The change we seek?

May 29, 2015. A new era had dawned in the history of our dear nation. The ruling party had been dethroned and the president who had tried 3 times had finally succeeded on the fourth attempt. Not much of a Lincoln but 4 did the trick. The barrage of promises during the campaign were beginning to look achievable, finally, we thought, a president that can work, an incorruptible man who is  dedicated to fighting corruption, it seemed we were finally on the right track.

Fast forward 6 months…  

Now I’m hearing things like ‘junketeer in chief’, ‘babagoslow’, some of  the high and mighty now go as far as buying full pages in our dailies and lambasting a government that has barely scratched the surface.

Even on twitter, that’s another story, Nigeria, being one of the countries’ with the fastest growing social media users, they have not failed to ridicule the current administration in every possible way, one would even think that Buhari has been in power for 10 years. My fellow Nigerians ‘in the voice of OBJ’ it has just been a little over 6 months!

In all honesty, I’ve not been paid to come and paint the general’s administration with butter and honey, on the contrary, I share some of our pain, but even the general said it himself, ‘I am not a magician’. Buhari is no messiah, I think some Nigerians were expecting him to just come and magically create a utopia under a year and we will then live happily ever after, the truth is, we need to face reality, and stop expecting presidential miracles.

This is not in any way to justify the president’s frequent visits to other countries and soliciting for assistance in fighting our companion ‘Mr. Corruption’. I’d rather have him stay back in the country and fulfill the mandate which the good people of Nigeria have given him. The recent spate of attacks in the north, the uprising of MASSOB, IPOB etc., needs the attention of a president that is resident!

Some may ask, where do I stand in all this

Well, here’s my candid opinion…

Thus far we have been quite impatient, that is indeed what is causing grave harm to our country, even our youths want to make it ‘sharp sharp’, it is already a part of us, therefore Nigerians are looking for change in the blink of an eye, things don’t work that way, it makes no  logical sense goading an administration that is barely a year old and wailing what a grave mistake we’ve made, the reality is, God willing, the Buhari administration will be in office for the next three years or even more if he has the strength, what we need now is constructive criticism towards the generals administration, if baba wants to go slow, please let him go slow and steady, we saw how long it took for him to appoint honorable ministers, and I dare say his choices were not so bad, we have people that are ready to work in the cabinet.

Greed is what fuels corruption in this part of the world, our politicians cannot seem to control the little Oliver twist in them. Some people seem to put our problems hanging on the neck of tribal and religious differences, here’s something you don’t know, when it comes to money, everybody is of the same tribe and religion. We could very well be ahead of where we are today in this  country, but because the average man sees only fallacies in the promises of the politicians, sometimes it seems like all hope is lost, but we need a positive mindset if things are to move forward.

 As a nation we clamor for change, but as Mahatma Ghandi and Barrack Obama rightly said ‘we are the change we seek, it starts from us’. We want the government to wipe out corruption, is corruption a government only affair?  Let the change we seek start from us, let us change our outlook positively.   

So therefore my fellow countrymen, the change we seek may be here, or not, only time will tell that, our only responsibility as citizens of the federal republic is to ensure that we fully support our government, we should watch them, scrutinize them, give reasonable constructive criticisms, we don’t have to jump at every opportunity to ridicule the government, they are no saints I know that, but in the words of 2 baba ‘nobody holy pass’. I laud the presidents effort to unravel and combat corruption in the country, that’s a start, we should learn to see the positives, let us watch the people we have given the mandate to serve, and raise alarm when they are doing otherwise,
let us do away with political, ethnic, religious differences, and let us see one Nigeria.

This is my candid opinion…what’s yours?