I am in a foul mood this Monday morning. Since President Muhammadu Buhari slipped away on a ten-day holiday, his compatriots have been on mental and verbal rampage. Millions of us have conceived and spoken rubbish, much of which has gone viral. It’s a crying shame how Nigerians reputed by other nationals to have won the global hospitality prize for keeps would be this hateful of their very own. Do we suffer from syngenesophobia, the morbid fear of relatives (or, contextually, compatriots)? Medical experts concerned should help us.
That might seem simplistic or even funny, but isn’t that how you escape from a useless cul-de-saclike trap? The Nigerian situation is a sad commentary on citizenship, and leadership. How do people, who seem to fear and tremble for God take so easily to resentment for members of their national family? Why do we play God in such a dumb way? I warned that I was in a foul mood, didn’t I? Why and how would people, who claim to worship God or Allah be this eponymously satanic in their words and actions?
What have I been rambling about? If you asked that, then you are part of the problem; an integral component of the politically-hypocritical and religiously-pugnacious clan of ethnic cynics, bigots and sadists whose public communications show Nigeria as ‘an atomistic society perpetually at war with itself’. We laugh it off as politics, but this linguistic diarrhoea has damaged our looks at home and abroad. Others see us as a nation of jokers; as a people of low morals; as those who applaud excellence or condemn mediocrity only when it suits our ethnic, religious and political biases. We go to ridiculous lengths to display what the world sees as native stupidity all in the name of scoring cheap political points.
Have Nigerians ever taken time out to ruminate on the untold blot that these unfounded rumours stamp on our escutcheon? For as long as we continue with this downhill mannerism, the world will see our country as only a pretender to the throne of global significance. Up close and personal, we shall remain at best a fractured union pulling away simultaneously in different directions as has been our wont since 1960. This is not about the North and the South nor can it be about them and us. This condemnation is about all of us: The government, the people; everyone. We have failed Nigeria!
Staying with the latest onslaught against President Muhammadu Buhari, it is not difficult to see that the Presidency or indeed the administration and the people are both responsible for messing up what is simply a natural routine. Just as there would always be a vexed debate vis-à-vis which comes first, the chick or the egg, there’s no need to apportion blame on the basis of who set the stage for this round of Buhari’s unpresidential treatment by the people he leads; the very people who jubilated when INEC announced him winner 2015. Yes, because if one accepts that it is the people; nay, the opposition that tried to make political capital out of the president’s ten-day leave, there would also be the need to look at the flip side: Namely, how the president’s own men and women have handled matters arising from the leave. By being secretive, the many spokespersons of the administration prepared the ground for this ‘much-ado-about-nothing’ confusion. They should have known that their insensitivity will bring back our girls; sorry, will bring back Yar’Adua memories (may his soul rest in peace); the era when bad aides bungled things for a good leader. The initial noise by the people may have been to ensure that our country wasn’t allowed to retake that route. Perhaps!
But no, presidential handlers stuck to their guns. It seems this toughened the people to allow stuff to degenerate to this mockery. While such lines, ditto being labelled ‘wailing wailers’, should not grant citizens the poetic licence to insult their president or government in the social media, they can incense a few to throw caution to the wind. Yet, we must show restraint. President Buhari is ours, in health and in sickness. We, the people, may condemn his team members for occasionally being overzealous and unpresidential but we should never descend into the arena. We destroy our country, otherwise.
Thankfully, an alarming majority of our citizens have either not caught the bug or yet betrayed its symptoms. I celebrate Northern or Muslim or non-PDP Nigerians, who never met then-President Goodluck Jonathan but who supported him totally. Similarly, I commend Southern or Christian or non-APC compatriots, who have no relationship whatsoever with the Aso Rock incumbent but who are with him in prayers and in deeds 25 hours daily. Nigeria needs these patriots, going forward.
Furthermore, there’s a sane approach that every government must adopt in sensitive matters of this nature. First, we must realise that we are not in North Korea, where the leader cannot be said or seen to fall ill. This is Nigeria where our president is neither God nor a god. Muhammadu Buhari is a human being whose inalienable rights include the legroom that he could fall ill from time to time. It removes nothing from him if he takes ill. In fact, we should panic if with his age and the burden of Nigeria on his tired shoulders he does not intermittently excuse himself off on break. Illness is not a taboo except, perhaps, in Aso Rock. That’s one. Two, hiding the whereabouts of a leader from the people he leads on the pretext that he’s on leave is puerile reasoning. It doesn’t add up. If anything, it fuels anxiety, suspicion and rumour-mongering. The Presidency is to blame not only for distracting the boss, who was supposedly resting but also for carelessly arousing worries about his health and life. The man is our president!
While the part about death must be expunged from our collective memory, President Buhari on return should thank Nigerians for loving him as we do. He should also teach or insist for his aides to feel free at all times to avail the people of details of his movement and activities. Deafening silence or incoherent explanations only lead to embarrassing fabrications.
Also, in the course of this Presidency, if there arises again the need in the absence of the president for government to seek to douse nationwide cynicism, either the wife of the president, Aisha, or Vice President Yemi Osinbajo should be deployed because they both still retain the believability elements of credibility, pedigree and what I call honesty-boldness.
As for we the people, some of us, the Bible at Proverbs 24:17-18 has something we must meditate on. I wish President Muhammadu Buhari long life and in good health. God bless Nigeria!
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