OPEN-GRAZING & THE ADAMANT, INSENSITIVE BUHARI

August 21, 2021. 

This is “No Bullshitting,” and the topic is Open-grazing and the adamant, insensitive Buhari. Yeah, I know, I have been on hiatus for a while now, and some fans have contacted me in various ways to protest. Well, I’ll tell you the fairy-tale reason for my hiatus. I have been battling with ‘Mr. No Bullshitting (Mr. NB)’ to allow me the control to do one blog on my own, devoid of ‘his’ radical language, well, at least devoid of some of it. I can tell ya, it was not an easy battle to grab the control from Mr. NB. In fact, ‘he’ was still yelling and kicking and protesting as I started this blog without his input.

You see, I want to have a chat with my FORMER HERO, our Nigerian president, General Muhammadu Buhari. Or, at least I want to pretend to have a chat with him, or to chat to him in a monologue if that’s the best that I can do; and, I don’t want Mr. NB’s radicality in it. A presidential chat demands a presidential attitude and language, I always say. My message to Mr. President became necessary just a couple of days back, on August 19, 2021, when I heard his two contradictory pronouncements in one single day.

“I Won’t Leave Office As A Failure”, he said in one breath; and, in another breath, he also told us that he has constituted a committee to pursue his prior vow to resuscitate a dead, archaic, northern grazing-routes law; and this time, he wants it all over Nigeria, not just in the north. Those two positions are definitely incompatible; they are contradictory. Open grazing is definitely the biggest source of the atrocious insecurity that pervades Nigeria today under Buhari’s watch as president. And, since he is so insensitive and hell bent on forcing open-grazing to continue, he has no business telling us that he does not want to leave office as a failure. Every Dick and Harry (including this Harry) knows that, beyond human lives being wasted every day, along with other casualties, insecurity is the biggest threat to the nation’s economy. And failure in it, is failure everywhere. Yet, the man is dreaming that he don’t leave office as a failure.

Turning to the guy with me when I heard Buhari’s contradiction, I was like…“Wait just a fucking minute, bro; did I hear both pronouncements correctly?” My friend said “Yap!” and I immediately wished that I can have a heart-to-heart chat with our president to discuss his self-contradiction. I would respectfully, constructively, sincerely, and objectively analyze it for him.

You know what; I halfway believe that Mr, President would probably listen to me if he understands that I mean him well, albeit very bluntly. Mine would be a constructive critique, mind you, and not necessarily a criticism. But, of course, his gate-keepers won’t allow me to get within one mile to him once they hear the letter ‘C.’ Hence, I will have to make do with this make-belief chat, pretending that I am chatting with Mr. President, thus:

“Your Excellency, sir”, I would start, “I heard your two recent pronouncements, and I want to inform you that they are very contradictory. On the matter of your wish not to leave office as a failure, I must tell you that you’re already on global record as a huge failure. Mr. President, I know that you don’t consider me as a friend, especially since I am from your ‘DOT IN A CIRCLE’ called the Igbo land. But, I want to talk to you as a friend anyway. Please forgive me for being so blunt, bearing in mind that only a good friend tells his or her friend some bitter truths, with the Godly intention to engender a positive change. Believe it or not, I truly used to be a big fan of yours, and, in my own little way, I actually fought for you when Obasanjo rigged you out in your 2007 presidential bid. Your Excellency, that story would be too long here, so let’s suffice with my statement that you were actually my hero, until you disappointed the heck out of me with your woeful failure in governance since 2015 to date. What makes it so bad is the fact that your failure is mostly hinged on your ethno-religious bigotry, and your senseless extreme clannishness.

“Mr. President, if you could look beyond your infamous declaration that you only appoint people that you know in your government, you might have been as great as Nigerians have proclaimed your kin, General Ibrahim Babangida to be. The consensus is that, unlike you, Babangida is a kind, liberal, ‘detribalized” man who picked the right competent hands from every corner of the country, based on merit, to build a united progressive Nigeria. Instead, you choose to be destructively clannish by filling your cabinet with incompetent or/and unpatriotic hands whose qualifications are merely being Fulani and Muslim. So, yes sir, you created your failure right from ‘the jump-street’, with your destructive extreme ethno-religious bigotry and clannishness, meeeeeen!!!” Then, I would quickly realize that I just sounded a little like Mr. NB with the “meeeeen” stuff, and I would quickly and humbly apologize to Mr. President before continuing, thus:

“Mr. President, sir, I don’t know whether the persons that you consider to be your friends are so terrible that they don’t tell you the truth about anything, or you are the one who FAIL by refusing to listen. But, Your Excellency, someone has got to tell you the truth sometime, and I urge you to listen sometimes, pplleeaasse, sir!!! It is a great virtue to listen and be sensitive to your people! I do hear everywhere that you are a stubborn man once you set your mind on anything, and you do FAIL to listen to advice, friendly, or otherwise. Your Excellency, I hope that you have noted my constant emphatic use of the word ‘fail’ for you at every opportunity. I am repeatedly underscoring the fact that you have already been recorded globally as a failure in many ways, sir, and, I’m only here to tell you the truth, hoping that you will listen. And then, we may consider the REMOTE POSSIBILITY of reversing your failure verdict with hard work and sincerity of purpose, in pursuit of your new ‘tall-order’ dream “not to leave office as a failure”, Your Excellency.

“And, Mr. President, sorry sir”, I would continue, “but with all due respect, even with hard work, it would still take a divine intervention, a miracle indeed, to reverse the global verdict on your huge failure as a president. Some gods somewhere would have to hold marathon meetings, in a concerted effort to join their supernatural powers together; and maybe, just maybe, they would achieve such miracle. Your failure has done too much damages in six years, to fix within just two years, meeeeeeeeen!!! Oh, sorry again for my language, Mr. President, I can’t help myself sometimes. ‘Meeeeen’ is just my way of expressing my frustration.

“So, Mr. President, where are you gonno start in trying to put things right, huh? Is it the astronomical insecurity, or the destruction of the ethno-religious unity of the country with your Fulanization mentality, both of which are related, huh, huh, huh??? Sir, do remember that you did confess to us that you only appoint persons that you know, and, so far, they have mostly been Fulani Muslims. So, try not to be offended when Nigerians, going by your own confession, say that you came into office with a “Fulanization Agenda”, as they call it, which has completely destroyed the unity of Nigeria.

“Or, may I ask how you intend to suddenly right the wrong of the acute food shortage in the land, which is partly caused by the evil, wanton destruction of our farmlands and food crops by killer Fulani herdsmen? Mr. President, we can’t possibly discuss this sincerely without addressing the fact that Nigerians feel that the killer herdsmen are APPARENTLY enjoying the complicity of your armed forces.

“And, how about the economy, Your Excellency, and the terrible plunge in the value of our naira under your watch, for instance, with it’s consequent skyrocketing inflation, huh, huh, huh??? In turn, this has immensely contributed to the starvation in the land, only second to the destruction of farms and massacre of farmers by herdsmen. How can you possibly correct this within two years, meeeeeeeen!!! Sorry, sir, my bad again.

“Your Excellency, I’ve got to tell you that all the persons who know you closely hold a common view about you as an unrepentant ethno-religious bigot. They also know you to be extremely clannish, with a stubborn, unforgiving spirit. Indeed, I personally can attest to your unforgiving spirit, sir! What else do we call an old man who still openly professes that he will never forgive the entire Igbo race for the sin of less than ten soldiers who were involved in a coup d’état, all the way back in 1966, fifty-five whole years ago, huh? Your excuse, sir, is that the coupists killed your kin in the coup. Your Excellency, sir, are you forgetting that you were once involved in a coup d’état yourself, in 1983, and lives were lost, too, after which you emerged as military Head of State, huh? And, nobody is persecuting you today as you have been persecuting the entire Igbo race for the sin of very few Igbo soldiers.

“So, yeas, I permit me to repeat that your unforgiving spirit, bigotry, insensitivity, and adamancy or stubbornness are simply out of this world, Your Excellency!!! You have refused to listen to the yearnings of Nigerians on the matter of open grazing, and apparently willing to cause a civil war just to retain an archaic outdated mode of cattle rearing for your Fulani people. What makes it even worse is that you’re actually not doing those your cattle-rearing kin any good at all, no sir!!! Besides, you are annoying the good people of the Fulani race, because you have made them all look like jihadists to the world, just for few evil jihadists-cum-herdsmen.

“You should support a modern mode of cattle rearing if you mean the true herdsmen any good, because the modern method is far more productive, and less stressful for them. And those little wandering children that we call herdsmen would get a chance to live normal life of education and everything else, too.

“In essence, Your Excellency, your dangerous clannishness is actually very counterproductive for your Fulani kin who you believe that you’re protecting and defending…such a sad misunderstanding, meeeeeen!!!” At this point, I would pause to check Mr. President’s reaction. Knowing what I know about him, he probably still would not say a word until I am through. So, I would continue my monologue, thus:

“Let’s face it, Mr. President, many Nigerians see your desperate effort for grazing-rout as pure jihadist land-grabbing for your Fulani kin. Much as I hate to believe that you are a jihadist, the allegation makes sense to me, too, considering the fact that the subsisting land law in Nigeria vests the control of land everywhere in the governors of the states, in trust for the people of the states. Sir, you have no right or power, whatsoever, to control any parcel of land in any state, not as a civilian president, and certainly not with our present constitution; no sir!!! No wonder, legal and political pundits are wondering how the heck you intend to achieve your grazing-rout feat, especially in the face of the resolution of all the southern governors against it. Sir, when they send their security outfits such as ‘Amotekun’ to enforce their ban’ are you planning to openly confirm the people’s allegation, by sending your armed forces against state outfits in a civil war. Otherwise, I pray thee, tell me how else you intend to enforce your grazing-routs obsession, huh, huh, huh???

“Nigerians also argue that your unlawful clannish position simply means that your “I won’t leave office as a failure” statement was actually made to some Fulani oligarchs, and not to Nigerians. They allege that the oligarchs had mandated you to ensure that you make Nigeria a Fulani Republic of cows before you leave office. Nigerians also allege and insist that you have little or no interest in the general affairs of all Nigerians…all to state that your new dream of “I don’t want to leave office as a failure” is very unrealistic because you already failed woefully, and you don’t even want to work hard for it, not with your open-grazing obsession.

“Finally, Mr. President, please give me something, in words or deed, to work with you in convincing Nigerians that you truly want to leave a good legacy for all Nigerians, for one united Nigeria, sir. I do suggest that whatever that you want to do MUST include telling the crooks in the leadership of our National Assembly to give us a truly reforming electoral bill, before you sign it into law. For one thing, please tell them that they MUST include electronic transmission of votes, pretty pleeeaasse!!! Then maybe, just maybe, we will try and forgive some of your booboos.”

So, folks, that would be my own side of a wishful chat with President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, if only I would ever get the chance. Mind you, it doesn’t really make sense to say that Mr. President has two years to right his wrongs; no sir, no ma’am! He has much less than one year…maybe just six months. Um huh; we all know that, following an ugly tradition, governance will stop in Nigeria as soon as 2022 comes around. Our RULERS will turn their attention to wheeling and dealing and everything else that they always do in preparation to rig themselves into power in 2023.

Hey, I know that you do know and agree with what I’m saying if you are Nigerian; I just happen to be stating it in a no-bullshitting manner…shikena!

NBB INFOTAINMENT: “WE DON’T NEED NO MORE TROUBLE” BY BOB MARLEY:

Folks, the blog is long enough already, so, I will leave out the “Info-“ (information) aspect of NBB “Infotainment” today, and only give you the “-tainment” (entertainment) bit, with a befitting music for the topic of the blog, without much talk. In any case, Robert (Bob) Nesta Marley does not really need much introduction anyway. In the following song, he tells President Buhari that we, Nigerians, don’t need any more trouble. Indeed, we have way too much already, meeeeeen!!!

And, here comes Marley’s “We Don’t Need No More Trouble” for ya:

https://youtu.be/mk9sd4RL-gI

This is “No Bullshitting,” by Harry Agina.

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