By Emmanuel Uchenna Ugwu
What does President Barack Obama do when a hate-drunk man enters a
school building and shoots American kids dead?
The
busiest and most burdened leader in the world suspends his routine and moves
quickly to own the carnage as the ultimate guardian of the United States .
He goes on air soon after the news breaks. He comforts the bereaved families
and calms a shaken nation. He swears that America would visit the runaway
killer with a condign punishment. He changes his itinerary and visits the
devastated neighborhood as soon as possible.
*Buhari |
What did
our own Obama do after Fulani herdsmen destroyed farmlands, butchered forty
eight human beings, and burnt down a church in Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani, in a
three-in-one violation of the people’s livelihoods, lives and religion?
President
Muhammadu Buhari, the sentinel of our homeland, did something that illustrates
the age-old inhumanity and irresponsibility of Nigerian rulership: He observed
the umpteenth terrorist attack on a peaceable Nigerian community and did
nothing!
He waited
for the governor of the depopulated state of Enugu to contact Aso Rock and request for an
audience.
When
Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi reported for the appointment, the Nigerian media styled his
visit as an occasion for the governor to "brief" the president.
The spin
emanated from reflex factory of the Nigerian press. It was their salute to
tradition.
A
tradition in which order works in reverse. A setting where, in the aftermath of
a humanitarian disaster, a healthy commander-in-chief rests easy in his office
and waits for the governor to fly to Abuja
to confirm the fairy tale.
The
‘briefing’ is a reverse condolence visit; the quest of a traumatized citizenry
for the sympathy of the aloof leadership of their own country. It is an
aberration. But it had to happen because Nigerian rulers are strangers to
empathy. They are incapable of breaking out of the bubble they live in to
acquaint themselves with the distress of the street.
Buhari
received Ugwanyi with imperial condescension. The President hoped to earn
praise for deigning to see the governor. Of course, a photo-op with his lowly
caller would telegraph that he was magnanimous enough to pay precious
presidential attention to the incident.
But Buhari
failed to exude passable seriousness. The honesty inherent in his
constitution foiled the attempt of his politician persona to enact a convincing
make-believe reality. The pictures of his encounter with Ugwuanyi showed Buhari
jesting with his awkward-smiling visitor. They looked as jubilant as
if they had met... to celebrate the success of the massacre!
The
pictures of an exultant Buhari and Ugwuanyi, people who were supposedly meeting
for a ‘briefing’ on the bloody mayhem, were most incongruous. The pictures
strongly suggest that State House photographers did not find Buhari possessed
of the sobriety appropriate for the situation. So the media team was
constrained to select from all the shots taken the ones in which the two men
appeared to be least euphoric!