I join all those who have welcomed President Muhammadu Buhari, walking upright, back to his fatherland.
Hopefully, over 100 days in London enjoying the best medical care Nigeria’s public funds can buy has enabled him to rediscover himself and the mission he loudly proclaimed.
The omens are not good. Six months ago, on February 5, I described what I called “The Fall of Buhari, And The APC.”
That was during his seven-week medical vacation in the United Kingdom. He suggested as soon as he landed in Nigeria from that visit that he would be returning for further treatment, a prophecy that was fulfilled on May 7.
During those two months in Nigeria, it was clear he was in no shape to work, let alone lead, as he merely spent most of the time in his residence going through the motions. When he returned to London in May, he wound up spending over 15 weeks, returning eight days ago under intense pressure from civil society groups.
Again, he is back on duty, but only in principle, as he once again “works” from his home office. A presidency statement blamed that choice not on the president’s poor heath, but on rodents. Apparently, while Buhari lay on a London bed, rats took over Nigeria’s seat of power.
For a man who has always positioned himself as a tiger, the irony has not been lost on the world, which has in the past week laughed us to scorn.
Nor should the irony be lost on Nigerians regarding the implications of Nigeria’s richest, most powerful and most secure office being overrun by rats at the same time as legions of zealous officials enriched foreign airlines and drained the treasury traveling to London to pay obeisance to the king. It is a foreboding metaphor of desecration.
Anyhow, to Buhari’s home office Buhari went, officials resuming the tired party line that the president is powerful enough to work from anywhere.
The reality is that Mr. Buhari is far from recovered, and may never be. Remember, medical science is still unable to treat some sicknesses, and even the richest and strongest of patients are merely managed. In the case of the Nigerian leader, he has arrogantly refused to tell his citizens what his diagnosis is. This can only mean that for as long as he is sick, not only is the nation sick in more ways than he is, Nigeria’s innocent and poor will pay for his time in bed, as well as for friends and gamers who make the pilgrimage to see him wherever he is.
All of this complicates the prospects of a leader who consistently declared in the early days of his administration that he intended to restore confidence and credibility in the government.
A vow he made again and again, there is little evidence in the past two years of substantive efforts to accomplish that objective. Instead, Nigeria’s poor continue to get poorer and the unemployed remain unemployed. Unfulfilled electoral promises mount alongside official excuses and propaganda. If rats can eat the president out of his office, how much of the country have they eaten up that is not making the headlines?
On February 5, I concluded that Buhari has fallen. Unless he has saved some magic under his sick pillow, his relevance as a political force is over. But it has not ended because he is sick, but because while he had bragged at length and forever about what a difference he would make, the presidency proved to be bigger than bluster.
What Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) achieved in their victory in 2015 is, in effect, the equivalent of false advertising. Perhaps the electorate should have bought none of it, but the competition he faced was patently and demonstrably worse.
What they have achieved since then, set against that advertisement, is an embarrassment, and Buhari’s sickness and its politicization is the only thing that has masked that embarrassment.
As a result, disappointed Nigerians are being criticized for expressing disappointment in a man to whom they gave so much. Others deliberately mistake human sympathy for acceptance.
In none of the indices on which Buhari and the APC made the assault on power, and for which they lampooned the rival Peoples Democratic Party, have they made a passable, let alone respectable, impact. Missing are the major, round-the-bend changes that not only reshape society, but prevent the future from relapsing into the past. We are whom we were, in some ways worse than we were.
To be clear: tokenism is not success, nor is propaganda performance. So far, the Buhari administration has been just another Nigerian possession of power, which it then uses for its political and personal relatives. The same double agendas, the same undefined structures and processes, the same empty boasts, as well as the same legion of sycophants and apologists, are-at the expense of the Nigerian people and the advertised mission-at play.
To this mess returns Buhari, in dubious health and more dubious motivation.
The truth is this: As much as one sympathizes with Buhari in sickness, he is not going to make an impact lying down that he could not make standing up. He is not going to conquer with one-tenth of his energy what he could not do at full strength. Officially sick since January 19, he has barely done any work this year. That is a period of seven months, five of which he has spent abroad, and two in which he allegedly “worked from home,” as though the presidency were a typing assignment.
But Buhari and the APC now get a new chance. But they must serve up performance, not more rhetoric. No excuses are good enough.
Letter to SOS:
Re: ‘About the Gani Fawehinmi Research Centre’
Our attention has been drawn to your August 20 article on the Gani Fawehinmi Library and Gallery.
We appreciate your interest in its sustenance, and in the encomiums you expressed, including: “This facility, which is only a short distance from the Office of the Governor of Lagos State is probably the only one in the country with a full collection of the newspapers of the period, many of which I have often tried to find at the National Library, without success. This makes this institution an important cultural icon, just as its famous proprietor was.”
However, we wish to correct an obvious misrepresentation of the current situation concerning the cooling systems. It is not correct that the “Library environment is now inadequate for study…” Agreed that we had challenges in the past with the cooling units, but while the technicians struggled to repair them, a fairly new giant Air Conditioner was installed. Consequently, we do not currently have any complaint regarding air conditioning in the main library hall.
Are we claiming to have it all? Not at all. We therefore affirm your call on “Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and all legal personalities who knew Gani well and deeply appreciate the cause of knowledge to help support this important cultural symbol.”
Uche Ekeocha, Chief Librarian
• Twitter: @SonalaOlumhense
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