In Nigeria, to borrow a cliché, principle is as rare as the hen's teeth, which explains why Nigerian elites - political, business and religious - cannot speak truth to power. They would rather speak tongue-in-cheek: flippant and insincere.
This trait has become more evident since the All Progressives Congress, APC, dislodged the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, from its high perch in 2015. Schooled in the arcane art of propaganda and doublespeak, deliberately obscuring and distorting reality, the party apparatchiks were able to wheedle the largely unwary Nigerian populace.
Even when it was apparent that General Muhammadu Buhari sitting in Aso Rock as president of Nigeria was the greatest disaster that has befallen this country since independence in 1960, APC still blamed the country's mounting woes under Buhari's watch on the "16 years of PDP".
Yet, every honest observer knew that the worst of the PDP was by far better than the best of APC with Buhari as president. Not even in the so-called war against corruption did Buhari excel. The APC government with Buhari on the saddle became corruption personified. Even as Minister of Petroleum Resources, the operations of the oil sector became more opaque than under the much-maligned Diezani Alison-Madueke.
Nigeria's economy was destroyed by Buhari's incompetence and the insincerity of APC. But, as the Germans say, "Lies have short legs." What the APC ideologues, including Buhari's successor, President Bola Tinubu, know for sure but pretended otherwise is that when life becomes a labyrinth of self-pleasing lies, the legs needed to carry that load are always too short because lies beget lies, and sooner than later, the story becomes so absurd that those trying to get away with it are trapped.
We seem to have arrived at that juncture. Eight years in power and counting, it has become politically inexpedient for the APC to continue blaming the 16 years of PDP for Nigeria's woes. Now, even those that said Buhari was the best thing that happened to Nigeria are blaming him for the country's extant woes caused, no doubt, by Tinubu's missteps.
Agreed, Buhari did a terrible job of the economy. But Tinubu has succeeded in pushing it over the edge in the eight months of his presidency. To pull the economy out of the mess where Buhari left it, there ought to be a new thinking, a dose of fresh perspectives. Right now, there is none.
The truth which a lot of people are shying away from is that the trio of Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun; Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Abubakar Bagudu and Central Bank Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, do not have the gravitas - what it takes to pull Nigeria's economic chestnuts out of the fire.
In any case, as criminal as Buhari's mismanagement of Nigeria's patrimony was, what pushed the economy over the edge and brought the untold hardship in the land are the ill-conceived and hasty policies of subsidy removal and floating of the Naira.
So, when the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and former Edo State governor, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, blame Buhari's administration for the raging economic woes, they are being economical with the truth while trying to cut Tinubu some slack.
Speaking virtually on Sunday at a religious event in Abuja, Sanusi said it will be unfair to blame Tinubu's administration for the country's current economic woes.
His words: "I have been, over the years, talking about the pending crisis ahead of the current economic hardship. Any economist who has studied monetary policy in the last eight years knows that Nigerians will fall into this difficult situation... If I am to be fair and just to President Tinubu, he is not to blame for the current hardship."
But Sanusi did not say what Tinubu has done differently from Buhari's economic policies or the new thinking that he has brought to bear on the dire economic situation he inherited.
Then, the former national chairman of the APC, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, in his rabble rousing style, echoed the same sentiments same day on Channels Television.
"My first loyalty is to Nigeria," Oshiomhole, who was governor of Edo State, claimed as if anyone was in doubt of his so-called allegiance to fatherland. "At some point, before the last President left office, I lamented loudly what I saw as reckless policies that were designed to dehumanise the population that was already in pain. I felt that it was not what the then president promised. I dissociated myself from those policies and I'm happy that I was not the only one... It is the long-term consequences of those policies that we are still grappling with now," the former Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, president further claimed.
Of course, Oshiomhole was talking about the ill-fated Naira redesign policy of the Buhari administration. But it is sheer dishonesty for him to claim that the policy alone is at the root of the mess the APC administration made of governance in the last eight years.
Oshiomhole said Tinubu should not be held responsible for whatever decisions the Buhari government took because "he was not a minister or adviser. He never took a contract in that government and he cannot be held responsible for what the government did right or wrong."
Really? How revisionist can an argument get? Just yesterday, it was 16 years of PDP, but today, it is eight years of Buhari, which has nothing to do with the political party on which platform he contested and won the presidency and which manifesto he implemented.
As if the rationalisations of Sanusi and Oshiomhole were not bad enough, religious leaders have now thrown their impious hats into the justification loop.
The General Overseer of Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, is now saying the challenges confronting the country require spiritual solution.
Adeboye, who was in Kaduna, said since political leaders appeared to have tried their best, and the country's woes persisted, "Nigeria, therefore, needs the help of God and it needs the help urgently."
Then, on February 12, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Abubakar Sa'ad III, said the current difficulties in Nigeria were a direct consequence of people straying from the worship of God. The solution for him is for Nigerians to return to God in prayers.
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Delivering a message at the grand opening of a Jum'ah Mosque in Guzape, Abuja, the Sultan, who was represented by a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Alhaji Yayale Ahmed, said: "Everyone knows the situation in Nigeria right now but the solution is to go back to seek divine intervention and prayers."
Unfortunately, Pastor Adeboye did not tell Nigerians what their prayer point(s) should be. Is it the leaders that should be praying to atone for their sins against the people or the poor masses who should pray for divine protection for their leaders?
What did Nigerians do to offend God that He will decide to punish them? So, we should pray for Tinubu? Why not! But what should we be praying for? That God should come and do for us what he was elected to do? What then is the responsibility of leadership? How come we exonerate our leaders from all blames whenever the country is faltering?
All this revisionism is a conspiracy of Nigeria's elite class again the masses. But truth be told, God is not quarreling with Nigeria. Unless and until our leaders start taking responsibility for their failures, nothing will change. The only way to get Tinubu to deliver on his electoral promises is to hold his feet to the fire. Making excuses for leadership failures is the reason why Nigeria is plumbing the depths of misery and not because of God's anger.
