No! Wailers, you cannot force Nigerians to mourn

By Emmanuel Ogenyi… A statement asking President Muhammadu  Buhari to resign as issued by an appropriately named, Wailing Wailers, is nothing but what it is – Comic Relief. Wailing Wailers, perhaps, is the same as that appellation that was given to the fanatical followers of former President Goodluck Jonathan, who never got over the fact that Nigerians  voted him out of office for bad performance.

It could also be that there are those who are caught up with the fact that ‘Wailing Wailers’ would condemn anything, even the sun setting and rising, and therefore decided that their identity offers a platform to make irresponsible claims while Jonathan’s loyalists take the fall.

Wailing Wailers are alleging that the government has recorded no achievements. At least that was the impression the statement created. This will suggest that cleaning up the mess left behind by their role model is no achievement. Or that halting the slide he triggered in the nation’s fortune is something that is of no importance. For them, the challenges besetting the nation have no connection with the profligacy of the administration that they now paint as perfect.

Somehow, it is lost on this crowd that President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has largely succeeded in decimating the Boko Haram insurgency that their hero allowed to fester for reasons that are not unconnected with politics, corruption and ethnic considerations. Under the present dispensation, same as the way corruption became stealing, Boko Haram is a national problem and not a cash cow for turning the office of the National Security Adviser into personal ATMs for a connected few.

As would be expected, the Wailing Wailers made spirited attempt to disguise their real message by bringing up privatization and economic issues as part of their grouse with the present administration. This a crass error of judgment. One, they missed the point that any privatization or sale of national assets being contemplated now were first triggered by the administration they were loyal to. They must also realize that borrowing became an option only after it became glaring that the treasury has been robbed beyond what the nation’s revenue can remedy without recourse to financial intervention.

Even more worrisome in the amnesia of the Wailing Wailers is their attempt to paint the growing Shiites tendency towards terrorism as a phenomenon that is peculiar to the current government. A cursory look back in history would show then that even the immediate past administration battled the problem of Shiite extremism with attendant casualties. Why then must it be made to look like the Nigerian state’s refusal to be cowed by sectarian extremists is something new? Would the Wailers rather the rest of us with the law enforcement agencies fold our arms until we are annihilated by sectarian fanatics?

Read also: Soyinka & Trump’s Illegitimate Kids

Wailers are already seeing a 2019. They should rather see a government that is determined to work for Nigerians as opposed to threading the popular path and jeopardize our collective future. That disaster of papering over the reality of the problems facing the nation is one that no sincere leader should repeat for our collective wellbeing. If there are cracks in the wall, let’s scrape out the debris so that the yawning gaps can be sincerely filled and that is what is happening currently.

But that call for President Buhari’s resignation is more ominous than a the ranting of a ragtag assemblage of jobbers for the erstwhile dispensation. Considering what they are asking for, those behind the resignation call can be no less than Boko Haram sponsors who are now searching for a new front to launch their attacks after failing in previous bids to get at Mr President through proxies.

It is on record that they had attacked those on the forefront of fighting Boko Haram with key players being in their crosshair. They have alleged corruption of very senior persons in the anti-terror war, not just to criminalize the existence of such officials but to use them as the channel to undermine the integrity of Mr President.  They  have cried ethnic discrimination where none exists. They have made false claims about human rights abuse and they have made all manners of excuses that would only fly among those that are ignorant of the variables shaping the anti-terror war.

Because they are committed to tearing Nigeria apart, there is no amount of counsel that will make the Wailing Wailers see reason as every word in their statement confirms that they have more or less morphed into a cult for which logic and deductive reasoning has become an uphill task. They will never get to see that Nigeria is being moved from the era of  impunity they know to the one that responds to system and  institutions. Even if they cannot see this good thing right before them they nonetheless have the responsibility not to lie to the nation about their true intent.

Ripples Nigeria…without borders, without fears

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now