means to govern in the age of social media. They
called Jonathan “clueless.” They must know that
new names are in the offing for Buhari. Some are
already going viral. But I leave it to others to
conduct the naming-ceremony.
Complaints about how bad things are will just not
cut it. Buhari cannot expect to get any sympathy
from Nigerians. He showed no sympathy for the
plight of Goodluck Jonathan. He deserves none
in return. If the economy is in bad shape as a
result of the drastic drop in oil prices, that fact
was known before the election. Nevertheless, he
asked for the job. No point in telling us now
what is wrong with the job or how difficult it is.
You were elected to overcome the difficulties.
In my youth, I used to sing a popular Yoruba
song. It says: “Omo n’wase, o ri’se. Ise to wa lo
ri.” It means: “the chap looking for a job, got a
job. You got the job you were looking for.”
Buhari wanted to be president. He ran for
president four times. He is finally the president-
elect. But one week to his inauguration, he runs
away to London. He is already tired, even before
the job begins.
Is he sick? Does he need regular medical
attention? The General talks a lot about the need
for transparency in government. However, he
does not seem to understand that this must also
apply to his personal life as a public official.
In order to achieve anything meaningful as
president within the first 100 days, General Buhari
is going to need all the good luck he can get.
However, Goodluck will be leaving Aso Rock
unfailingly on 29th May, 2015.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/05/goodluck-president-elect-buhari/

You again?.. This disgruntled element may end up giving himself heart failure because of his hate for Buhari... Very bitter and frustrated writer. To think that I took my time to read everything, hoping that he would make some sense at some point, but the old man ended up talking thrash... Too bad.

Aribisala at it again . Sir, you still don't get it the people of this country could no longer stand injustice, inequality, corruption boldly embraced and many other ills Jonathan government refused to address. It's good to have someone like you on the other side of the fence playing devil's advocate though but you need to join us to celebrate this air of change.

And I'm I supposed to read dat epistle?

Aribisala, you can GO AND DIE!!!!!!!

The writer sounds very bitter, frustrated and angry. I hope his mood improves in the coming days.