By Idowu Akinlotan
If eloquence or elocution was all that
is needed to prove one’s bona fides or demonstrate competence, President
Muhammadu Buhari would prove a woeful failure. In his maiden media chat last
week, he struggled to communicate, and worse, even struggled to form his
thoughts. He did not have problem with his tenses, nor if he did should that
worry us. At least the country understood their president, and from his
responses, the president in turn claimed and indeed appeared to understand his
countrymen, especially how sometimes difficult they can be. It was his first
media chat, and doubtless his coaches must have worked on him, schooling him on
difficult and anticipated questions, and gently admonishing the ramrod straight
retired army general to rein in his emotions, soften his taciturnity, and crack
some jokes. His coaches will now need to do more, and if need be, ensure he can
tell the difference between excise and exercise, for one has to do with customs
and the other military drill.
*Buhari
Overall, notwithstanding his problematic elocution,
President Buhari came across as honest, down to earth, dependable, and someone
Nigerians can trust with their money — absolutely. But to trust him with their
lives, Nigerians will have to school him on the constitution afresh and extract
promises of his fidelity to the laws of the land. For now, he sees both the
constitution and the law as hindrances and handles them with the expedience of
his military antecedents. Former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck
Jonathan spoke clearer and more fluently, and had better, wider and more
complex grasp of issues; howbeit the former was imperious with his guttural
voice and elocution, and the latter, with his clipped speech and tremulous
voice, suffered from persecution complex.
This is President Buhari’s first chat. Despite his age,
education and inflexible approach to issues, he is expected to improve
considerably and in many ways. But in some other critical ways, Nigerians must
not expect any improvement, because there won’t and can’t be any. The president
rightly drew a parallel between his first coming as a military head of state,
when he railroaded suspected thieves to jail and put the burden of proof on
them, and his latest coming as an elected president, when the burden of proof
lies with his government. Yet, he sounded plaintive, and could barely hide his
irritation with the procedural handicaps the rule of law imposed on him. Worse,
when asked why he seemed impervious to the bail granted some of his quarries,
perhaps particularly former National Security Adviser (NSA) Col. Sambo Dasuki
(retd.), the president bristled at the question, one of the two times he nearly
lost his composure during the chat, and drew attention to the severity of the
allegations and evidence against the retired colonel. At that point, and for
him, the issue was no longer the law. It surprisingly bothered him little that
he could be accused, very reasonably it seems, of pursuing vendetta against the
former NSA.
