By Rasheed Olokode
In his recent Arise TV interview outburst, our President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari openly indicted the 36 state governors over the widespread insecurity that has pushed many a Nigerian to the wall.
However, I I don't share or applaud the sentiments of the President. For me, Buhari did nothing but committed a fallacy that is technically referred to as 'Tu Quoque' which translates into 'What about you' in the English Language.
To really understand, I urge all Nigerians to shun the tendency of judging Buhari's statements with its face value.
Rather, we should look deep to really understand that he was actually admitting that he had failed but only trying to share the guilt with the governors.
Dr. Dipo Fasina aka Jingo, my erudite erstwhile Logic Lecturer in Great Ife, whereever he is, would surely be mocking Buhari and the rest of us that twice voted him as President and Commander-in-Chief that would come before a global audience to blame others for his own failure.
One thing I'm sure of is that Jingo would have helped Nigerians to rephrase and expose the logical semantics of Buhari's charge to the Governors - "Yes, I have failed to change the narrative of widespread insecurity since I became the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, what about you, the governors?" "Why have you not used your position s as the chief security officers of your respective states to arrest the situation?"
Buhari also impliedly said, "after all, you all collect monthly allocations on behalf of your states and the local government councils in your domains, I know that many of you always starve your local councils of funds originally allocated to them".
Above all, Mr President indirectly jabbed our Governors with what he felt was a knockout blow - "At least, all of you, governors, are the chief security officers of your respective states, then why would you and your people always blame and cry to me over security breaches in your domains?".
Alas! Any applaud for Buhari over his Arise TV outburst will amount to a celebration of tragedy that ought to be mourned.
If our President could make statements that only bring to the fore the unavoidable consequences of the faulty system, socioeconomic and political configuration which Nigeria currently operates, while requesting the human effects of the fault, our governors, LG chairmen and all other shades of political office holders to solve the very problems that caused their existence, then our destiny, as a people, is already lying in state awaiting final interment.
Who does not know that the status and traditions of our governors are all a function of the very system which the APC with Buhari promised to change? Who does not know that our cry to Buhari is not that he should just ask the police to arrest and prosecute criminals in our respective neighbourhoods, but to walk his talk of pre 2015 elections?
It was this same system superintended by an Almighty Federal Government, controlling all resources, making money on behalf of all and doling out money to the states for onward transmission to the locals that Buhari promised to change in 2015 and 2019?
Yes! It was this same system wherein governors were and are still chief security officers only on paper, where a police constable commits no offence if he or she refuses to comply with a Governor's directives, without an order from above.
Okay, I now understand. Buhari was indirectly accusing our governors of being below average, integrity-wise. He probably wanted to pointedly declare interrogatively - "Since I have, so far, lived up to my pre 2015 rating as a man of integrity by not playing games with your monthly dues, why have you not emulated my fine qualities of discipline and integrity by not tampering with the LG funds?
Good thinking, good talk, this may seem. But, once again, the heavenly bell sounds a banging 'alas' in response.
The Heaven is obviously not happy that we have foolishly fashioned our political cum leadership reality to be tied to personality factors instead of systemic factors.
What we have always reaped from successive administrations, at all levels, has been a function of individual personality and behavioural traits, dispositions and principles of individual office holders. In other words, we don't have a system that will compel a leader to act strictly in line with the national or common interest.
Rather, the man at the top always determines what the system looks like while he is still in charge.
Here lies the real singular secret beneath our failure as a Nation. A balanced system is what the listless groups of agitators are desperately clamouring for and not the continuation of the current personality based law and order which our President challenged our Governors to mend through behavioural change.
So, I will round off by clearly restating what Nigerians, under secessionist or any other guise, want - SYSTEMIC CHANGE that will put an end to the behavioural change that we have always had. Truly, the most dangerous, unreliable and unstable element of reality is human behaviour.
God bless Nigeria.
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