The Unfriendly King, his Cold-Hearted Advisers and the Danger that Looms -By Ambali Abdulkabeer

“A king exists to give life to all. That is what makes the town calm. Where the king fetes his privileged cabal and flogs the town from compound to compound, there will be an uproar in series. A king who is a scourge to his people cannot sip the love of the community. He cannot sleep and close his eyes from the blinding flashes of his indiscretion”. – Lasisi Olagunju

It’s unarguable that Nigeria has been popular for one thing–bad leadership. Since its beginning as a sovereign state, Nigeria has been in the grip of bad leadership, a scourge that continues to stymie its match to development. Amidst this unpleasant trend, it’s clear that the country is one a big entity bare of peace because huge swaths of Nigerians are not comfortable seeing and keeping up with the political strategies on which the country thrives. That is the more reason every failure is portioned to the absence of good leadership manifest in the sheer greed, cruelty and irresponsibility of the people in the corridors of power.

The viral statement of General Buhari in his Independence Day speech underscores the title of this piece. The statement, “It makes no sense for oil to be cheaper in Nigeria than in Saudi Arabia”, yet dramatises the king’s emotional detachment from the people he purportedly governs and the cold-heartedness of his advisers. It aptly explains my position that Buhari is unapologetically moored to schadenfreude– the feeling of joy from the agonies of others.

In the event of the above, it is clear that the humongous agonies to which huge swaths of Nigerians have been subjected to over the past few years of his reign are explainable within the atmosphere of ungodly policies that the regime has created. In the past few months, low-income Nigerians have been in pains as a result of the sudden hike in the price of staple food especially rice. I can’t wrap my head around the logic that explains the mass starvation in the country where the instruments of survival are in abundance. But the king in place of stimulating sincere energies towards the provision of locally-made foods, took to his wicked advisers to ban the importation of foods and condemned Nigerians to hunger. Our love for everything foreign notwithstanding, the king and his advisers are so unconcerned to see value in the abundance of food in the country. This continues while many Nigerians die of hunger every day.

Another sorry trend, aside from the above, is the bane of insecurity in the country. Buhari regime, to the best of my knowledge, believes that the basic security of Nigerians doesn’t matter. The mind-boggling narrative of abduction, banditry, insurgency and whatnots across all zones in the country is a testament to this. Everyday Nigeria is now littered with droves of security risks while the king and his advisers luxuriate in the belief that ordinary Nigerians should continue to die.

In all of this, however, Buhari and his cohorts are planning out news ways to unleash pains on Nigerians amidst the agonies in motion. You would see that despite the cries from the public, the cases of monumental corruption, high-handedness and rape of laws which define the regime continue to add weights. This, then, explains the plans ahead that reveal a more robust love affair between the insentient king and his bunch of doofuses that parade as his advisers, one that will open Nigerians to more agonies. Our king is even unbothered by the putrid mess which the education system of the country has become!

But there is a danger that looms. Those in the King’s graces should take the plunge and tell him the truth– that Nigeria has become worse than he met it, that countless Nigerians are now victims of homelessness, avoidable deaths and hunger, that the future of Nigeria, from the picture now, is bleak. He needs to be told that the seemingly unending security crises in different parts of the country will only expose Nigeria to more harms if care is not taken. There is no sense for Aso Rock to be more peaceful than Nigeria. In other words, The palace that must be in peace must guarantee the peace of its towns and villages.

To save Nigeria from breaking into pieces, the king should make his advisers aware that he is in power to give life, not to be an agent of death; to give succour to people, not to be a source of pain. He should be selective in the way he accepts advice and rule with love and passion. He should know that there is a time after now and break away from the attitude of cruelty and create a befitting climate in which Nigeria can seamlessly prosper.

Ambali Abdulkabeer writes from Ilorin. He can be reached @ abdulkabeerambali@gmail.com.