Column: Buhari should have taught Truss not to listen
By Odoh Diego Okenyodo
As a politician, Listening to the voice of your people is bad, and that’s if you listen to those who advise Third World leaders. Imagine what happened to David Cameron. He went for a referendum on Brexit and had no alternative result to show in case the people disagreed with him by voting to leave. Then they voted to leave the European Union, and life has not been happy ever after.
Since then, they have seen three more Prime Ministers, and they’re about to have the fifth Prime Minister in BE, Buhari Era. In the coming week, while Nigeria has had one President since 2015, he remains despite not fulfilling his promises. He should teach British leaders how to maintain stability in government by not listening to the cries of his people. As a friend of mine remarked yesterday, “That 10 Downing Street has become a short let apartment…AirBnB.” It sounds funny, but it is true. That place needs to be fumigated thoroughly and maybe exorcised.
Liz Truss should have swallowed her pride and come to learn from us. She may be leading a colonial master, but we, the colonial mistress, can have a lot to offer her. Now, see what pride has done. She is no more a Prime Minister and has used up her last opportunity to blame things on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. What was she so reckless with a lifetime opportunity to learn from the feet of the master?
Like I said before, Buhari has outlived four Prime Ministers, and he’s going to see the fifth one, most likely before he leaves on the 29th of May, 2023. Of course, not everything that he has done has been bad. But you can see that his promise of not worsening the security situation in the country, his promise of improving the economy and his promise of fighting corruption are all dead. Even his greatest associates have disagreed with him on the records, so much so that his Presidential candidate is not likely to invoke Buhari’s records as a testimonial of what their party would do. This is somewhat like Liz Truss, who also made promises that she could not keep, one of which was the promise two days ago that she would fight to the end, that she’s not a quitter, but she’s a fighter, and then the following day she quit! Why should someone promise not to quit and do so immediately after? That is a betrayal of a democratic promise!
But please, Truss was not your average democrat, and so she had to be consumed by the machinations of her group. Liz Ross believed everything was available to be determined by who had the most money to pay. And so she didn’t believe in things like the environment, taking care of the climate and similar kinds of things, so the government tried to protect the people against a capitalist class that was extracted from society. She believes that people should buy everything that should be for sale. Even the air. This was why the economy kept having issues under her watch. In some way, this is similar to what we have in Nigeria. We have people dying as a result of floods, and they are not expecting their President to be with them because he never empathises with anybody suffering anything. And Nigerians have gotten used to not having a President that is presidential in times of need. And we need to teach Britain how to be like this, especially their Prime Ministers, to understand that when you’re a Prime Minister, you are supposed to be above those minions who are unable to afford to be alive. So as detestable as least Truss’s policies were, you can see that she responded to popular pressure. Just like David Cameron, her predecessor, who is now like an ancestor.
But one needs to see the role the press played in this sack. The British press can be very unforgiving, and that might have been responsible for why this woman couldn’t survive more than 45 days as Prime Minister. Imagine those guys going around to unearth what the former Prime Minister said when she was 19. They also went to find out about the affair she had at the age of 25. While there is no condoning the affair or anything that was said, it is important to see how a person’s past can shape their future. Did in the past many years ago can be reproduced and made to appear like you said some minutes back. At the age of 19, with all fire in the brains and everywhere, it’s easy for a young lady who has seen nothing in life to say, ” Hey, the monarchy is not relevant anymore to the British people and needs to be abolished. And it should be abolished to say that here it cannot be used against me but why should it be used against somebody many years later without qualification?
If it is also true that Truss couldn’t flow with King Charles, some of us would scream, “Aha!” She always didn’t like the monarchy, and when she came in, the first thing that happened was the death of Mama Charlie. An owl hoots at night and the baby dies in the morning, and you say we should not cry foul? So you could say that Liz truss has been a victim of circumstances of some sort where everything she is touching doesn’t turn to god. It actually turns to sand, you know, where she says something that almost everybody says, and it comes to her and her she goes into an affair, and it comes to haunt her, and she comes into office, and the Queen dies just some hours later. Can you see how the British Village people are after her?
There were many reasons for the Prime Minister to leave. She wasn’t as strong-headed as Boris Johnson, and she also seems to have some kind of family orientation in a sentence that makes her want to go back home to something. She is 47 years old and spent only 45 days in office; I am shocked that the Goliaths within the conservative party didn’t allow her to enjoy the 47th day to make a day for each year she has spent on earth.