 President Mohammed Buhari has reviewed the state of the nation stating that Nigeria, in spite of its numerous challenges, is lucky to still remain one entity. The president told a delegation of House of Representatives that went to see him at the presidential villa in Abuja. He said citizens have a right to freely choose their leaders during elections, irrespective of party affiliation or religion, and that he must be respected. He reaffirmed his determination to serve the country to the best of his ability. He also went on to commend the National Assembly for its cooperation with the executive. The president said he tried hard to get the 8th National Assembly to do the same for the sake of the country, but that it did not work. Well joining us to discuss this is Chike Chude. He is a political analyst. Thank you very much for joining us, Mr. Chude. Yes, thank you. So let's examine Mr. President's, let's read between the lines here and also look at exactly what Mr. President is saying. He's saying that we're lucky to come through all of the things that we've come through as a country. And really, looking around us, we've had a lot to deal with from the Johnson administration all the way down into his administration, with Boko Haram and the Chibok girls and the Dapchi girls, and here we are with banditry and kidnapping, ethnic tensions, and we are still one country. And really, there might just be something to be happy about. We might just be one lucky country, because look at the likes of Rwanda, look at the likes of Sudan, and I mean Eritrea is, we have Eritrea is running away from their country, but Nigeria has somewhat weathered the storm. Don't you think Mr. President is on the right path? Well, I am hard to understand exactly what the president means. Yes, I know that right now, the country is barely moving forward as one nation. Obviously, the country is not united. The country is exceedingly very divided. And perhaps that is what the president means, that the president is facing this after he has had six years in power, where he would have helped to heal the wounds of the country and brought us closer to get back, united us even more. I think, you know, he says the president is telling us what he intends to do to continue to work for the country's unity, but he hasn't told us what he has done already towards achieving that objective. And I must point out that no country is run on lock. Every country is run on the basis of deliberate actions, acts of commission or omission. That is what the president is telling us. And you don't think that the president has been deliberate in all of his years of leadership, and I'm talking about under this democratic dispensation, you do not think that the president has been deliberate with all of the, you know, the laws that he's put in place, the executive orders, or the fact that the president has spoken on several issues. You don't think that he's been deliberate, you think he's been passive? Well, I believe that the president has been deliberate in a lot of the things that he has done. But again, what is the value of the deliberate actions that he has undertaken in the country? What are the outcomes of the president's deliberate policies? Are the actions positive or negative? Have the actions contributed in uniting the people of this country? Have the actions contributed in making Nigerians love themselves, you know, more? Or have the actions ended up dividing the country and creating suspicion within the policy where people feel that government is run on the basis of parochialism and nepotism and all that? At least in the past six years, people have an idea of, people had an idea when the government was brought into power about what they expected from government. After six years, people have an idea about what, you know, how, I mean, the rate of the government, whether Nigeria is united, more united today or more divided. And I think the latter is the case with Nigeria. Nigeria is much more divided. And perhaps the president, I don't know what it means that, you know, we are lucky. It is not about luck. The country is on tenterhooks. The country is in a very difficult situation, it is in a very difficult place. And I'm not exactly sure that the president has done so much, you know, in trying to unify the country as a father of everybody. Because the belief out there, you know, and the suspicion out there is that the president has not exactly been a father, a united figure in the country. But we might be wrong. We might be wrong. Perhaps we have been reading some of his actions or inaction strongly. But what we are seeing is a country that is on the verge of collapse, you know, and the president has not exactly contributed to holding the country together and uniting the various support that make up the country. I don't think, I think at that level, we might not have scored him even above 50. But Nigeria has always been a country that's divided largely along ethnic and political lines. In fact, even religious lines. And that didn't happen because President Buhari became president. He came to meet Nigeria the way it is. Maybe the lines have become more and more obvious under this administration, but is this his problem? I mean, the president's promise to fight terrorism, to put an end to unemployment, to put an end to corruption, those were his core mandates. I don't remember his core mandate being to teach us how to be united, to love one another, and see every other person as Nigerian first before we are Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba. And I'm not saying that it's too far-fetched or too far-flung from the presidency, but can we really blame the president for the divisions that we have as a country? Well, if you say Nigeria has always been divided, there's always been some level of a division in the country. There's no doubt about that. But we saw the fineness of Nigeria. We saw the best part of Nigeria in June 12, 1993, when Nigerians across all divides, religious, geopolitical, ethnic, came together to cast their votes in an election that was adjourned to be the freest and fairest in the country. And unfortunately, it was announced. And I think the high point of that election was the unity that we saw when the candidates for presidency or for both parties, where we had a Muslim-Muslim ticket, especially for the SDP. And then the Christian administration of Nigeria was very okay with it. And they said, then the can was led by Abish of Okuji. And for him, it was, it doesn't matter, or it didn't matter if we had the Muslim-Muslim president. What mattered is what they do when they get to power, when they work to push Nigeria forward along the path of progress, when they work to unite Nigeria. Today, Nigeria is far more divided than it has ever been. And I'm not saying that this has to just be to do only with the president. But the president, I mean, the way he has conducted himself in office with regards, for instance, the issue of federal character that is supposed to symbolize our togetherness as a nation, in terms of his appointment, he's unprecedented, no presidency, no, even under the military dispensation, within the level of parochialism and nepotism that has been exhibited in the past six years in terms of appointments, where to the extent that people, you know, begin strongly to feel that the president has the other agenda, other agenda that is, I mean, other than a Nigerian agenda. So this has been the issue. And I think that the president has a very big role to play in trying to bring Nigerians together. And like I'm saying, I don't think he has done so much of that. And people are not convinced. And if we talk about division in this country, the separatist institutions in this country, all of these things have been highlighted more by the governments that we have had in the past six years. Let's talk about one of the major issues that the president highlighted at that event. He talked about the he urged politicians to respect, I'd like to quote him directly, people's right to choose their leaders. He did say that. And I want to take your thoughts on that. He's asking politicians, I'm sure he's himself included, to respect people's rights in choosing their leaders. I want to make reference to a conversation I had yesterday where the pastor of the House on the Rock Church was talking about the fact that people who, the king makers already decide who would be our leaders before the election day. And then these people are put in front of us. And then we are only limited to the choices that the king makers have made. Why do you think that Nigerians are so averse? This might not be the right word, but please correct me, to joining political parties, especially the very religious ones. But we're very quick to complain about who is being presented by any political party or who wants to run. Why are we so taken away from the idea of being part of grassroots politics or even holding a party card, whatever party it may be? Why do you think that we are so averse to it? No, you see, the reality is that the political elites have failed us in this country. And again, we can't talk about the failure of the political elites without also talking about the failure of the followership in the country. We do not have a committed followership. Of course, there are so many reasons for that. The poverty in the land, the lack of electricity, and all that. So many of these things have also contributed. The deep divisions that the political elites have perpetrated in this country for the pupils, taking advantage of that and keeping and to keep the people divided. Why they continue to ride roughshod over the people. So these things have contributed. But I think that they say to whom much is given, much is expected. So the political elites have also been very, very responsible for what has gone on in this country, especially from 1998. And we'll be talking about the big two political parties because they are the ones that have had the way with them to take control of the politics of this country. And with the control of the politics of this country, the Iran riots, with the country's treasury, with corruption and everything that has gone on. And where were we in all of this? We keep making reference to these things. And I'm not in any way holding brief for Mr. President or the APC or the PDP. I'm just asking salient questions. We sat through all of these things and we saw them happen. What role did we play as followers in making sure that these things did not continue? Because this seems to be like a very deadly cycle that's killing us, you know, every day. Well, I think it is, it's a very difficult situation that you, that I, I, there's no hard and fast rule. There's no one answer that will resolve all of the contradictions, sociopolitics, social political contradictions that we have in Nigeria. You know, the people have been impoverished over the years. And once you have the people that are operating at this, at the economic level that they are operating, they have very few choices. So you have a situation where, you know, the political elites, you know, now determine a lot of things, you know, what happens in the country, because the people themselves have been kept for. So their choices are very, very few. They are just very little they can do. But again, that's the essence of what the civil society organizations are doing, trying to create awareness among the people, try to list up the people, try to tell the people the implications of the consequences of allowing themselves to be bright, to sell their goods and all of that. You know, but the reality is that, I mean, somebody has said that a man is loyal to the person who puts bread on the table. And so when he comes to the election time, the politicians will put bread on the table of the average Nigerian who is very, very impoverished. You know, so these are some of the, so the, the, the situations that confronts the average Nigerian. So how we are going to get out, get out of it is something I cannot exactly tell you that I know. But we have continued to educate Nigerians. And the reality is that a lot of Nigerians are becoming more and more aware of what is going on. You know, so some of them are beginning to stand up to become, at least from that knowledge that, the knowledge that provokes, you know, the action. So we hope that sooner than later, that many of them will begin to fight back, you know, to kick back against the politicians when they come with their money, they will tell them, you know, they're able to tell them where to get off. You know, but I can, like I told, that I've said, it is going to be a very difficult situation because poverty is actually determining how, you know, the, the general populace responds to the overtures of the politicians, poverty and illiteracy. And so we need to be able to do something and to properly educate our people about their duties and responsibilities when it comes to their engagement with politicians in the country. And finally, before we wrap up this conversation, the president also pointed to the fact that he was going to fight and end. I want to, I want to quote him directly. He vowed to end insecurity. Now this is like the big white elephant in the room where, I mean, literally in every part of the country, there is some form of insecurity and people fear for their lives. You know, it's happening. It's either it's kidnapping or broad daylight robbery or, or abductions in, you know, in the Northwest. This is not the first time the president is vowing to end insecurity. Why should we take this one seriously? Could it be that maybe he wants to go out with a bank? Let me tell you, if you have to do a survey of Nigerians, I think about 1995% of Nigerians will tell you that they don't believe the president. So it is time for the president to learn to work the talk. It is not about because we have had him at every particular point in time. You know, he keeps on making the statements that he will bring the bandits to, to, to bring banditry and the bullets in the country to, to, to restore. Nigerians don't believe him. You know, so, so this is one time where actions should speak louder than words. Let him do it. And then Nigerians will say, yes, he told us he was going to do it. But if you're going to, because the more the president talks, the more the president talks about what he's going to do with the bandits and Boko Haram and the insurgents in the country, the more, the more deadly this people become, the reality is that they are in charge, the insurgents and the violent extremists in this country are in charge of what happens. They determine what they are going to do, where they are going to do it, when they are going to do it and whether there will be consequences or no consequences. In most cases, there are no consequences. So we now have a situation where the government either backs them or the government gives them money, you know, with, with, with, you know, with the hope that they are not going to, that they will stop what they are doing. And what happens is that they are empowered more, they become border and then continue more atrocities against Nigerian people and the Nigerian state. So let the president walk to talk. Let him stop telling us about what he's going to do. Nobody believes him. Let him do it. And then with all of our heart for him and say he promised he was going to do it this time around, he had done it. All right. Achiketure is a political analyst and he joined us live from Lagos. Thank you very much for speaking with us. We appreciate it. Thank you. All right. We'll take a short break and when we come back, I will give you my take. It's time for my take. Well, I'm here again to sound the alarm that time waits for no one, not even you, not even us in Nigeria. We keep waiting and hoping that some miracle will happen or maybe God will send an angel to, you know, become the president of this country. No, it's never going to happen. Why? The leaders that we have were very deserving of them. You ask me why? Don't get angry. The truth is bitter. We are a reflection of our leaders. We aid and abate these leaders and we, you know, for every group of people that are criticizing and asking for dividends of democracy, there's another group with a placard supporting the mediocrity that has been exhibited by our politicians. And so really there is no concerted efforts. We're not in agreement. If we want good to be the order of the day, we as a people need to start doing good. These politicians are just a fraction of the 200 plus Nigerians that feel this country up. So a tiny group of people cannot lead us. If we, the example, are not good people, if you want good governance, then you need to start governing well in your homes. It starts from the home, into society, into our communities because all of these people we call our leaders are a product of society. We cannot change Nigeria by just like this. It cannot happen. You can't toss a coin and hope that Nigeria will change for the better. No. It starts with you. It starts with me. And until we all decide that we want this country to change and stop playing to the gallery, it will not change. It will continue to complain. It will continue to go around in circles and it might take 40 plus years in this wilderness of no good until we realize that we need to stand up. And who says that when you are poor and you're hungry, you're angry, the moment you're given rice or a wrapper or salt or little money, that that will suffice. Your anger is supposed to push you to say no to all of these petty gifts. How long did it even last? You finished the rice. Four years later, you're crying, you're grinding your teeth because you are the reason why you're suffering. But if you turn your backs on these people and say, take these things away, do the job. And if you do not do the job, we will come for you. We will get you out of that office. No matter how long it takes, these people will sit up. But until then, we'll just keep waiting. I am Mary Anacol. Thank you for watching.