Buhari: Sad And Saddening Interviews

 By Tony Eluemunor

Ordinarily, any Nigerian should celebrate the very fact that President Mohammadu Buhari granted two nationally televised interviews in two days. This was a man who had been dubbed the taciturn one simply because he would clam up even when the cries of a need to address the nation was howling like the harmmattan wind. 

*Buhari 

Yet, what did the average Nigerian get? On very vexatious issues, the average Nigerian has remained as uninformed about the real issues in BUhari’s mind as though the man never spoke. And yet, he did speak volumes. 

This time, the blame does not lie with the President at all. He never at any moment refused to answer any questions and it is to his credit that he never ruled some topics as no-go areas. So, what went wrong? 

President Buhari's Alleged Northernization Policy

By Reuben Abati

Perhaps the biggest news this week so far, has been the attempt by the Presidency to debunk the allegation that President Muhammadu Buhari has been kinder to Northerners and Muslims in the recruitment of persons into his administration. The published list, itself a response to an earlier indictment by the BusinessDay newspaper, has been dismissed as incomplete, selective and misleading but all of that draws attention to a crisis at the heart of Nigerian politics, nay African politics. Matthew Hassan Kukah once described this in our context as “the-myonisation-of-power”.

That is when a Nigerian from a particular part of the country becomes President, his people including his kinsmen and his friends and associates from his community and other parts of Nigeria see his ascendance as their own opportunity to have a taste of the national cake. They fight over the proverbial cake. Invariably, they benefit from what is called the politics of proximity. They get appointed to the best positions. They gain better access to the seat and the man of power than everyone else. Nigeria is not alone in this regard.

The same politics plays out in other African countries. In Kenya, John Githongo, their once-upon-a-time anti-corruption czar, in a book on him, the author, Michela Wrong complains that what prevails in Kenyan politics is the syndrome of “it-is-our-turn-to-eat.” In that country, the emergent politics is not even just about what to eat, it is about ego, elite contestation, dynastic rivalry and power. Wrong is right in many ways. That drama has been played out in the recent elections in Kenya but here in Nigeria, we have also been dealing with the same crisis since independence.

Fulani Herdsmen: Grim Statistics Of Their Bloody Exploits

By Dan Agbese

You probably thought it could not get more unsettling. You were wrong.

Here is some evidence. Former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, addressed a one-day forum organised by a group known as the Search for Common Ground on his farm October 30. In it, he released some grim statistics about the killings and maiming in clashes between Fulani herdsmen and peasant farmers in four states – Plateau, Nasarawa, Kaduna and Benue – in just one year. These figures are certain to chill your bones and make your eyes go rheumy for the present and the future of our country.

Here are the details he gave for 2016 only: 2,500 people killed; 62,000 people displaced; $13.7 billion lost to the clashes and 47 per cent of the internally-generated revenue in the affected states lost. 

The problem with statistics is that when they are about human beings, you cannot put faces to them. Human beings are thus reduced to stark, impersonal numbers. The death of 2,500 Nigerians and the displacement of 62,000 others may do no more than give you a momentary jolt only for you to shrug it off. You are not likely to think of them as struggling Nigerians in our rural areas who were doing nothing criminal but pursuing their legitimate livelihood as peasant farmers who fed the nation.

That Ill-Advised Search For Oil In The North

By Bolaji Tunji

On Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari was said to have met with three state governors from the northern part of the country. The meeting was to discuss what is becoming a desperate, continued search for oil in the north.

Sokoto governor, Aminu Tambuwal, one of the visitors to the president, was quoted to have called on the federal government to support the search for oil in the Sokoto basin, as that area had been discovered to have oil reserve as far back as 1957.

President Buhari Still Doesn't Get It

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

After listening to President Muhammadu Buhari's three minutes, fifty-six seconds national broadcast on Monday, August 21, his first since coming back to the country from a 103-day medical tourism in the United Kingdom, I concluded that he still does not get it.

I doubt if he ever will.

*President Buhari

Prior to his speech, I was not overtly hopeful I would hear anything grand, ennobling and soul-lifting.

Yet, after a three-month absence from duty post, during which time he presumably had time for sober reflection on what ails the country of 180 million people over whose affairs he superintends, I had hoped he would have realised the need to calm frayed nerves and bring people together through moral suasion.

How wrong I was.

APC, Buhari And Arrogance Of Leadership

By Bolaji Tunji

On Monday evening, news filtered in that newly sworn in American president, Donald Trump would hold a telephone conversation with holidaying or recuperating (depending on the information you are working with) President Mohammadu Buhari. Apart from the surprise announcement, Nigerians were equally eager to see whether the conversation would hold and not another of the propaganda that Nigerians have been fed with in recent time, to prove that the president was and is still ‘hale and hearty’, according to the acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo

President Buhari and APC National Leader, Tinubu

The conversation  eventually took place. As with everything that had been subjected to social media scrutiny and query by Nigerians, doubts were raised about whether President Buhari actually spoke with the American president. Nigerians had cause to doubt whether a telephone conversation took place. Weeks after the president left the country on an extended 10-day leave, which was supposed to culminate  with him seeing his doctors, the issue that dominated the cyberspace especially when the president decided to extend his stay without a clear cut date of return was his health status. Information had filtered in that  the president had passed on. It wasn’t as if anybody was wishing him dead, but his health status had been shrouded in so much secrecy that it was difficult to know what to believe.

Who would blame our people? The experience with former President Musa Yar’Adua is still fresh in the memory. After several weeks and months of hide and seek, the citizen eventually got to know that President Yar’Adua was dead. It was a fact that could no longer be hidden.

So with President Buhari, Nigerians were still unconvinced that he was still alive. They thought they were still being taken for a ride in the usual way, in spite of assurances from different quarters.

But I have issues with the All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Buhari. Even when those who surrounds the president are saying differently, Nigerians needed assurance from the president himself, they wanted to know the problem with him. They found it difficult to accept the information from Aso Rock media managers. You can’t blame them, once beaten, twice shy as it’s often said. All they wanted was assurance, they wanted to hear from the president. It was a simple enough thing to arrange.

They wanted the president to speak to them. They wanted to see him ‘live’. But they were disappointed. The APC, the president and his media minders didn’t see any need for it. It was a display of sheer arrogance, that the people do not matter. It is surprising that the president equally decided to keep quiet and didn’t feel the need to speak with the people, unless Nigerians are still not being told the entire truth about his health status. You could have a lot of people visitin. It does not indicate anything. People have visited some people like that they pay their last respect? It does not mean everything is perfect.