Enugu Massacre: The Branding Of Buhari As Comedian-In-Chief

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!