FEMI ADEOTI COLUMN
He is in the forefront. He is leading the odd, ugly pack for the wrong reason. Enfant terrible Nasir El-Rufai is it! He holds sway in the heavily terrorist-infested Kaduna State. That’s not his immediate concern. All the same, he was a delight to watch last week. He dominated the space. And he explored, exploited it to the very maximum. He remains the rave of the moment. And he was truly ravenous and ravening. Nobody but him! And, guess what, he enjoyed every moment when it lasted. Or so he pretended.
El-Rufai is amusing. And watching him speak is amazing and appalling. He does not know when and how to stop. No limit, no boundary. For him alone the “the means justifies the end.” Strange? Even stranger things he did. First, he swapped roles with the opposition party. From that vantage position, he did the absurd. He launched a ferocious onslaught on Aso Rock, Abuja and its chief occupant. He dared the so-called dreaded cabals. He was convinced they needed to be checked. He actually called them out for war. And they are responding, fighting back discreetly. His allegation and claim: They are determined to scuttle Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidential ambition. And their weapons: Naira re-design and fuel crisis.
Not satisfied. He recruited like minds. Two of his governor-colleagues fell for it: Bello Matawalle, Zamfara and Yahaya Bello, Kogi. Birds of the same feather flock together. Speed was their watchword. We knew they were self-centred. But we never imagined they were that wicked and parochial. We didn’t pretend all along. We knew we could not trust them any longer. But it never crossed our fancy that these governors had gone down that deep. They boiled. They fumed. Not for our collective good but for faulty motive. That way they will continue to boil until they’re burnt out. We were rudely confronted with their shenanigans that Monday morning.
They rushed to the Supreme Court. They vowed that the naira renovation must be put on hold. And they got their evil prayer answered almost instantly. They claimed they did it for us. They lied. We read their curled lips well. Our children in government-owned universities were forced to stay home for eight months for no fault of theirs. Fuel crisis has become endless, our own way of life. They never saw the need to stand in the gap for us. They didn’t complain to Aso Rock, neither did they go to court. Instead, their children are flown abroad. They get the best education money can buy. And they flaunt this with reckless abandon.
Benue State Governor Sam Ortom remains a lone voice in the wilderness. Daily, he cries his heart out against killer Fulani herdsmen. The Presidency never heard him out for once. His governor-brothers mock him to scorn. None of them would join forces with him. Not even the latter-day “militant” El-Rufai. But the naira redesign unites them. They detest their vote-buying agenda being truncated, scuttled and derailed. So? They all stood up to be counted. Where’s their shame? They were never there for us. And they graphically displayed it one more time. They got to office through empty promises. And they lived a life of deceit throughout.
Since they claim to occupy the office for our sake, we still need to interrogate them. Particularly with their streaming actions and inactions. We wonder aloud: Did we actually elect these characters? Nigeria can be likened to an enormous, bizarre kitchen. There, all sorts of concoctions are recklessly thrown up. Issues that break other nations into irreconcilable pieces. Here in our clime, they are mere pastimes. We even make a mockery of them. And laugh heartily over them. Serious matters matter to us no more. SAD! The reason El-Rufai was emboldened. He became impatient in his defiance and insubordination. He jettisoned his co-traveller governors. He moved on unperturbed.
On Monday, February 7, 2023, he did the unthinkable. He practically jumped out of his cage spitting fire. He roared to high heavens. He poured out. He let off his pent-up anger. He ranted all the way. No pretence about his real element. He lost his self-control, he threw it to the wild winds. All known and unknown cautions were ignored. He fought dirty, as if he would not fight another fight. El-Rufai vomited. He was cross, vexed. He angrily told his trader-audience to rebel. In fact and indeed, he led the insurrection: “Nasir El-Rufai, Uba Sani and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu promised you that if we (APC) are elected, this policy will be changed. Everyone will be given sufficient time to change their money.”
No ambiguity. The message is not lost on us. He meant every word pronounced. He issued a counter-order: “Stop taking your money to banks, keep them with you. Nobody can make your money to become worthless. It is the law; nobody can do it.” He even relied on the same law to justify his action He was not done yet: “It’s just a matter of time, be patient. We have 18 days to the elections. Once the elections are over, you should expect what Tinubu would say, which is the change of this policy.” He was so certain: “You should help us pass this message to relatives.
Everyone should stop taking money to banks. Continue trading with the old notes.” Imagine. If this had come from any other part of the country but the North! If it had been Nnamdi Kanu or Sunday Igboho! El-Rufai clearly rocked the boat. His immunity is giving him uncanny audacity. Guts for anti-people policies. And leading him to revolt against the very citizens he swore to protect.
What absurdity! He needs to be halted fast. There should be no second chance. It could be dangerous. A monumental disaster. El-Rufai is just one lamentable and deplorable sampler. We are never relevant in their wicked reckoning. To fan their conceited embers, we come handy. They stick out their thick and fleshy necks. Wicked souls all! Then they “humbly” reach out to us. We are turned to a chessboard. They blab. They jive uninspiringly. They become laughable in their defence of the downtrodden. This species of leaders! They are our heavy crosses. And crushing us to shreds. Pray that El-Rufai may not derail us.
TAKEAWAY
Awo’s prophetic message, 35 years after
This is indeed a sad and saddening takeaway. I stumbled upon it on a social media platform. It frightens me to the marrow. I had read it somewhere very long before this time. It never made such powerful impact as it makes in these our perilous times, 35 years after. The reason I share it here.
“Something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. “In other words, at the threshold of our new social order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, nothing principled, nothing ethical and nothing idealistic can work with them. “And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities, are exorcised. “But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics. Or, unless the dialectic processes, which have been at work for some 20 years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. “There is, of course, an alternative option open to us: To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos.”
– Obafemi Awolowo, February 28, 1986