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Even his most rabid critics could not have imagined that he would reduce Nigeria to a failed state. Six years on, Muhammadu Buhari has achieved the feat with outstanding ease, as the country has, literally and factually, become one whose defining dynamic is anarchy unbound in all its terrifying ramifications.
As the country steadily dissolves into unrelenting chaos, the president, who’s really not a president, continues to channel Emperor Nero of the ancient Roman Empire, who cruelly fiddled while his beautiful capital city was burning.
Buhari has made our worst nightmare about him come true. Those who really knew him had always readily bracketed his name with incompetence and parochialism. But none of them could have thought that Nigeria would become an expansive killing field, painted with the blood of thousands of innocent Nigerians, under his ill-starred, befuddled leadership.
Aso Rock has never hosted a messiah since May 29, 2015, and won’t host any in the next two very challenging years of Buhari’s presidency. Share on XBack in 2015 during his first inauguration as president, he had declared that, “I belong to no one, and I belong to everybody.” That declaration was tangibly hollow even then, which made the inherent falsehood most galling.
Those were not his words because they never came from his heart. They sounded good and noble, and projected a false determination to be a leader of all Nigerians. They were woven into his address to reinforce the myth that he was truly a changed man. One whose notorious dictatorial instincts had morphed to some grudging acceptance, if not admiration, of the beauty of democracy despite its inherent flaws.

But he has since been found out, not by those who knew him, but those who had elevated him to the status of a messiah who would come to rescue and regenerate Nigeria. They have lost patience with his unapologetic fealty to crude nepotism and extreme nativism, as he has presided over the diminution of the country in every respect.
To be fair to him, he never pretended to be, or pronounced himself a messiah. Those who sold his candidacy and swore that he was the answer to our problems, particularly insecurity and corruption, tagged him as the messiah. To every legitimate question about his capabilities and preparedness for the office, they had a robust riposte: “Is that the issue? It doesn’t matter.”
The country is being held hostage by viral insecurity to which the federal government has no solution. The economy is in complete shambles. And corruption is now flying supersonically. Share on XWhat mattered more to them was ending the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan whom the then leading opposition party, APC, had, through brilliant propaganda, tarred as “clueless” and, therefore, didn’t merit another term in office.
Nonetheless, Buhari basked in the glow of his elevation and celebration as a god. Even the man, who affects the air of asceticism, wasn’t immune to the irresistible draw of intoxicating flattery.
As we all now know, the god has been disrobed. Aso Rock has never hosted a messiah since May 29, 2015, and won’t host any in the next two very challenging years of Buhari’s presidency. Ironically, as the country is drowning in despair and desperation and his star has dimmed considerably, that of the man he succeeded hasn’t stopped rising and glowing.
