By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
It’s not only drugs that expire; presidents also expire. There are expired and there are expired presidents. You can quote me on this matter.
The loneliest man on God’s earth is any expired president of this country called Nigeria.
Not even an expired harlot is lonelier than the expired president. Brothel prostitutes hardly ever abandon their mentors, but not so with political prostitutes who litter this land of the unhappiest people on earth.
Lackeys and ill-assorted ass-lickers in Nigerian politics abandon all presidents once they are out of power like used prophylactics.
My ever serviceable crystal ball tells me that it is in the bid to make up for the coming days of abandonment and loneliness when he is out of power that President Muhammadu Buhari is encouraging every wannabe to visit him at Aso Villa over the 2023 presidential chase.
Trust Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to beat the gun in the visit to Buhari in Aso Villa, but the forever dangerous Northern elders have quickly come out with the ominous warning that their fellow northerners must not vote for any president like Buhari because they are ashamed of the Daura man as a failure.
Can’t you see that the loneliness is already creeping in on Buhari even before he has expired? The elders of the North have kicked into touch like a deflated football the notion that the North can never ever abandon its own.
Just like Peter denied Jesus Christ in the Bible, the northerners have denied their own messiah. Can I hear a loud Hallelujah to that?
It’s like all the powers-that-be are in a mighty hurry to get to the 2023 presidential election date that will launch Buhari into the sad world of expiration and loneliness.
Considering what happened to his predecessor, President Goodluck Jonathan, after he conceded power Buhari must now be having a goose pimple or two on the fate that lies ahead.
My formidable friend who has seen it all, Dr Reuben Abati, reveals that after President Jonathan conceded to Buhari the outgoing president’s boon companion who was always sharing boon moments came to Aso Villa and coldly announced that he had not come to see his old friend but to explore the new powers on the rock.
Poor Reuben could not get the hang of it that even the presidential lounge was denied Jonathan when he came to embark on his lonely flight to Otuoke.
It had to even be negotiated for the lounge to be opened and for a presidential jet to be allocated for the man from Otuoke to undertake the flight into the wilderness of utter loneliness.
Our elders say that the new bride ought to learn necessary lessons from whatever happened to the older wife.
It is not for nothing that General Olusegun Obasanjo who reluctantly took power as a military Head of State “against my will” reappeared as a civilian president angling for constitutional review and the so-called Third Term.
The anticipatory loneliness of the expired president needed to be fought with all the powers belonging to “my command”.
Let’s get back further to the first (and last?) military president of Nigeria, General Ibrahim Babangida, who annulled the popular June 12, 1993 election and perforce had to flee Aso Villa into the loneliness of the fabled 50-bedroom Minna mansion.
Now that Buhari has matched the record of Obasanjo in transiting from military leader to civilian president, the sad reality that cannot be mastered is the loneliness facing the misfiring messiah as the days roll by.
Buhari stressed that 150 cows were all he had before his advent into Aso Villa, but I daresay that returning to these 150 cows may not be enough to stave off the debilitating loneliness of the expired president.
It gets even worse when parrots such as Lai Mohammed, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu woud no longer be there to repeat endless praise songs of idol worship.
Junketing with multiform presidential jets will be out of the way in a manner that may deepen the loneliness into acute desolation and chronic depression.
The absence of cattle routes and ruga domains may end up playing funny games to the mind when loneliness rules the roost once out of power.
It is cool to learn from Jean-Paul Sartre: “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”
The bad company of the loneliness of the expired president recalls the words of Joss Whedon: “Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there.”
Nigerians hardly ever miss their ex-presidents, and many would actually wish that these ex-leaders never ever happened even as ordinary living things.
Now there is some noise in some Nigerian circles that Buhari has arranged to fetch Goodluck Jonathan out of loneliness and install him in power in a curious predecessor-successor-predecessor-successor chain.
Nigerians are not at all excited by the proposition, and not a few pundits maintain that Jonathan will end up graduating from loneliness to total disgrace if he opts for the poisoned chalice.
Count me out of all the permutations for all I know is that stark loneliness is the ultimate reward of the expired president as per the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”
A tear for the expired president!