Buhari: A President Frozen In Time

By Ikechukwu Amaechi
There is hardly any Nigerian who is not in a state of despair right now. Since Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as president last year, despondency has enveloped the nation. Disappointment makes the misery worse.

In the build-up to the 2015 elections, Buhari was cast in the mould of Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (Charles de Gaulle), the legendary French military general and statesman who founded the Fifth Republic in 1958 and was elected the 18th president of France, a position he held until his resignation in 1969.

*President Buhari 

To some others, he was Nigeria’s Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Turkish army officer and revolutionary, who became the first president and founder of modern Turkey.

So beholden was Atatürk to his people that his surname, which means father of the Turks, granted to him in 1934, was forbidden to any other person by the Turkish Parliament.

Many of the promoters of the Buhari candidacy then assured us that by the time he was done with governance, he would be deified.
To be fair, there are still some Nigerians who believe that Buhari is Nigeria’s messiah but they are in a pathetic minority now.

And that is a big tragedy, not only for us but for the man himself, who failed to rise to the occasion when it mattered most. The president has demystified himself.

Yes, demystified himself because his injuries are self-inflicted.

A friend raised a poser last week which I consider very pertinent. What do you do when you have a president who did not come to power through the barrel of a gun but the ballot box and yet does not care a hoot about public opinion, about national mood?

What do you do when even the most sincere attempt to say, ‘hey, wait a minute Mr. President, you are going the wrong direction,’ is hoisted on the pole of deceit as evidence of corruption fighting back?

The answer to this poser, I must confess, is not as easy as it seems; which, perhaps, explains the melancholic atmosphere all around us.
But it seems Buhari is beginning to take the people for granted. His grandstanding is becoming offensive. His ‘do as I say and not as I do’ attitude is beginning to rankle.