By Paul Onomuakpokpo
Despite the official
veil on the auguries, that the nation is on the cusp of a crisis that threatens
its survival owing to the secrecy surrounding the ill health of President
Muhammadu Buhari is a troubling fact that is clear to the discerning among us. Of
course, we take cognisance of the fact that like a phoenix, the nation has
often risen from the ashes of seemingly mortal calamities to grow stronger.
From the civil war through the June 12 crisis to egregious cases of corruption,
the nation has developed a certain immunity to the perils that would have made
it suffer a self-inflicted dissolution. But we have taken this resilience for
granted. This is why we are at it again, stretching this resilience by refusing
to do what is necessary to preserve the unity of the nation.
 |
| *Buhari |
We must be alert to the tragic character of
the current crisis if we must survive it and learn any lessons from it. It is
because of the absence of a correct appreciation of the spectre of tragedy that
hangs over the nation that there is official levity as a response to the
sickness of the president. Such levity is often expressed in the remonstrance
that the president is not as sick as portrayed in the public and the alleged
purveyors of the canard of his incapacity to wade through the complexities of
governance are threatened with dire consequences.
But it is now difficult to deceive the
citizens about the health of the president once again. The citizens once fell
for the deception when the president was in London London
