By Moses E. Ochonu
Buharists are always asking us to applaud the
president for every little tokenistic and symbolic gesture even when such a
gesture is late, ineffectual, and compelled by public pressure. It's a form of
emotional blackmail of course, but no matter. Let us humor them.
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| *President Buhari, wife Aisha, surrounded by family and friends, during his birthday party |
Because of its track record of deception, lies,
overwrought propaganda, hypocrisy, and duplicity, many thoughtful citizens are
now understandably hesitant to praise the Buhari administration even when it
appears to have done something praiseworthy. This is proving irksome to
Buhari’s hardcore loyalists. But why are Nigerians who are notoriously
politically easy to please reluctant to extent praise to Buhari? It is because
they don't want to look stupid days or hours later when the leaks and
revelations start occurring, implicating the do-gooders themselves as the
culprits of the very problem they were pretending to solve.
On several occasions, some
Nigerians have praised the president prematurely for taking a particular action
only to look foolish a few days or even hours later when it emerged that the
wrong that the president was being praised for righting was caused by him in
the first place. These Nigerians realized that the president and his
propagandists had manipulated them.
