By Moses E. Ochonu
There is a roving, seemingly ubiquitous army
of Nigerians who have appointed themselves defenders of President Buhari.
Unfortunately, by employing offensive and ineffective logics and tactics, these
fanatical supporters of the president are doing more reputational harm than
good to their hero, and turning away compatriots who would otherwise be willing
to give the president a fair hearing on the mounting disappointments with his
administration.
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| *Buhari |
Yesterday, I saw an update on my Facebook
timeline with the following words: “if
Jonathan had won, the dollar would be exchanging for N1000.” This was
apparently advanced to counter the criticism of the naira’s current free fall
under the confused monetary policy of this administration.
Where does one begin on this fanatically
blind, impulsive defence of Buhari? First of all, that statement begins from a
premise of absence, which is a no-no in logic. Jonathan did not win, so we do
not and cannot know what would have happened to the naira had he won. That
belongs in the realm of known unknowns, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld.
Historians call this counterfactual logic or
argument. And, by the way, since when did Jonathan become the baseline of
comparison for the author(s) of this Facebook update?
Second, it is a defence that slyly attempts to
divert our attention away from the current Forex reality, which is that under
Buhari the naira has lost about 40 percent of its value against the dollar in
the parallel market. We can debate the extent to which this is the fault of the
fiscal and monetary policies of the president, but that is a separate
conversation.
Third, the defence is premised on a negative —
that is, the fact that the dollar does NOT (yet) exchange for N1000, instead of
on the fact that it DOES exchange for N360, which is about N150 more than it
exchanged under Jonathan. In this warped reasoning, we should only start
complaining about Buhari’s monetary policies when the dollar begins to exchange
for more than N1000!
