Prayers for Bayelsa, boos for Buhari and his government

BY ZOGBOBIA SELOMO

To what level has this country to sink to warrant a stirring from the leadership of this much vaunted most populous black nation on earth into action? It is not about the economy going burst, that is a given. It is not about infrastructure decay or electricity in acute short supply, that is a fait accompli. Or is it about Nigeria being the poverty capital of the world? Even the inertia in high places has forced this ignominious reality on us as the home truth.

Just how low does the country have to sink? As I watch Bayelsa State under water in the past couple of days, that is the question that haunts every moment of my life, just to see people suffer so much, battle the waters which they have been used to all their life, and then be overwhelmed and found themselves completely abandoned, all alone, like the ancient mariner, lost at sea. Bayelsa is a nightmare. And the complete abandonment of the state by the Nigerian government makes the matter even worse.

By November 2, 2022, the state celebrated the 11th anniversary inside the waters, to give glory to God for His act of mercy in keeping the state alive. The holy books say, in all things give thanks to God. That’s what the state, led by the governor, Douye Diri, did this past Tuesday. But the flood pictures, especially viewed aerially, are not good. They are too overwhelming to behold.

Wednesday morning, the governor was on Arise TV. Pressed by the anchors, Dr Reuben Abati and Rufai Oseni, about the response of the federal government, the governor kept saying this is no time for blame games. We have not heard from the President, the Vice President and even the minister of the Humanitarian Affairs ministry.

Flash the pictures again. A state has nearly been taken over by soaring waters. The state has not heard from the top functionaries of the federal government. No visit. No words. No empathy. It is the silence of the grave yard. Who knows? It may be their wish for the entire state to be washed away, for the leadership of the nation to have peace in their soul.

It is worse as the President of the country, Muhammadu Buhari, has evacuated himself to the United Kingdom on health grounds. He has to be fit to continue to govern, but those in Bayelsa can go with the floods. As we say in this part of the world, God forbid! Really?

Could anything have been done to stop the floods? Perhaps, preemptive measures could have been taken. But not here where procrastination is a standard policy of the government. Procrastination while expedient actions are executively misplaced.

So it was that while several states of the federation were under water with Lokoja in Kogi state bringing their ordeal to the fore, the road connecting Abuja totally submerged, as Bayelsa was loading at the same time, President Buhari went to attend the First World Bio Summit in South Korea. Six days he was there, perhaps, watching on TV and trying to confirm the number of deaths in his own country. Okay, he has returned but has now travelled for the real reason, to take care of his health, as the President must be alive to serve his nation. Or is it really to remain alive to be served by this nation?

I don’t think people hate Buhari but they hate the fact that he belongs to the APC, a ruling party that has done so much to destroy every facet of life in Nigeria. The party that has taken the nation from the nadir of a pretending developing country to the mire of a loading failed state. They hate the fact that with all the human capital available in this nation, President Buhari has just managed to put together a collection of human species that hardly understand modern socio-political, economic practices or even nurse a modicum of human feeling in them. Really? Are these guys alien, that some states in the federation have endured devastating flood and the federal government is just about waking up from an irritating slumber?

What was expected? Nigerians expected governance. Nigerians expected empathy. Nigerians expected some actions from the government and a little humanness. They got none. Quite different from what they see in other lands.

Governance is not rocket science. Precepts abound for those with a little strand of brain. Hurricane Ian made a landfall on the state of Florida on September 28, 2022, with serious devastation. October 5, 2022, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and his wife, Jill, were in the state, took a helicopter ride to get full view of the catastrophe, and also met with the governor, Ron DeSantis, even though the latter is of the Republican Party, and he, a Democrat. This wasn’t about party but life. Biden then approved the Florida Disaster Declaration which made federal funding available to affected counties and individuals. The Biden administration got behind the state and her people. Where is the Nigerian government in Bayelsa?

Before we scratch for the answer, let’s take a little trip back in time. When what now seems to be a much lesser evil came in 2012, President Goodluck Jonathan, the man they called inept and clueless, had the presence of mind to tour the affected states of Kogi, Anambra, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers, to estimate the devastation by himself.

Spokesperson for the President at the time, Dr Abati, wrote on October 9, 2012, “President Goodluck Jonathan has declared the flooding a “national disaster” and established a National Committee on Flood Relief and Rehabilitation. On October 9, his administration announced it was providing U.S. $110million in financial assistance.”

The same man they called clueless appointed bsuinessman, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, and erudite lawyer, Mr Olisa Agbakoba, as co-chairmen of the Committee, and Dr Mike Adenuga of Globacom as the chief fundraiser.

Jonathan, to them, was clueless but he took action and galvanised the big boys into action to help save lives. History has played a trick on this government peopled by those who haunted Jonathan out of power. The floods have returned in more ferocious anger. They have not only been found wanting, daft and inept but have sorrowfully just displayed a total lack of capacity to govern. Their protracted silence is not only uncanny but evil. Their delayed response is beyond condemnation.

This is not about Jonathan, however, but about the shouting failure of this government, whose officials made so much noise about changing things in Nigeria in 2015 that Nigerians saw El Dorada without experiencing it; they saw castles built in the air and dreamt to live in such abracadabra that only APC could create.

Now Bayelsa and other states need help and the APC government led by Buhari is pouring salt on the pains of the people it has refused to help. One failed minster, among several others, a human disaster who didn’t have have any business occupying that position in a nation that boasts of some of the best brains in the world, Hajiya Sadiya Farouq, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, gave a morbid ranking within the week that Bayelsa is not among the ten most affected states, but Jigawa. More morbidly, she blamed the dead and the submerged states that those who suffer are the states who refused to heed the early warnings from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency, NiMET.

Can’t this nation just wake up to the evil in the land and the recklessness of this administration which has more appetite for lucre than accommodation for human feelings? This minister fed pupils who were not at school during COVID-19 with large sums of money, doled out subvention to people not listed in any register to bring them out of poverty, but with floods wiping out life in the nation, the minister is aggravating pains and anger with her crash ineptitude and provocative ignorance.

And the same party is campaigning. They have a magician in a Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State, who, after contributing immensely to create a disaster, has now dusted up himself as the new messiah, who has promised to continue with the very disastrous and destructive legacy of this administration.

There is disaster in the nation. The PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has gone to walk on water in Bayelsa; Peter Obi of the Labour Party has done same, obviously not in the manner of the story of Jesus Christ in the Bible, but as humans, to share in the pains of these people. Meanwhile, the head of government is abroad, the officials are unfeeling, and the party is campaigning to change our world, but not the world of those who are dead or have lost everything in the flood.

Bayelsa needs our prayers. This government deserves outright condemnation of the very extreme type. But Nigerians need to wake up to ensure that never gain will APC and its evil happen to the nation again.

Selomo writes from Lagos State.