By Remi Oyeyemi
President
Muhammadu Buhari, has shown that he enjoys sycophancy. He appears to revel in
it. He swims in it. He eats and drinks it. He definitely loves it a lot. The
echoes of praise – singers are sonorous in his ears. The cacophony of
sycophants translates to rhythm of rhymes in his ears. He adores the way
boot-lickers make his shoes shine. The cringing around him seems to make him
feel whole. It is a revelry not grounded in reality. And if he continues with
this attitude to governance, it is easier to see how he would end up. Any
president who is already accepting any form of nomination for a second term
towards the end of his first uneventful year in office has to be less serious
minded than expected.
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*Buhari |
The party leaders who are behind this are not friends of President Buhari. To
begin to offer him the ticket of the Party three years out at this point in
time is premature, sycophantic and inimical to the country’s progress. It is
aimed at bringing the President down and ensuring his failure. But Buhari himself,
cocooned in self aggrandizement, inebriated in self importance and intoxicated
by egoism could not see the danger of the Greek Gift. His crapulent myopia
could not avail him the opportunity to see how such a decision was not in his
own best interest.
The implication of this is very
huge. It suggests that President Buhari wants to be president just for the sake
of it and not for the interest of Nigeria and its yoked people. Since
he assumed office about a year ago, everything has been going from bad to worse.
He has no single achievement he could point to that he has accomplished. He has
filtered away all the goodwill he enjoyed when he assumed office and majority
of his reasonable supporters are already scratching their heads if they had not
made monumental mistake by electing him to the country’s presidency.
Rather than focus on the
challenges of putting Nigeria
in order and getting things to work, President Buhari has turned himself to Mr.
Gulliver. He has been traveling all over the place. This is not new. What is
new is that the public uproar about this has not made any dent. He does not
seem to care. Nigerians could make as much noise about what he is doing wrong,
he won’t be bothered. He has continued to travel and cost Nigeria hard
earned naira. Some estimates have put each travel by the president at around
NGN 350 million. It could be more in some cases. For a President who complains
about lack of money in the national purse, this does not make any sense.
According to a recent report in
the media, the combined worth of Presidential Fleet is $390.5 million (NGN
60.53 billion). This fleet includes two Falcon 7X Jets, two Falcon 900 Jets, a
Gulfstream 550, one Boeing 737 BBJ, one Gulfstream IVSP, one Gulfstream V,
Cessna Citation 2 Aircraft, and Hawker Siddley 125-800 Jet. The President’s
party APC criticized the previous president, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan for
profligacy. Refusing to dispose some of these Jets to recuperate some money and
put an austere style in place makes the President to look like a hypocrite.