By Steve Osuji
A STATE OF SUSTAINED FORCE MAJEURE: Force majeure, a phrase of French origin, literally means an overriding or superior force changing the course of events.
An Igbo wise saying illustrates force majeure in this simple way: a stronger creature has accosted the cricket in its hole!
Force majeure is a massive earthquake, a large scale warfare or a pandemic of the magnitude of the current COVID-19.
Humanity often get some reprieve in that this usually gargantuan phenomenon don’t last too long. Each time it strikes, it inflicts maximum destruction to man and his universe and sooner, recedes or it is contained.
But in the last six years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, Nigeria has virtually been in A STATE OF SUSTAINED FORCE MAJEURE. And we may well be at it till 2023.
Since it’s a self-inflicted pain, there doesn’t seem to be any respite in sight. The president and other state actors that have brought this catastrophe on Nigeria are at sea as to how to remedy it.
PRESIDENT AS A MEDICAL TOURIST: If there isn’t a superior force at play here, why would any president continue to enjoy medical holidays abroad, even for routine check ups, while his state’s health system is grounded and indeed run aground?
As President Buhari gleefully jetted out to London two days ago, resident doctors in Nigeria had served notice of an industrial action. Last July, they had downed tools but a patchy negotiation had seen them back to work. Hardly any of the agreements reached with government had been kept.
A government that has been stumped by the routine task of managing its health personnel would naturally be at a loss as to how to keep up with the complexities of a decent health system.
And that’s it; Nigeria’s health system is as good as CRASHED. Even the clinic in Aso Rock, Nigeria’s Presidential Villa, has been found to be dysfunctional. The president’s wife said so two about years ago. The president going abroad for a routine check corroborates the fact that the number one clinic in the land cannot run basic checks on Number One.
So much noise was made about vastly upgrading Nigeria’s health facilities during the COVID19 scourge but our languid, do-nothing elite were only full of soundbites.
The same vacuous talk we have heard since 1984 when President Buhari seized power as military Head of State.
In his entry speech, he had disavowed our hospitals of those days as mere consulting clinics. But that tenure was almost defined by doctors’ strikes. Just as it is today, 37 years after.
INSECURITY: PROBABLY THE MOST UNMANNED TERRITORY IN THE WORLD: Nigeria’s health system is just typical of all institutions in Nigeria, hardly anyone is functional.
In the last six years, we have experienced a surge of Fulani marauders from across Africa and beyond converging in Nigeria which is today, a NO MAN’S LAND.
We saw Idris Derby, the President of Chad, lead his troops right into Nigeria’s territorial boundaries unchallenged. He would stroll out casually after warning Boko Haram leader, Shekau, never to set his foot on Chadian territory.
Nigerians woke up last October to hear that an American SEAL team had violated our sovereignty by dropping on our soil to rescue an American hostage.
A band of Sahel region vagabonds have also found home in the hills, mountains and forests of northwest Nigeria since 2015. Though there’s a strong conjecture that some of them had been let in as mercenaries to support an envisaged post election violence in 2015, Buhari also made a policy of throwing Nigeria’s land borders open to all apparently in pursuit of his Fulani agenda.
An existing Boko Haram terrorists challenge in the Northeast was only compounded with the ascendancy of Buhari in 2015. Today, Nigeria is besieged by deadly Fulani herdsmen, migrant bandits, Boko Haram and some say, members of ISWAS. Nigeria especially the north is today a flourishing theatre of kidnapping, death and destruction.
Do we ever wonder why Nigeria suddenly became the vortex of violence in the West Africa sub-region? Why is Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast up to Senegal, Gambia peaceful and without nary a hint of bandits, killer herdsmen and terrorists?
WHEN INEPTITUDE AND GRAFT MEET NEPOTISM: The reason Nigeria stands out today as the ISLAND OF SHAME in West Africa is simple. The Buhari government is utterly inept and parochial.
His nepotistic mindset and crave for Fulani hegemony in Nigeria threw the floodgates open for rogue migrant Fulani to find joy and comfort in Nigeria.
Two days ago, they unleashed mayhem in Ebonyi State, burning villages and killing as many as they could; some account say 50. Not one word has issued forth from the presidency.
It didn’t matter that non-open grazing law has been enacted in most states of the country yet herdsmen challenge constituted authorities with savage impunity; they kill, maim and raze villages across the land daily and the presidency looks on with tacit support.
It is common knowledge now that Buhari is inept, outright incapable and blighted by crude nepotistic tendencies. But if many members of his team are upright and shorn of avarice, so much would be different.
On the contrary, corrupt tendencies have gone up one notch compared to Goodluck Jonathan’s era. In that bleary regime, slush fund was literally domiciled in and frittered by the office of the National Security Adviser, NSA, a certain Col. Sambo Dasuki.
Today, the national defence budget is a bazaar for the so-called generals. The other day, the current NSA, Gen. Dambazau, had blurted angrily that the out-gone service chiefs practised scorched-earth tactics with military budgets. He said hardly any stock of fighting arsenal can be found for all the billions allocated. Dambazau was promptly made to eat his words while the failed service chiefs were rewarded with envoy positions abroad.
But for most of six years on the job, they were outgunned and serially embarrassed by a band of untrained, malnourished vagabonds.
Only yesterday, a recent US report stated that corruption was more widespread and pervasive at all levels of government, including the Judiciary and security services.
We all knew this.
MORE DEBILITATING CORRUPTION AT STATE LEVELS: The force majeure which corruption has become in Nigeria is more prevalent at the state levels. Hardly any local government council in the country is operational. Most state governments simply pocket LGA federal allocations. They also corral an indeterminate quantum of state funds as monthly security votes. Governors neither give account nor secure their domains with these huge funds at their disposal.
While our governors gambol about in the metropolis, vast hinterland of Nigeria is unmanned and neglected. Worse still is that our governors don’t want to discuss this crucial matter, rather they seek to abolish the local councils through the back door while they seek more autonomy and even more funds from the federal government.
Indeed, our so-called governors are largely obdurate, stiff-necked and too arrogant to notice that they have become a major problem of the land and indeed, a persistent force majeure!
On a final note, until there’s a change of guards in the presidency and until our governors come back to their senses, Nigeria remains an ENDLESS FORCE MAJEURE.
•Osuji is a senior journalist and newspaper columnist.