Compared To Jonathan, Buhari Is A Weakling

By Reno Omokri

“I Never Knew the IGP Moved To Nasarawa After I Sent Him To Benue”.

These were the words of President Muhammadu Buhari, a man sold to Nigeria as a strongman leader. Going further, the President is quoted to have said “I did not know that the IG did not stay in the state. I am getting to know this at this meeting. I am quite surprised.”

*Jonathan and Buhari 

This revelation from President Buhari has vindicated his wife, Aisha Buhari, who in 2016 revealed that the President had lost control of his government. What type of Commander-in-Chief gives an order and does not have processes in place to verify that such orders have been carried out? A weak leader that is who.

President Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) sold a lie that former President Jonathan was weak, however, if an Inspector General of Police had disobeyed President Jonathan’s orders two things would have happened; Former Jonathan would have known because he had a practice of verifying that his orders had been obeyed, and Ex President Jonathan would have sacked such an IGP before you could say Jack Robinson.

A case in point is that of former Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba. IGP Suleiman Abba was established to have committed an infraction on April 21, 2015 and he was fired by President Jonathan on the same day.

But President Buhari’s weakness and inaction, as typified in the willful disobedience of his order by IGP, Ibrahim Idris, is part of a pattern of behaviour that shows that the President is in office but not in power.

During the Jonathan administration, some ministers and other officials were accused of either corruption or conflict of interest and they were summarily fired. One on the same day and the other after a two week investigation. But contrast that with President Buhari who left his Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, in his job even after glaring evidence that the man was crooked.

Till today, Nigerians do not know which official in the Buhari administration brought back Abdulrasheed Maina, reinstated him into the civil service and gave him double promotion. So undisciplined is the Buhari government that his Head of the Civil Service and his Chief of Staff were caught on video quarreling over the Maina affair in full view of reporters and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Such is the hallmark of an administration with a weak and gutless leader.

Even a former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, showed more spine in office than President Buhari. It will be recalled that when then Anambra State Governor, Chris Ngige, was ‘impeached’ then abducted and locked in a toilet, he testified that a phone was smuggled into his toilet detention center with which he called then Vice President Atiku Abubakar, because then President Obasanjo had traveled out of the country, and that Atiku Abubakar subsequently called the then Inspector General of Police, Tafa Balogun, and ordered him to reinstate Ngige.

If a sitting Vice President can order an IGP and ensure that his order was carried out, Nigeria has no use for a President who cannot do the same. A President that cannot supervise his appointees, is that one a President? A President whose orders are disobeyed, is that one a leader? President who does not know what is happening in his government, is that one in power? 

*Reno Omokri was former aide to President Jonathan on New Media