In my lifetime, I have had the privilege of holding face-to-face meetings with two former Heads of States of two African countries.
In January 2021, as a UNDP funded legal consultant to the Ministry of Justice of The Gambia, we held a meeting with former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ). He was there in The Gambia to mediate for peace due to an ongoing constitutional deadlock between the President of The Gambia and the Opposition.
In the year October 2024, as an European Union funded legal consultant to the Ministry of Justice of The Kingdom of Lesotho,I had the privilege of meeting and holding series of conversations with the longest serving former Prime Minister of The Kingdom of Lesotho.
There is a common feature that resonates in my conversations with both former heads of States, they were both in charge of their mental faculties of recollection of events that occurred during their tenures!!!
Even the former Prime Minister of Lesotho who was born in the year 1945. When he told me about an event that happened in the 1990s which involved Chief Emeka Anyaoku (in his role as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth) and the former King of the Kingdom of Lesotho. After our conversation, when I cross-checked the facts, the said former Prime Minister of Lesotho was 100% accurate in his narrative.
However, PMB as a former head of State who just left office in the year 2023, when called upon to provide a narrative of his tenure in office had this to say:
“Former President Muhammadu Buhari has stated that the country’s security and economy improved significantly during his eight-year tenure.
Buhari stated this on Wednesday while receiving members of the Katsina State Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigerian Union of Journalists at his country home in Daura, Katsina State.
The former President stated that he inherited a bad economy and security challenges from the Peoples Democratic Party, which was in government for 16 years.
Buhari, however, asserted that his government’s strategies successfully tackled these challenges, curbing terrorism and economic hardship.”
The foregoing is how PMB remembers his tenure.
However, a Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Josef Onoh, has debunked the claims of PMB by providing statistics to controvert PMB as follows: “Under Buhari’s watch, the North East. North Central, South East, South West couldn’t go to sleep in peace. When you assumed office on May 29, 2015, the cumulative number of people killed in Nigeria, according to the NST, was 34,972. But from the day you assumed office, the death figure rose to 98,083 as of May 16, 2023.”
Josef Onoh concluded by stating that during the regime of PMB, Nigeria became what he described as the “Las Vegas of corruption and insecurity”.
Between the recollections of PMB and Josef Onoh, it appears that the recollections of Josef Onoh are more consistent with published statistics about the status of insecurity and the economy during PMB’s tenure.
For example, it was during PMB’s tenure that the World Bank announced in the year 2019, that with over 83,000,000 Nigerians living under abject poverty, Nigeria was now classified as the poverty capital of the world. This is a nomenclature that was previously held by India.
“Amnesia refers to the loss of memories, including facts, information and experiences.”
So it appears that between the recollections of Josef Onoh and PMB, someone appears to suffer from amnesia and delusions!!!
Also, it offends the sensibilities of many Nigerians who are already suffering economic hardships inflicted by PMB’s regime to hear his latest self-adulation which comes across as: “Rub salt in the wound” means to make a difficult situation even worse for someone by reminding them of their pain or failure, essentially adding insult to injury; it’s an idiom that implies making someone’s discomfort more intense by bringing up a painful topic or situation.”
