Nigeria’s Professional Excuse Makers

By Moses Ochonu

Professional excuse makers are enablers of bad governance. We dealt with them during the last administration. We're dealing with them yet again in this one. Yesterday, I posted (on my facebook page) a simple inquiry about why President Buhari was going to the US to attend a nuclear non-proliferation summit when Nigeria has no civilian or military nuclear industry. The silly excuses started pouring in, muddying the reasonable ones.

*President Buhari 

Someone even said that as the most populous black nation, Nigeria should attend the summit. What blackness and population has to do with nuclear non-proliferation is not spelt out.

For several people, the fact that Nigeria was invited was enough, meaning that Buhari should attend every international meeting Nigeria is invited to regardless of its relevance to Nigeria's national interest. And by the way, it is Nigeria that was invited, not Buhari, which begs the question of why he had to go himself.

Other commenters speculated that he may be going to observe and learn about nuclear technology, since Nigeria plans to turn to nuclear technology for power generation in the future. Two retorts to that. First, the press release announcing the trip simply stated that he was attending the summit and did not mention why he is doing so, leaving Nigerians scratching their heads, wondering and speculating. This same chain of events occurred when the presidency announced that PMB was attending a charity event to raise funds for Syrian refugees. Without the release specifying what Nigeria had to gain from such an event and why the president was helping to raise funds for refugees from a distant war when our own refugees are reeling, Nigerians rightly concluded that the trip was a wasteful misplacement of priorities, a misguided product of xenophilia.

Second, even if Nigeria must attend to "study" proceedings, why not send the minister of science and technology or the top federal official with oversight of that sector?