Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Dr. Eni, architect, author and historian, earned his Bachelor of Science, Master of Science in Architecture and Ph.D. In Environmental Management.
All Progressives Congress APC is a political party in Nigeria and the incumbent party in power. It was founded on 6th of February 2013,11 years ago as a result of the merger of the following mushrooming political arrangements viz Action Congress of Nigeria ACN, Congress for Progressive Change CPC and All Nigeria Peoples Party ANPP. Its political position could be said to be centre left and ideology as vague and disjointed economic nationalism. The party emblem is the broom, yes broom.
Why adopt the broom as the party’s emblem? what exactly is a broom both emblematic or not? Succinctly put, it is a simple cleaning tool made of a stick or handle with bristles attached to one end. Brooms come in various shapes and sizes, but their purpose has universal application: to sweep away dirt and keep our homes clean. Brooms have both physical cum spiritual connotations and denotation. Brooms are not just tools for sweeping floors only. They are also believed to have special spiritual powers.The belief in the spiritual power of brooms dates back many centuries ago and spans across continents of the globe from ancient European folklore to African traditions and custom.
In some cultures, it is believed that sweeping the floor in the dusk can drive away evil and also help in getting rid of negative energies and keeping evil spirits at bay. Some people keep broom at the entrance porch of their houses to ward off evil spirits by creating a barrier that prevents negative energies from ingressing their homes.
Beyond its practical use, the broom holds deep symbolic meaning. It represents cleanliness, purity, and the removal of unprofitable obstacles in both physical and spiritual realms.
From the symbolism and tokenism of broom, one can understand why
Nigerians voted enmasse for this political party in 2015 as a counterpoise to President Goodluck Jonathan’s People Democratic Party PDP seeming corruption ridden administration.
For baby bloomers who knew and experienced the efficacy or potency of a popular headache medication called APC, it was like this party is poised to cure the economic and political headaches of the nation. For avoidance of doubt, APC-MR Tablet is a medicine that consists of Aceclofenac, Paracetamol and Chlorzoxazone. It is used for the treatment of pain, swelling, and tenderness associated with muscle injury and muscle spasms. This medicine works by blocking the release of certain chemical messengers that cause pain, swelling and fever.
It begs the question, whether this belief in the ability of APC to cure the pains, swelling and tenderness associated with national cum natural injuries and spasms of the country has been misplaced or deserved. If a questionnaire is drafted to any level of appropriateness and agility to elicit responses as to find out if these tall dreams have been met, achieved or derailed by various and varied respondents, the outcome would be the same.
Starting from the ascendancy of its first president in the person of retired Major General Mohammed Buhari in 2015 up until the second APC president Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the story has been of pains, economic despondency, political gerrymandering, social dislocations and missed opportunities.
Buhari could be forgiven for being very sickly and as result left day-to- day governance in the hands of his fellow Fulani cabal, who felt entitled to pilfer from the commonwealth, coupled with a large scale sleaze in prosecuting of the war against insurrectionist Boko haram operating at the Northern periphery of the country, which later morphed into nationwide insecurity denominated in various brands of armed struggle and violence of banditry, abduction, armed robbery and wanton killing of innocent citizens either in their farms, or while in transit for business or recreation or anywhere for that matter and their organs harvested and their anatomy dismembered. The economy of the nation was the worse hit as a result of which the country convulsed with economic seizure and the attendant paralysis. Buhari regime could not deliver on any of their electoral promises, as such every aspect of the nation took a dive for the worse. His exit from government was long in the diary of all Nigerians, who could not wait to see him get off fast enough from the seat of government at Abuja; the infamous Aso Rock Villa or presidential lodge.
Before that day arrived, the prospective incumbent president alerted the nation that it was his turn to rule Nigeria in the most cavalier manner possibly pronounced and announced as emilokan in his native Yoruba vernacular or lingo. He did not stop at that. He postulated that the idea was to grab it and run with it.
That was exactly what he did in literal and evolved senses of it. He indeed grabbed power and ran with it.The Independent National Election Commission INEC did an unheard of nocturnal announcement of his win. The Election Appeal court and the supreme Court of Nigeria accepted the charade based on technicalities and not that justice was served. The judiciary has lost the toga of the hope of the common man as a result of the convulted and imprecise nature of the verdict delivered in the post election era. It left the youth with moniker “obedients” reeling because they believed that their man of the moment, Peter Gregory Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party LP won the election fair and square, however the divisiness in the nation has been temporarily papered over for peace to reign.The nation nonetheless matched on, on the renewed hope that President Tinubu would be better that his predecessor Buhari. It has long been established that hope is not a strategy needed to repair the psyche of Nigerians long exposed to haplessness and helplessness.
Just before one can say Jack Gowon,Tinubu has cancelled the controversial fuel subsidy without a fall back plan or option B. For him, it was not just a mean feat but an act of courage, never demonstrated by any of the former presidents. Consequentially, pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) know as either fuel or gasoline and other petrochemicals spiralled out of control and above the reach of the common man to the extent that Nigeria’s roads hitherto impassable became immediately empty and devoid of the perenial traffic gridlocks and the ubiquitous standby generating sets that won’t allow neighbours to catch a wink of sleep at night, lost its voice at last . Urban, semi-urban and suburban areas became ghosts of their former selves as the roads are emptied of traffic. As Nigerians are reeling from this assault, he again removed the parallel market Bureau de change in the foreign exchange market by harmonising the exchange rate of both state actors and non-state actors, without protecting the prostrate and prostate lying local or national currency-the Naira. Naira consequently and consequentially embarked on an involuntary and unstoppable free fall- the freest fall of any national currency in the recent history.The effect of these two crassly promoted and promulgated government policies wiped out the middle class and lumped them together with the poor of the poorest into exceptional and unacceptable multidimensional poverty stratum. His minders and government press hailed the announcement as another courageous policy.
He, just as his predecessor, had suffused all political positions in his government and cabinet disproportionately with his tribal men and women. Federal character means nothing to him.The questions begging for answers are; have these abruptness and disruptive policy thrusts solved any of the nagging problems of the average Nigerian such as availability of food, fiscal, physical and energy securities that are hurting and haunting the people presently rather they have evolved into catalysts of unimaginable catalogue of woes on virtually all segments of the society except the political class, who are immune by the virtue of their unreasonably inflated salaries, padded allowances and perks of their office as assembly men or women.
Education, health and infrastructural services are dilapidated, moribund and virtually nonexistent occasioned by the exodus or japa in local parlance of healthcare givers, educators and investors in droves, to other nations even in the least developed African nations. The coming on stream of the Dangote oil refinery has been plagued with intrigues. One wonders why in a free market economy such as Nigeria, Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited-NNPCL should be the sole importer and buyer of both crude and refined oil products.The turn around maintenance-TAM of the other three refineries at Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna has been a wild goose chase and enormous white elephant.
The rot in our educational system is such that the Joint Admission and matriculation Board-JAMB has consistently embarked on annual embarrassing lowering or depression of entrance cut off marks or points into the nation’s tertiary or higher education institutions. One wonders if this hydrolyzing of standards is not the major bane of the educational system in the country.
The hospitals are there to assist patients to die either in instalments or quickly, as a kind of euthanasia. The pharmacists sell unprescribed and expired medications at criminally exorbitant prices without conscientious oversight from appropriate authorities such as the National Agency for Food, Drug and Allied Comodities-NAFDAC and National Drug Law Enforcement Agency- NDLEA. The local chemists now support the decimation and depopulation of the masses by selling over the counter -OTC drugs of every hue and colour. The morgue are now overflowing or filled to the brim with cadavers that expired due to treatable and preventable ailments. Big transnational and foreign companies are on the run, fleeing the country as if she is on fire thereby exacerbating the extent of unemployment, underemployment and mis-employment in the society.
Nigerians previous to this time, had turned to their faith to find answers and solace. Again grand larceny and fraud in these traditional worship, and churches-Catholic, Anglican, Apostolic, Pentecostal or hybridized versions, have also not helped matters. It is easy to sit on the fence because one has no dog in the fight and just like the lgbos are wont to say in this type of circumstance-ha mezie emezie, that is, it is up to them to resolve the matter. However it behoves every patriotic Nigerian to help explore plausible solutions and also advance advice going forward. The following advocacy might be equitably considered timeous and inevitable considering the state of the nation and/ or Union.
The road to recovery must involve the political class to reduce their earnings and allowances, reduce tremendously the cost of governance, reduce the number of persons in the corridors of power and success.The state governors must establish profit making companies to employ the jobless, and also set up robust infrastructure et al, quite different from these makeshift projects they undertake for the sake of their pockets and to serve the interest of their cronies and patrons. If Governor Alex Otti of Abia State can leverage on the increased federal fiscal allocation from the central government, as a result of the devaluation of Naira to transform his state, others can follow suit.
The judiciary shall endeavour to re-inhabit itself and be seen to be blind to fithy lucre and re-invent herself as the bastion of justice and transparency. The law enforcement agencies must be retrained in the use of kinetic and non kinetic tactics to quell insurections, insecurity and the maintenence of law and order even if it requires to routinely resource police and civil defense corp all over. The academia, especially the egg- heads must spearhead the pursuit and acquisition of technical and technological education to serve the needs of the nation. The worse case scenario is that there is a lot of work required but barely no program is in the offing to kick-start this rebooting and retooling the bureaucracy, academia, uniformed institutions, judiciary etc, to stem this downward slide of the nation.
Nigeria has experts in various walks of life that can be recruited to serve the critical needs of the nation but are largely snubbed by the political class due to inferiority complex masked as superiority. The buck stops at the president’s table, unfortunately, he is behaving as if he is campaigning long after the elections have been won and lost. He is still talking about his aspirations, dreams and intendment. He is proposing his good intentions after about a year plus in the office. Gallivanting with long convoy of imported posh cars and limousines, surfing with presidential yacht, cruising with his newly acquired aeroplane are not addressing the nation’s problems with the urgency and emergency they demand and request. Misplaced allocation such building multi-million dollar Vice President’s Lodge at a time of serious economic crunch does not reflect seriousness to edge away from unnecessary wasteful spending that brought the nation on her knees. Nigeria has been known to be borrowing money from IMF, World Bank and any source that can supply immediate fund without astutely negotiating the interest rate. If the truth be known, Nigerian government is living dangerously.
The Northern youths as recently as many months ago during the “Endbadgovernance” national protest, tried to invite the military back to governance through putsch. Granted that there are no more putschists in Nigeria as the military cadre’s conditions of service have soared above other civil servants and as result they consider coup plotting as abhorrent and unprofitable, almost infra dig. It is believed that the take-home salary of a Colonel in the military is in excess of that of a university professor however it is not ruled out that some officers could be compelled due to the exigencies of the moment to change the present corruption ridden administration and political class out of sheer ambition or patriotic clarion call to duty. President Tinubu would have himself to blame if such happens. He should as a matter of emergency respond to the existential problems facing average Nigerian person and ignore the comestic and flowery use of English language to bamboozle Nigerians.The cost of living which entails the purchase of electricity, petrochemicals, national household staples such as rice , beans, cooking oil, transportation of goods and persons must be drastically reduced to the barest minimum within a space of six months so that nothing untoward will not derail our fledgling democratic experience and experiment.
The trajectory points inexorably to massive social dislocations as result of the masses not meeting their basic needs. In this wise the president needs an urgent advisory, as my Arochukwu people of Igbo land would say, – Oza kulatara kpo, onyi ya, ya gbawa ulu-meaning that if one sweeps up a heap of rubbish, he should cart it all away, perchance the heap of waste is too massive, he should make repeated trips to clear it.
Unfortunately, Emilokan has both duties and pleasures. The president can not privilege one against the other. The president must roll up his sleeves and put his shoulders to hulk to shore up the capsizing behemoth dubbed Nigeria. Failure to address the binary requirements of his official duties has dire consequences. The enjoyment of the perks of the post of presidency and the headaching chore of lifting the badly damaged or broken nation from sinking further goes pari-parsu and to quickly join other comity of nations to install forward looking, proactive and sustainable policies and programmes in every sense. It is well to note that unforgiving and unforgettable history will continue to consequence those that need consequence either now or later.
