How Buhari Restructures Festus Keyamo’s Mentality

By Erasmus Ikhide

In his attempt to do violence to our immediate history, his recent tutelage at the revered Gani Fawehinmi’s resting place tended to glamorize President Muhammadu Buhari’s destruction of Nigerian economy.

However, Keyamo is at liberty to crave for political appointment in Nigeria — as he has always done, including his allegedly arranged and purchased “SANship” — even to the notoriously inept, ethnically bigoted and a pure hermit like President Buhari for all he cares, but expecting Nigerians to be foolish as much as himself is partisan blindness.

That Mr. Keyamo had his brain scrapped out and replaced with Mr. Buhari’s ancient and analogue-type of brian is not sufficient for him to advocate same for us at a time Nigerians and the global community have mounted campaign for dynamic young Turks to take the mantle of leadership at all levels of government.

Again, you’re wont to ask, what informed Mr. Keyamo’s idiosyncratic position that President Buhari is the one to reset Nigerians’ value system and mentality for a prosperous nation when Buhari himself has proven to be irredeemably corrupt and a sectional leader?

The conformist Keyamo roaring: “I also firmly believe that our value systems in politics and the society have been so damaged pre-2015, that a firm and experienced hand is needed to reset our collective mentality before we can set sail again. The notion that public office is just available to share money which was the norm pre-2015 is gradually being eroded

“A few more years of that kind of orientation will do us a world of good. President Buhari is one of the very last of the upright Mohicans in Nigeria available to reset our mentalities before he takes his bow in 2023, if the Nigerian people so wish. We must take advantage of his still being around to use him maximally.”

Obviously, the compromised lawyer is unaware that Nigerians who have been at the receiving end of Buhari’s poor governance structures, selective amnesia, brazen corruption and the escalating genocide visited on them by the terrorists Fulani herders — a murderous organization President Buhari openly subscribed to as its grand patron led to the collapse of the economy know more than he does.

Keyamo’s clownishness is boundless! Why does he seek to legitimize his support for Buhari’s presidential second term bid by dropping Chief Gani Fawehinmi’s patriotic name into the bargain? How does that change what’s already known about him — mentality to grandstand on frivolities?

“In doing this, I take a cue from my revered late boss, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, SAN who mentored me. Throughout his career, he also fiercely engaged every government in Nigeria and suffered as a result.

Guess what? THE ONLY GOVERNMENT HE FULLY SUPPORTED THROUGHOUT HIS LIFETIME was the government led by General Muhammdu Buhari in 1984 – 1985, and that was to the chagrin of some of his colleagues and fellow “radicals.”

Let me add that at no time did Keyamo belong to the progressive left but a calculating right winger who was against the NANS leadership being a member of the so called peace movement that aligned with state security service to hound radical students’ leaders.

His stint at Gani’s chambers was an opportunist search for newspaper fame and had to antagonize Gani over the running of NCP for cheap popularity. A check at his legal history shows that he hasn’t won any substantial case all through his legal voyage. The problem with many Nigerians is that they hardly do any background check on those who claim the label of an activist.

But at least, we expect the cash-and-carry activist lawyer to tell Nigerians whether or not Gani would have endorsed the relentless slaughtering of compatriots across the country while Buhari insisted that the Benue people and other states of the federation must accommodate the killer herders.

Keyamo is yet to tell Nigerians how Gani would have reacted to the appointments into national security topmost positions — all the Security Chief from the north — against the constitutional provision as stipulated by the Federal Character Commission while the nation is in turmoil and under unremitting bloodbath.

Nigerians are waiting for Keyamo’s explanation about what would have been Gani’s position on the scammed Dapchi Girls’ abduction and release that further exposed the fraud in Buhari’s government.

Nigerians, except the hypocrite Keyamo, knew Gani sufficiently enough to be sure that he would have taken Buhari government apart in courts for the disgraceful and ethnicity-driven reinstatement of Adbdulraheed Maina and Yusuf Usman who have both defrauded the nation of billions of naira. Nigerians know that Gani would have been striving in courts demanding the inclusion of top APC chieftains like Adams Oshiomhole, Rotimi Amaechi and Senator Musliu Obanikoro and other to be tried and jailed for looting the treasury.

To be clear, Festus Keyamo is on the voyage to defame late Gani Fawehinmi’s patriotic contributions to the struggle to liberate Nigeria and emancipate the long suffering masses.

Dancing on the Gani’s grave, Keyamo signposted the Avatar as an unregenerated soul, incapable of deciphering when the cookies crumbled, were he to be alive. That’s the dumbest supposition from money-minded lawyer, morally bankrupt enough to trade off his parents.

Is anyone surprised that Keyamo is asking Nigerians to vote Buhari into office for a second term without fulfilling a single of his electoral promises to Nigerians? Keyamo is asking Nigerians to count their blessings in the belief that Buhari’s next four years in office will bring an end to the present economic hardship.

“My message to all those teaming supporters who did it in 2015 for our President is that you do not abandon a ship with which you set sail midway. Our race is not a 100 meters dash. It is a marathon race to rescue our country.

“We are almost there. When we turn the corner in 2019, you will see the tape at the finishing line. We must not run out of breaths. We believed in 2015. We must keep that belief alive,” Keyamo had intoned.

The reasons Mr. Keyamo is on a permanent amnesia and faded campaign sloganeering about the previous government destroying the economy is the failure of Buhari administration to point to any known achievement, apart from dividing the country on religious and ethnic lines.

That is APC’s way of taking Nigerians for fools because its belief that Nigerians are not aware that the nation’s economy collapsed as a result of the devaluation of the naira and closure of boarders when no measures were put in place to cushion the effect of our mono-economy.

In 2015, I helped to canvass for votes for the All Progressives Congress, (APC) because of the policy on job creation and the desire to develop the economy.

The APC manifesto on the economy and jobs creation stipulates that the party will maintain sound macro-economic policy environment, run an efficient government and preserve the independence of the Central Bank.

The APC promised to restore and strengthen financial confidence by putting in place a more robust monitoring – supervision and regulation of all financial institutions; thereby making the nation’s economy one of the fastest growing emerging economies in the world with a real GDP growth averaging 10% annually. That was the promise, among others.

The party promised to embark on vocational training, entrepreneurial and skills acquisition scheme for graduates along with the creation of Small Business Loan Guarantee Scheme to create at least 1 million new jobs every year, for the foreseeable future.

It promised to integrate the informal economy into the mainstream and prioritize the full implementation of the National Identification Scheme to generate the relevant data. It partly promised to expand domestic demand and consider undertaking associated public works programs.

It was APC’s manifesto to embark on export and production diversification including investment in infrastructure; promote manufacturing through agro-based industries and expand sub-regional trade through ECOWAS and AU; make Information Technology, Manufacturing, Agriculture and Entertainment key drivers of our economy.

APC promised to balance the economy across regions by the creation of 6 new Regional Economic Development Agencies (REDAs) to act as champions of sub-regional competitiveness; put in place a N300bn regional growth fund (average of N50bn in each geo-political region) to be managed by the REDAs, encourage private sector enterprise and support to help places currently reliant on the public sector.

The vacillating APC has abandoned its electoral promise to Amend the Constitution and the Land Use Act to create freehold/leasehold interests in land along with matching grants for states to create a nationwide electronic land title register on a state by state basis; create additional middle-class of at least 2 million new home owners in our first year in government and 1 million annually thereafter; by enacting a national mortgage system that will lend at single digit interest rates for purchase of owner- occupier houses.

For the first time in living memory and in Nigerian history, a political appointee took to the public domain to dramatize his appointment by an ethnically and morally bankrupt government of a man whose divisive style of governance has created more problems than solving them.

Who will tell Festus Keyamo to stop advertising his political appointment in a failed government and tell Nigerians what Buhari government has achieved in the last three and a half years? Has the facts changed now that Buhari has restructured Keyamo’s mentality and made him more of the same?

Erasmus, a Public Affairs Analyst writes from Lagos. Email: ikhideerasmus@gmail.com I invite you to follow me on Twitter @ikhide_erasmus1