The cartel of
political prayer-warriors are bound to lay claims. But if anyone deserves
credit for at least "fast-tracking" the return last Saturday evening
of President
Muhammadu Buhari to, as they say, continue his "good
work" in Aso Rock, it must be the procession of contrarians who had laid a
siege to Abuja and their comrades who barricaded Abuja House in London,
regardless of official posturing to the contrary.
By openly
declaring himself fit but waiting for the doctor's formal discharge, PMB
inadvertently made himself vulnerable to accusations of "moonlighting"
away in London while the situation at home was growing precarious.
Apparently
carried away by the euphoria that engulfed the Nnamdi Azikiwe International
Airport the moment the presidential jet landed or maybe out of sheer empathy
with a patient struggling to rise from the nadir, the media would effectively
downplay the candle-lit vigil by the motley crowd of Nigerians who had
assembled in front of Buhari's London camp and heckled the president all Friday
night till the morning of the day he departed.
Had PMB not
taken off that day, there was certainty those pesky Nigerians, who had secured
a London police permit to so assemble and protest, would resume their heckling
behind the nation's green/white flag with the prospects of the name-calling
degenerating to an international embarrassment.
That could
not be the kind of atmosphere you expect an old patient to convalesce
effectively. His misery would only have been compounded.
But of all
the spectacle that later unfolded in Abuja that day, the most unsettling must
be the appearance of Governor Nyesom Wike. A political master-stroke no doubt
by the wily PDP gladiator from Rivers against his rivals now holed up in Abuja.
Political difference, he seemed eager to demonstrate, should not result in
death-wish. (Not surprising, his bitter political foe and Transport Minister,
Rotimi Amaechi, was missing at the welcoming party.
Expectedly,
since Saturday, sycophants have been trying to outdo each other across the land
in continuation of the culture of "eye service". Not helping matters
are those whose deeds tend to border more on profanity than holiness by issuing
loud statements announcing plans to fast or pray for Buhari, as if the creeds
of all faiths do not already oblige genuine believers to always remember leaders
in prayers as a matter of compunction.
The vitality
of the king, we are already told, is the wellbeing of the community.
One governor
declared public holiday for "thanksgiving" even though he had for a
whole week lived in denial of a grave pestilence that claimed no fewer 60
people in his state.
Buhari's
sudden return would, however, seem to have spoilt things for someone like Sat
Guru Maraji, just when many were beginning to expect to hear the day he would
make his own appearance in London. Long before the much revered Pastor E A
Adeboye of the Redeemed Church wrapped up penultimate Thursday the flurry of of
august visitations from Nigeria, the Ibadan-based mystic had relentlessly
offered to heal the ailing president like "I cured IBB."
But while
laying claims to omnipotence, it seems completely lost on the self-styled
prophet that the same IBB has over the years continued to bear the pain
resulting from an injury sustained during the civil war with grace and today
cuts the perfect portrait of forbearance against the agonizing ravages of
radiculopathy.
Well, we can
only hope that with Buhari's return and gratitude formally expressed in his
Monday broadcast for all the "prayers," such comical distractions
will now stop.
Reacting to
the same broadcast, however, embattled Rep Abdulmumin Jibrin (of the
"padded budget" fame) said what he heard sounded more like a
"coup speech." On the contrary, I thought I saw a president very much
in a hurry to get back in the Abuja groove and reassert his authority. Maybe
Jibrin was tempted to say that because the president evoked the picture of
antiquity by not availing himself of the latest technology in a teleprompter
and instead chose to read a script, clumsily shuffling the sheets before
viewers.
Anyone familiar
with the production of television broadcast by a political leader will readily
attest it can be very, very exacting indeed, much more for a recuperating
septuagenarian.
In terms of
content analysis, the speech was rather too fleeting to speak to the nuances of
burning national issues the president obviously wanted to address.
Hopefully,
as he gets more briefing in the coming days, the commander-in-chief will
gradually get a fuller picture to enable him better appreciate the dangerous
shape things assumed while he was away.
Perhaps the
most memorable line in the broadcast was this: "The national consensus is
that, it is better to live together than to live apart."
Clearly,
Buhari, being a war-tested general, seems obsessed with only the security
dimension of the national question. By recalling his extensive conversation in
2003 with Emeka Ojukwu, the now late Biafran folk hero, Buhari appears too
eager to demonstrate to neo-Biafrans the futility of seeking to disinter the
old sepulcher.
But the real
challenge is the need to understand what could have led Ojukwu's political
grandchildren into a nostalgia for the path abandoned 47 years ago. What this
grave hour calls for is exquisite leadership skill to win back their trust and
enlist their talents in the enterprise of nation-building.
Overall, it
is reassuring to hear Buhari speaking firmly, restating his promise to tackle
decisively merchants of hate, kidnappers and "farmers versus herdsmen
clashes" (sic). But the president needs to understand that these are only
symptoms of deep structural defects long detected in the federal union. What
remains is to summon the political courage to fix things and guarantee the union's
sustainability.
Issuing
threats or deploying maximum force will, at best, only secure temporary relief.
Without rooting out the cancerous growth, administering tranquilizers today is
tantamount to the laughable futility of thinking that merely changing the
sitting order in a Titanic in the face of an approaching iceberg will
eviscerate the looming existential threat. As we read of the proverbial Titanic
that succumbed in the Atlantic Ocean, clueless janitors were busy rearranging
the decks even as the sybaritic band continued playing while the vessel was
sinking.
In Buhari's
absence, the Council of State directed the Inspector General of Police to
explore the possibility of community policing. This could only have been
inspired by the realization that the present policing architecture can no
longer meet today's needs.
Hopefully,
Buhari will also get to know in the coming days that even his party, All
Progressive Congress (APC), has since realized the futility of living in denial
that generally speaking, the national structure as presently constituted is
sustainable. Apparently reading the national mood correctly, it has already
raised an in-house committee to fashion its own response.
This
inevitability was succinctly expressed by Tunji Bello, the Secretary to the
Lagos State Government, in a keynote delivered at the Nigerian Bar conference
which opened in Lagos on Monday. His words: "The practice of the current
skewed federalism or what I call "military federalism" being camouflaged
as genuine federalism must stop as most of the States are currently
hemorrhaging socioeconomically.
"Even
by logic, a federation derives its strength from its constituents. So, how then
do we reconcile the recent proposal that
the power to organize local government elections be taken away from the states and added to the functions of the
national electoral body controlled by the government at the center? If we say
the reason is because the ruling party in the state tends to win all seats in
council polls, what is the guaranty that it will also not become the turn of
the party that controls the government at the center to make a clean sweep of
all the council seats as well?"
The ailment
has been diagnosed; what remains is to cure it.
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