Change Starts With Me -BUHARI, The Question is Has Buhari Changed?

Oddly enough, there are two answers to that question: yes and no. There is abundance evidence to prove that the President who launched another campaign to officially change
Nigerian attitudes and values, and his accomplice in that regard, the Minister of Information and Culture, might not be the right people to be preaching to us – their Fellow Countrymen. To begin with, not all changes are beneficial to society.

The change from a nation which had a diversified export base, up till the late 1960s to one which became enslaved to one product, crude oil, was largely brought about by long years of military rule – starting from 1966. Buhari was one of those who forced that change on us – without our consent.

Now, the chicken has come home to roost. One of the major beneficiaries of government by armed robbers of peoples’ sovereignty is now faced with cleaning up the sh*t which he and his colleagues started. Nigerians are best advised to read the scripts prepared by the Ministry of Information and Culture with a great deal of caution. At the moment, the sincerity of its authors is seriously in doubt – on account of their individual and collective antecedents. A few examples, well documented, will illustrate the point being made here. Let’s start with some recent occurrences.

Back in 2014, when it was politically advantageous to the All Progressives Congress, APC, then out of power, to support the activities of the Bring Back Our Girls, BBOG, group, President Jonathan’s administration regarded them as, at best, a public nuisance, and at worst, a security risk.

Each time their marches were disrupted by the Nigerian Police, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, speaking on behalf of the party and its presidential candidate, fired off public announcements condemning the GEJ government for violation of the fundamental human rights of the BBOG.

Anyone reading those passionate defences of one of the basic rights of free people in a democracy would have been led to believe that Buhari and Mohammed actually believed in those principles. Today, the BBOG, and others who believed in their right to free association, and who voted for APC on account of that, had been swindled. Officially now, and under APC, BBOG has been labeled a “security risk”.
Has Buhari changed? Certainly; but, it is a change for the worse for a democracy and it does very little credit to a President trying to preach a change of attitude when he has been caught in a socially disruptive change of principles. A greater leader than he would ever turn out to be, Ghandi had advised about the things that would destroy any society. One of them is “Politics without principles”.

Even if one wants to overlook that one, difficult as it is, how can one, given the economic recession ravaging the country, that the same Buhari blasted Jonathan for maintaining a large presidential fleet of aircrafts – which made Presidential Airlines the second largest in Nigeria and bigger that four private airlines put together. One would have expected that among the first Executive Orders given in May 2015 was the reduction in fleet size.
On the day, Buhari and Mohammed were going through the song and dance about value-change, it was obvious that their values have taken another change for the worse.

The cost of maintenance of the fleet, previously astronomical, had become killing because everything in the crafts must be imported at N425/US$1. The Buhari who campaigned in 2014/2015 has clearly changed right in front of our eyes and he is behaving more and more like Jonathan.