PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari’s new year address to Nigeria has been described as embarrassingly  banal, uninspiring, empty, myopic, unrealistic and bereft of any benefit of historical dynamics.

According to Mike Ozekhome, Constitutional lawyer and human rights activist, the president’s speech is “an unfortunate  metaphor for one who has lost total touch with the people and their aching pulse. The speech comes straight from stone age Ostralopithecus verbiage that never showed any  gravitas, sincerity of purpose and honest admission of abysmal  failure, total directionless and cluelessness in the current opaque   governance of the country.

“It never talked about, nor told Nigerians what he is doing about the putrifying and oozing corruption squarely located within his government, with overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence of fat untouchable  cows left unprosecuted. PMB in his speech, dismissed with a wave of the hand, the genuine and shrill cries of minority of Nigerians for an immediate restructuring of our fundamentally flawed federal system of government, which is actually unitarism in nature and operation.

“I couldn’t believe His Excellency  could muster enough courage to blame helpless and hapless Nigerians for allegedly being inpatient in expectations of good governance after two years and nine months of his becoming president,with approximately only  one more year to another election!  Can someone help me remind His Excellency that he and his APC voluntarily entered  into a written contract with the Nigerian people, in their manifesto and roadmap charter,with about 41 mouth watering ELDORADO PROMISES that completely hoodwinked Nigerians to queue behind him? When he was accused of not possessing school certificate qualification or its equivalent, Nigerians fired back that  it didn’t matter; that they were satisfied if all  PMB had was a  mere Agege bread or Nepa bill tag.

“Such was the ululation and sheer passion that when he was pronounced winner,one Nigerian actually trekked from Lagos to Abuja in solidarity,whilst another rode a bicycle from Kaduna to Lagos.

“Alas,the promises and hopes of a better tomorrow have since become a mirage, reminding one of Julius Caesar’s “tale told by an idiot,full of sound and fury,signifying nothing”.

Ozekhome noted that Buhari even  audaciously blamed imaginary heartless Nigerians for the unexpected  shortage of fuel and gas that grounded Nigeria for weeks and forced helpless  Nigerians to spend their entire Christmas yuletide days and nights at filling stations, for non existent fuel that had been mindlessly and  criminally diverted by roguish government officials to their cronies and highest bidders.

“He surprisingly  exonerated a colourless, rudderless and corruption-laden NNPC that is not accountable to the Nigerian people. PMB failed to do an honest self introspection,to discover that he,as the substantive minister of Petroleum Resources (since he could not trust any other Nigerian honest enough to head the ministry), has  woefully failed Nigerians.

“While discussing the insecurity that has since exacerbated under his very nose and close watch, he NEVER for once mentioned, even by way of passing remark,innuendo or allusion,rampaging and vanquishing  herdsmen that have since  overtaken Boko Haram in terms of their deadly potency and limitless capacity to murder,pillage and spill innocent blood. He simply, as is now legendary with him, passed the buck of every national malaise.

“He incredulously blamed everyone and everything else,except himself,for the unprecedented divisiveness in Nigeria today,the increasing ethno-religious strifes, loud self determination  agitations, mass suffering, starvation, squalour, melancholy, hopelessness, regrets, gnashing of teeth, chaos and near anarchy, that Nigeria has descended into under his government.

“Nearly half of the speech was wasted on discussion of railway projects which do not add value to immediate issues about hunger,mass unemployment and Nigerians’ bare desire  to survive. The more I read the speech, the more I am convinced that Nigeria is in real trouble. I wish Nigerians a prosperous new year,” Ozekhome said.

– Jan. 2, 2018 @ 8:25 GMT /