THOSE milking Nigeria dry with Tinubu as the cash cow, may wonder why the clarion call on Bauchi State Governor Bala Muhammed to join the 2027 presidential race and replace Tinubu as a savior.
Tinubu, as a Supreme Court cobbled president loaded on Nigerians, has already failed in the assignment for incapacitation and inexperience. He is best for revenue collection but not leadership whence the call on Bala.
One is not talking of lopsided appointments, increasing security challenges, rising cost of living and cluelessness, one is more to the glaring fact the Tinubu administration has lost bearing from the onset. The government seems to have a hidden agenda against certain components of the federation, now steadily surfacing.
One wonders how the entire security and economic leadership of the country are managed by a particular geo-political zone as if the other components lack competent hands for such appointments or trust. If they lack competent hands and trust, what’s then their justification for remaining loyal and supportive to a system that has no confidence in them?
Since the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the selected, sorry, elected president from the 2023 presidential election, there has been the temptation to make the tragic sense of things the touchstone of Nigerian politics.
The desire to daub life dire, has for a long while defined the tide of political partisanship and the transience, of hope as a nation ideal.
In the fracas of faith and filth, the negligible attains significance while the essential gets consigned to the fringes of awareness.
The moral and ethical issues of misgovernance, predatory corporatism, treasury looting, the toxic assets amassed by politicians and their collaborators in public service, to vulturine lending, to self-serving legislation, to anti-growth economic policies, insecurity and sky-rocketing inflation appear to be irrelevant in the arena of public discourse en route to the 2027 elections.
Instead, a cross section of the media, in fulfillment of its role as courtier, unfurls to the ungloved palm of doubtful patriots and dubious ethicists, hurling rant about the possible candidature of Bala Muhammed. Amid the noise, barely any news medium examines the aspirants of other political parties.
Consequently, Bala may enjoy a free ride to power, heedless of the detractors wishes, and markedly detached from the sense of purpose and responsibility attached to the public offices they occupy in a fast failing system.
As rival parties intensify nocturnal campaigns across the country, politics gets intense as the major actors flout the rules and skirt around ethical tropes.
Nyeson Wike and Yusufu Maitama Tugga’s frantic efforts to de–market the credibility and presidential aspiration of Bala Muhammed for advocating a change of approach to governance piloted by their tin god, amounts to incantatory of their insincerity to that their tin god and to the Nigerian nation.
But this piece is hardly about Wike and Tugga’s stupidity but more about the tenor of engagement in Nigeria’s already heated political space. The scalding rhetoric and venomous attacks on political personae exemplify the tragic sense of things in our heated spaces.
The sense of things is a response to the Nigerian experience and it manifests in the electorate’s detachment from patriotic endeavor. As we steadily approach the lifting of the ban on the 2027 political campaign, Nigerians must unlearn the apathy of the herd reengage democratically in the ongoing politicking. They must ask crucial questions on stewardship of those seeking elective offices.
Of the prospective aspirants other than Bala, whose aspiration else echo’s our heartbeats? To what do they owe our reverence? By their citizenship, do they furnish pathways to empower disillusioned, jobless youths of Gwarangah, Sharam, Daho, Ex-land, Mavo, Song, Akokwo, Gombi, Vandekya, Wukari, Mayoine, Agbor, Dawan, Sango Ota, Kundak, Kwalmiya to mention a few?
Do they teach the youth to shun greed, selfishness, god complex and hooliganism as Bala does persistently? Do they impress that, in the end only Nigerians get to choose what becomes of Nigeria, not a coalition of shady friends from the corridor of power and charlatans?
The answer resonates in each aspirant’s utterances and deeds. Transcendent moments and deeds are manifestations of an exalted intelligence. Who among the 2027 presidential aspirants if not Bala Muhammed that possesses the loftiest acumen? Whose, antecedents in private or public office—or both—elicits the passionate tribute of a cheer? Whose past and present exploits incite the passing tribute of a sigh? Despite the youths’ dissatisfaction with the status quo, do they project the moral character, strength, political literacy and intelligence required to make the right choice for the good of Nigeria?
The ongoing jostle for political spoils is overtly ritualistic. Duplicitous analysts and the political class of the other divide relentlessly pursue their selfish interests amid widespread suffering and bloodshed.
Even the self-appointed Progressives and Obi-dients have shunned the lilies and languors of virtue for the raptures and roses of vice, as Dolores would say. Amid our unabated suffering, they reconstruct Nigeria into a narrow commune, beholden to their selfish interpretations of power and political office.
Their virtues are short, and their vices extensive and implacable. Their lips, full of lust and laughter, attach to the country’s bosom like curled serpents that are fed from the breast. Every dispensation, they press with fanged lips where their reptilian predecessors have suckled. Nigeria thus becomes the doomed Cleopatra giving suck to their asps. When kicked out of office, they grudgingly recoil—but never quitting the corridors of power and can do anything under the sun to remain relevant—-to accord Nigeria the affliction of deadlier asps in the successive administration not bothered about party affiliation. Nigeria will never be rid of them until we set our grief’s needlepoint astride the prick of pain.
Of the Bala Muhammed aspiration, I see a true democrat, a patriot, and misunderstood political titan. I see other men enslaved to power and god complex. I see voyagers hampered by baggage from past and present that would forever haunt them. Even the new political ‘kids’ on the space come forged as minnows and bathetic ogres.
I see a colossus whose handlers paint a ravishing portrait of him even as critics dismiss him as yet another genome of leadership, dastardly and base like the Casanova lost in the folds of bearded meat.
I see an electorate wrought of two extremes: cynical and apathetic. Very few candidates excite passion and hope, save the dangerous fits thrown by their pawns and puppets on the social and selected conventional media owned by them and their associates.
It’s about time we identify the contender jostling to handle our heartfelt yearnings as his tuberous burden. Who among the aspirants is better equipped than Bala to resolve Nigeria’s economic woes and most pressing conflicts? I have not seen any!
Many Nigerians are probably living through one of the worst decade of their lives. They read and listen to stories of bloody genocides at dawn, poverty and strife in the next town or village—many more live through such situations. And as usual, an economy patched with foreign loans, fleeting growth and duplicity.
It took a perfect gathering of bad leadership to get to this moment of hardship and insecurity we are contending. It would take an imperfect cannonball of a man to lead us through, to survival. Who, among the aspirants is wrought of such fibre? Bala Muhammed readily comes to my mind.
What we should be interested in is a president capable of fostering the type of education and skilled force, Nigeria needs to power her industry. We have no need of a big and egocentric President in hard times; what we need is a humble man of great depth.
