Buhari has what it takes

By Abubakar A Fari

Building a nation requires one who has what it takes. It is not just any politician with money bags that is it. No. You need one that is it. President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) is it. PMB has what it takes. Quality and not just quantity is what it takes. One with strong mind, vision and the will to deliver good leadership is not just for every Tom, Jack and Harry with money to spend. Most Nigerian politicians desperate for power are in the class of what one politician calls “the rats and mosquitoes”.

Given the mandate to preside over the wealth of the nation, with hindsight, most of our politicians are weak minded, irresponsible and power corrupts them absolutely. They have shallow minds, not transparent, prefer to do things anyhow or in roundabout ways. Policy directions and implementations are never straight.

The resort to perfidy and crime to retain power is the deadly scheme.
Most Nigerians nation-wide hungry for power really lack what it takes to rule democratically because they lack the sense of balance in their hearts to do justice.  They will not delegate power at all. Believe they possess all the wisdom. During the GEJ, he never delegated to his deputy for one minute to act in his absence. The attribute of PMB to delegate and restrain his appetite to abuse office is what one may call an exception and one in a million.

It is better these quantitative politicians never taste power. For they sing songs as comrades but end up as rats and blood suckers of the treasury. I should like to advise them to accept the role of “the best President Nigeria never had” to console their souls. Equally in the states “the best Governors the state never had”. Majority after leaving office with hind sight aught have not disgraced themselves for the sheer incompetence and corruption.
If kidnappers as the feeling goes should get death sentence, why not also the kidnappers of the wealth of citizens. It was not strange that just one bright sunny day one by one, we woke up with Andrew, Dieziani and co siphoning billions of Naira with impunity.

How many kidnapped persons will be paid with these kidnapped billions? Or are they privileged kidnappers to escape justice as their tribesmen or their clerics want?
It was the legacy of PMB that has caused sanity in Lagos when boarding rickety buses. Before the WAI it was next to impossible to enter the wobbly commercial buses in piece in Lagos. Despite all the “open eye” and the bogus degrees and certificates.

Thanks to PMB the culture of queuing to join a bus is now in place in Lagos.  Corrupt government officials were sent to prisons and untouchable mosquitoes that plundered government contracts as “businessmen” in collusion with rats in government houses. Many had to contrive sicknesses and stayed in hospitals to avoid the prison filth they cared less about.
Upon release the rat mentality returned. Many whose net worth were unpaid debts and riding rickety cars and inability to pay rents and school fees before NPN and PRP came to power now are high net-worth indivisuals with assets build up in best areas in Abuja, Kaduna and their villages.

With the PDP it was earthquake corruption according to the US government.  They have gone across the borders to far away London, New York and Dubai acquiring assets and living extravagant lives styles with spoilt kids and wives.
One should like to believe that after PMB left the scene in 1985, there has not been a leader in Nigeria in charge, with what it takes to get things right. One thought that Olusegun Obasanjo was to be a Nelson Mandela, but nothing near that was witnessed. If any, the lost opportunity to make Nigeria great became manifest. It was more of a “Nigeria jaga jaga” or “helele cooley” type of administration, where loyalty to Obasanjo and not the Nigerian state was the state policy.

It was more of chicanery and a lost opportunity where USD billions of petro-dollars was wasted. With no infrastructure in place and zero transparency in public finance management coupled with a compromised Legislators and Judiciary. The National Assembly was just like a television set and Obasanjo was holding the remote control changing channels that suited his tastes. An advisor was invited to “eat” a la Bola Ige while his advice was of no value.

With the stamina and hard work one does not have to be a hanger on to live in happiness. Stealing is not it. It requires one with what it takes to confront the rapacious National Assembly and Judiciary head-on, implementing the BVN, the TSA, quashing the fertilizer racketeering, sending a corrupt former governor to prison, among other things. This is in addition to the fact that PMB has what it takes to lead the way so as to eliminate the thievery in public trust which is a blessing for Nigerians.

Engr. Fari wrote from Kaduna

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