So The President Could Speak?

Buhari

 President Muhammadu Buhari could pass for the most distant President in Nigeria’s democratic history. This is more so during this his second term which began in 2019. Unlike Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan who talked to Nigerians regularly, through the NTA (the state television network) in which some independent journalists are also invited at regular intervals to ask questions to the President on the activities of his government and state of the nation, President Buhari allowed that tradition only once in his administration, and that was during his first term.

Recently the president has grown too distant that many are beginning to compare his style of governance to that of the late head of state General Sani Abacha. Abacha was a military dictator under whose regime Nigeria became a pariah nation. With no friends around the world and fear of being overthrown, the Kano-born General was holed up in the Presidential Villa. His last public appearance was the airport ceremony of welcoming the Palestinian leader late Yasser Arafat in 1998. He was rarely seen in public, however, unlike Buhari’s case where Garba Shehu and Femi Adesina issues statements regularly on behalf of their principal, in the case of Abacha, there was no one speaking for the president regularly. That Buhari’s democratic government could be compared to Abacha’s regime in terms of the visibility, perception, and communication to Nigerians should be of concern to the Buhari Presidency.

Buhari’s “I don’t care attitude” in speaking directly to Nigerians has reached a feverish pitch amidst unprecedented insecurity and an economy on comatose. The governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom whose state has been invaded by herdsmen and several communities sacked and hundreds killed, has at every opportunity called on Buhari to speak to Nigerians and stop the killings in his state. He felt that it was wrong for the president not to speak to Nigerians on the killings perpetrated by herdsmen, bandits, and Boko Haram and outsourcing that responsibility to his media aide, Garba Shehu, saying that Nigerians did not elect Garba Shehu as their president but Muhammadu Buhari. The governor because of this has received a barrage of attacks from the presidential spokesman.

Also recently when the Southern Governors Forum met in Asaba the capital of Delta State to deliberate on the state of the nation, one of their resolutions in what has become known as the Asaba Declaration was that President Muhammadu Buhari should speak to Nigerians. Similarly, the various ethnic nationality groups including the Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Middle Belt Forum, PANDEF, Northern Elders Forum, among others have at various times called on President Buhari to speak to Nigerians on the state of the nation, especially the insecurity overwhelming the country.

Early this week the deputy governor of Benue State Mr. Benson Abounu, called on President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene and halt attacks on the state by herdsmen.

The deputy governor who said this on a live television programme, added that the body language of Fulani leaders had contributed to the atrocities committed by herders in Nigeria.

“One very effective response that I seek is a word from the president of this country concerning what is going on, asking the Fulanis to stop these terrible actions of theirs,” he said. The deputy governor was lamenting about the killing of over 60 persons by herdsmen in the state the night before with no words from the federal government.

Aside from the Benue killings that the deputy governor was complaining about, readers of newspapers in Nigeria are aware that on a daily basis hundreds of Nigerians are killed or kidnapped for ransom by herdsmen, bandits, Boko Haram, ISWAP, and other non-state actors bearing unauthorized arms in which in other climes would have warranted constant interface between the president directly and the public, but Nigeria’s president was always missing when his leadership was needed. The only thing that reminds Nigerians that the Presidency exists is when they read or hear the broadcast of news containing part of the statements by the president’s aides, which had not been enough to inspire hope, but rather reinforces the despair and the anger in the country and lack of patriotism among Nigerians.

Not even the death of the country’s chief of army staff Lt General Ibrahim Attahiru and 10 other officers in a plane crash in Kaduna in the midst of war could make the president speak.

However, the president suddenly found his voice on Tuesday, June 1, 2021, when he received officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) led by the chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu who had gone to the Presidential Villa, Abuja to brief the president on the series of attacks on INEC facilities across the country which had become more regular recently in South East in particular and parts of South-South. The attack in the South East has been blamed on the proscribed secessionist group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), but the group has vehemently denied the allegation.

Receiving the electoral officials, Buhari warned that those misbehaving in certain parts of the country were obviously too young to know the travails and loss of lives that attended the Nigerian Civil War. “Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war will treat them in the language they understand. We are going to be very hard sooner than later,” he warned.

He had never been this firm and resolute when bandits, herdsmen, and Boko Haram are sacking communities and taking over their lands in North Central Nigeria or even in parts of North West including his home state Katsina.

It is common knowledge that there is no love lost between the President and the people of southeast Nigeria. The people of southeast Nigeria rejected him in the 2015 presidential election and he classed them among the 5 percent that did not vote for him and thus does not merit the attention of his administration in terms of appointments and sitting of development projects. And he has largely ignored them as he promised and created the most nepotistic administration in Nigeria’s history, including making a mess of the federal character principle enshrined in the constitution to ensure no group dominates the federal government in our federal system of governance.

The video where he spoke to the electoral umpire has been trending and he spoke from the heart. It was the real Buhari, the quintessential Buhari. The real Buhari that the Northern elders knew, which was why when he won the 2015 presidential election, while he was still president-elect, the Northern elders led by late Maitama Sule met him at Akinola Aguda House and pleaded with him to be president of all Nigerians and not be “President of Northern Nigeria.” Just like the saying goes, “A leopard cannot change its spots.”

The speech that Buhari made with INEC officials was proudly shared by his aides on various social media platforms including Buhari’s official Twitter account. The speech was interpreted as hate speech and thousands of Nigerians petitioned twitter and Twitter took it down to the chagrin of the administration.

In the state that Nigeria found itself with mounting insecurity, hunger and starvation, and the highest unemployment record in the world, people are on the edge and many are planning to flee the country, what is needed from the president is reconciliatory speeches. Speeches that give hope to the people and not grandstanding and threatening to unleash violence on those who did not agree with you. Instead of dialoguing with agitators from South East who are not known worldwide to be violent, you threaten to unleash federal might on them.

Meanwhile the same administration dialogues with bandits and Boko Haram that has killed over 10,000 people, created over 2million internally displaced persons (IDPs). The speech was un-presidential, reinforced the government’s notoriety for nepotism and ethnic and religious chauvinism. It was unhelpful.