No Messiah Coming to Save Nigeria -By Oluseun Onigbinde

Oluseun Onigbinde

One thing that 2015 should teach us (or has taught me) is that no messiah is coming to save Nigeria. Until we stregnthen our institutions and allow them stand firm irrespective of political expediency, Nigeria will keep going through flip-flops.

A major issue is the absence of the President for 103 consecutive days. I am like the Premier League ended and started again but our President is not back. We can’t even get active participation at international events because Acting President won’t pass a night out. I really wish Buhari well having been the only one I have voted for as President but what’s going on now is NOT right in any frame.

Buhari that I see in the pictures flung around cannot stand the rigour of the Nigerian Presidency. He will be better staying in London to take care of himself since as a former President, his 1966 class is entitled to premium healthcare, a luxury Maiduguri to Abakaliki residents can’t access.

Every protest has been met with force and dehumanization. Quietly, his issue of health is being ethnicized as we worry less if its ideal for a 74-year old man to hold on to office when his health required more attention. We begin to worry more he’s taking his slot as a Northerner in this game of musical chairs.

Reuters report showed that Osinbajo might be Acting but the right instruction comes from London and everyday the messianic proposition haunts us. I have nothing mundane to benefit if Osinbajo is President despite having known him before he joined the Presidency. I know people with fit this into the ethnic bracket again but this is the way we have always acted, most Nigerians put Nigeria second and our ethnic badges ahead. This is evident in the Wuse Market event recently.

A public officer with plane parked at the airport, aides receiving thousands in estacodes, living plum lives in London and it still does not trigger our conscience that how did we get to a place that we can’t treat our President. It does not strike an emergency in our approach when the wounded in Maiduguri can’t even get a bed to lay on. It is very shameful. In this midst of this charade, some people still thump their chest that Buhari for 2019 rather than allow him carve a legacy by resigning and allow political gladiators to realign for 2019.

From Daniel Kanu of YEAA, to Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria of the Goodluck Jonathan and the ilk of Lauretta Onochie who answer civic questions in disgust, and to those wrapping this around ethnicity when our time for Nigeria’s redemption ticks away, I agree that:

There is nothing wrong with Nigeria but everything is wrong with Nigerians.