Can Buhari’s Dumb Government Also Choose To Be Deaf?

By Rotimi Fasan

In describing the Muhammadu Buhari administration as dumb I do not wish now to be understood as referring to what many commentators increasingly call the administration’s or, in fact, the president’s cluelessness (Is it not amazing that this administration has so quickly frittered away its goodwill in less than two years, to the extent that it’s now being described in the same unflattering register as the Goodluck Jonathan administration?) Buhari, Osinbajo and Adeosun.

 

*Buhari 

Rather than commenting on the frustrating missteps and ineffectuality of this government, my focus here is on the widening wall of silence that the administration has chosen to erect between itself and the Nigerian people. It is a needless and useless wall that will ruin whatever very modest gains can yet be recorded for the administration- if it knows true sovereignty lies with the people.

The Buhari administration has rigidly stuck to its gun in its irresponsible failure to communicate with the people of this country and keep them in the know of important activities in government circle. Whatever are the immediate inconveniences this stance could mean to sections of the Nigerian people, whatever may be the pains being presently endured by some Nigerians (such as the beleaguered people of Southern Kaduna) as a consequence of such willful hostility from leaders of this country, the government in the long run stands to lose far more than any section of the Nigerian population.

It’s not given to many to have the boon of a second chance. But Nigerian leaders randomly take such chances for granted without any hint of an awareness of it. We’ve seen this tragic cycle repeat itself in the lives of our leaders and occupants of public offices from the lowest position in the land to the highest offices imaginable. Given a second or even third chance in some public office, they go on to repeat the very errors and scandalous performance that marred earlier opportunities, making them forgettable footnotes on the pages of history.

Provided he has the sense of history to measure his own conduct and appraise his government’s performance, President Buhari would one day look back and regret his failure to connect with the people by building on the goodwill that ushered him into power. For this he has nobody but himself to blame. This is a self-inflicted but entirely avoidable wound that is right now festering and worsening the relationship between the government and the people. It’s in this sense that I have described the present administration as dumb, that is mute and lacking the ability to speak. The detail that needs to be restated, however, is that this government’s muteness is not a congenital defect.

It is rather a clear case of hubris, a demonstration of an authoritarian disposition within a democratic context. It is no more unavoidable than it is natural. It would seem then that President Buhari feels affronted by differing opinions and would rather not have his authority questioned in the manner permissible in a democracy. His dismissive silence, which looks sullen in every particular, is the only way he could get back at those who ‘disturb’ him with their ‘noise’, unsolicited and annoying demand of explanations to actions he would rather take without being held to account.

President Buhari, Dialogue Matters

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

With an air of imperial finality, President Muhammadu Buhari has ruled out the possibility of holding a dialogue on how to resolve the crises in the Niger Delta. From initially pretending to support a dialogue with the leaders of the region, Buhari has moved to declaring that there are no credible leaders to talk with in the region and now finally that a dialogue is not even necessary. He says the problems of the region are already known.

The position of the president which was articulated by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo during his visit to the Niger Delta seems to be only about the oil-rich region. But it actually reflects the stance of Buhari concerning the whole country. Buhari does not want any dialogue; all he wants is for the citizens to be quiet, wait patiently as he hands them a roadmap for the development of the country. But this approach of Buhari is not acceptable to the citizens simply because he cannot be trusted to take the right decisions on their behalf. Any roadmap for development that Buhari contemplates can only be tilted to suit his askew sense of development and equity.

As regards the Niger Delta, Buhari can only end up like his predecessors whose sense of development without the input of the people from the Niger Delta has paved the way for the gleeful allocation of oil blocks to people from other parts of the country while the indigenes of the region are neglected. Past governments were aware of the despoliation that has resulted from oil exploration in the region, yet they failed to take any significant step to address the situation. From Isaac Boro to Ken Saro Wiwa, the agitations by the people of the Niger Delta for development of their oil-ravaged region have often been met with brutal responses.

Or can the people really trust the president when he has failed to begin the process of the development of the Niger Delta almost two years after he came into office? And now it was not even the president, but his deputy, who went to the region after so much prodding. If the president were really sincere, he should have gone to the Niger Delta himself to understand the urgency of looking for solutions to the problems of the region. And he should have done this earlier. Rather, he has been preoccupied with how to crush agitators in the region. There is a good reason to suspect that what Buhari is doing is just verbal pacification to secure a peaceful environment for him to get more oil to run his government. With the history of Buhari’s lackluster responses to injustices in different parts of the country, the people of the Niger Delta have good reasons to be skeptical about his avowed developmental roadmap for the region. These responses have perpetually diminished our humanity, collective and individual, and thus we are obliged to be eternally vigilant in accepting his promises.

The Dirty Little Lies Of Buhari’s Biographer

By Femi Fani-Kayode

Professor John Paden, President Muhammadu Buhari’s official biographer, is a man that is very comfortable with distorting the truth and telling lies. He is also a man that has been doing so for virtually all his adult life.

Anyone that doubts that should read his biography on the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, which was written in 1986 and titled Ahmadu Bello, Saurdana of Sokoto: Values and Leadership In Nigeria, and which is essentially a self-serving and comprehensive compilation of Bello’s numerous virtues with little or no mention of his many vices. I read that book twenty years ago and I placed it in the “light entertainment” shelf in my library because it lacked gravitas or any real intellectual stamina.

Aisha Buhari, President Buhari, Gen Gowon,
Gen Obasanjo at the October 3, 2016 book launch
 in Abuja 

It was, at best, a beautiful public relations job for Bello and, at worse, a compilation of disjointed verbiage fit only for the dustbin. Paden’s book on Buhari falls into the same category. It is nothing but an illusion: an extraordinary and fantastic fairy-tale built on a shady foundation of pseudo-intellectual clap-trap and garbage.

To him, President Buhari is infallible. He is, at best, an angel of light and, at worst, a perfect mortal with no warts. Paden’s latest contribution is the greatest exercise in dishonesty and historical revisionism that has ever been undertaken by any foreign or Nigerian historian since independence. The only one that comes close to it in this respect is the book that he wrote on the Sardauna and a number of other books that he authored over the years which were primarily about core northern Nigeria.

Writing rubbish seems to be Paden’s stock in trade. In his latest book, amongst many other glaring and shameless mendacities, he indulged in two particular lies that are an eloquent testimony to his perfidy. The first was that three names were sent to President Muhammadu Buhari for the position of Vice President, namely Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Yemi Osibanjo and Babatunde Raji Fashola in 2014 for the 2015 presidential election. This is false and it is simply an attempt to demean and belittle Tinubu and the role that he played in the whole exercise.

The truth is that it was Tinubu and Tinubu alone that forwarded the only name that was given serious consideration for the Vice Presidential slot by President Buhari. That name was Professor Yemi Osibanjo. Senator Olorunimbe Mamora was also considered by Buhari but he did not have the backing of Tinubu and neither did Tinubu forward his name. The idea that Tinubu’s name was forwarded to be Vice President alongside that of his two protégées in the persons of Osinbajo and Fashola is nothing but fantasy and it was a beautiful and tasteful dish and tale that was spiced cooked up and prepared in the kitchens of Aso Rock.

Buhari Why?

By Onyemaechi Ogbunwezeh

Fellow Nigerians!

I can't still wrap my head around this!

The election of Muhammadu Buhari is gradually unravelling as a hagiography ghost-written by Big oil and other vested-interests of imperial atrocity that has continued to rape Africa for 600 years now.

Two days ago, General Muhammadu Buhari, elected President of Nigeria on the 28th of March, 2015, and who was about to be sworn in on the 29th of May, left Nigeria under the clouds of darkness, whose opacity is unparalleled, and jetted out to London for reasons no one has been able to decipher.

Buhari Why?

His press team came out to say that he went to London to rest. He travelled in the company of Deziani Allison Madueke. Was this an accident? This would be an accident if you believe that a politician would never lie.

This journey raises serious questions of fundamental importance to all Nigerians. Who actually owns Nigeria? And who actually rules Nigeria? And for whom do they rule this country?