New Telegraph

President Buhari’s last limb

It has now become very obvious to President Muhammadu Buhari that the government he heads is one that has brought Nigeria to its lowest, in terms of deliverables and leadership dispensation. By his utterances, these days, we see a President that is in constant lamentation.

 

We see his Presidential spokesmen talking like frustrated appointees, and trivializing very serious issues. “People blame Buhari if they cannot perform in bed”, what a banal statement in response to a citizenry that is already non-plussed by the poor leadership of the Buhari presidency.

 

How do you bring libidinal excesses to germinate in our leadership discourse? What flippancy? By the time the president would be leaving office, he would have become the Demolisher-in-Chief of the Nigerian edifice. His performance level is asinine. His response ratio is ludicrous.

 

His comprehension of the issues in the country is debilitatingly insulting. His misunderstanding of the dynamics in the polity shows lack of exposure, comprehension and a lack of vision. His control mechanism is standoffish. His leadership by proxy is an all-time high. His capacity to dissect issues to arrive at a roadmapto lead us to progress amd prosperity has been impossible.

 

Religious bigotry, nepotism, selective amnesia, favouritism and cronyism are the biggest features of this government. It isn’t just that the president is not willing to act, but also, the capacity to act has been eroded by his mental inertia.

 

President Buhari needs rest; little wonder he’s in a hurry to exit the inner sanctuary of Aso Villa to his Kaduna or Daura home, after a colossal failure in his leadership of the country. President Buhari’s style is largely unsuitable for a country that has broken its central weave of unity. A withdrawn style controlled by incapable aides is not useful for a country of broken tongues and tribes.

 

What comes out from the Villa is a product of inexperience, tactlessness, praise-singing, and leadership inertia. There is no craftsmanship. There is no brinkmanship. There is no ingenuity in decision making process. There is corruption everywhere you turn. Even in EFCC, the anti-corruption agency, stories of corruption are legion, as well as stories of favouritism.

 

Since EFCC was established, she has never enjoyed the services of a Chairman from the Southern part of the country; Nuhu Ribadu, Ibrahim Lamorde, Farida Waziri, Ibrahim Magu and the current chairman, Bawa. For seven years, President Buhari looks more like an absentee president, he is often caught napping on issues that threaten our common consanguinity.

 

El-Rufai told us that he was not aware of the threat by bandits and terrorists to kidnap him, until he (El-Rufai) informed him. That was the height of absent-mindedness. It is a confirmation of the fact that the president does not have his hands on the jar.

 

The buck does not stop at his table, from that statement of Governor El’Rufai. Even the politics of APC seems to confuse the president. A sit-in president of Buhari’s style devotes more time to listening to gossip, and leading by gossips. When you are unable to reach out to the field to ascertain occurrences, what you get to act on, are snippets of flavoured gossips that are carried by “eye-service” aides and political appointees who want to curry favour from and of the president.

 

Presidential directives are likely to be doctored and pockets of power cells are likely to flourish beyond the rubrics of what should be. How do you reconcile the reports around the acquisition of ExxonMobil by Seplat oil recently? After Presidential approval, another Presidential approval cancelled the deal. Or a situation where head of a parastatal would have finished serving his term, and three persons would be parading letters from the presidency, as the right occupant of such agency.

These are all signs of a divided house, munable to connect the dots of leadership. Until members of the Presidential Brigade of Guards were mauled down along Bwari Road, the presidency thought the threat of the terrorists was a mere fluke.

 

Now that the presidency has reportedly come out to talk about reaching certain agreement with those bandits on the exchange between the victims of the train attack and arrested kingpins of terrorism, we all knew Nigeria has become a lost battle.

 

The Kuje prison attack wore all the indecent toga of an “arrangee” attack from all the conspiracy theories we were fed. Now, the cookies are crumbling, and we are seeing the flow of the plots. The fight against terrorism has since been decorated as a commercialised war with its peculiar bargain.

Despite the huge resources pumped into the battle to regain the soul of the country, the results you see pale into insignificance. Corruption would even be further deepened. Lack of accountability is high on the scale, and the country daily descends the slope to its predictable abyss, because the closed door meetings have not yielded the right results. APC might be in a quandary, but PDP is not an option for now.

The President has not played the politics of politics in terms of rallying round the party when collective decisions are to be taken. The APC seems abandoned by a president that is fixated with his exit door; impatiently waiting to hand over the burden of leadership to anyone. Whenever his party loses election, he scores himself high as building the process of credible election.

In some cases, he embraces opposition victory as a mark of achievement of his “non-partisan” involvement. To President Buhari, inasmuch as he finishes his tenure, anything can happen to the country; he has no qualms. APC must  rescue itself from the president if it must sail through the turbulent waters of 2023 election.

And the party will need to rescue the president from himself also; if only to bail out his damning perception index.

What people see in the larger picture is that APC has not done well. But within the inner recesses of the party, the President’s style has impugned on the integrity of the party, reason why Atiku’s PDP is developing an contraption to confront the party in 2023.

It is not that president Buhari hasn’t achieved anything at all. That would be an unfair assessment; but his failure to weave the country together, some kind of national cohesion, is the reason why his achievements have been swallowed by cacophony of voices.

Kidnapping, insecurity, banditry, terrorism, and poverty have become the most visible take aways of a Buhari failed presidency. Obviously, President Buhari is disturbed about his place in Nigeria’s history, even if he pretends all is well. No leader will be happy seeing the level of killings and carnage, and be happy with them. Nigeria has become a killing field and it is pretty difficult for Buhari to provide the cutting-edge leadership that is needed to make a whole lot of difference.

He has become overwhelmed by the realities that stare him in the face, that even his aides now speak in frustration. President Buhari cannot discuss Nigeria’s economy intelligently without reading a prepared speech. He cannot dissect the issues without bating an eyelid.

The weak energy in his voice shows the waning thoughts of frailty. No bite, no scruples, and a manifest debility brought by old age. The intentions might be altruistic, but the delivery is never there. Every day, the presidency comes up with one comic relief after another, exposing the incompetence of a system where “kids” are taking presidential decisions because the president has deliberately ceded powers to them.

The party is almost helpless each time they needed the president to act swiftly to place it on a stronger pedestal in contestation for power. So, as far as President Buhari is concerned, anybody can win the presidency, it doesn’t bother him as he would have completed his term.

Such selfish approach to governance and power acquisition might alter the political permutations as the scramble for 2023 gains momentum. Nigeria and Nigerians will surely remember president Buhari in very loud voices as the man who came and got overwhelmed by the responsibilities of his office. Rather than preside over the country, he suddenly became part of the problems of a country in dire need of leadership.

He appears unruffled but his leadership rendition is the reason why the country is sitting on the precipice. He has joined the wailing wailers also, urging time to fly so he can exit the rostrum and have his peace.

When he was undergoing drills in 2015 in preparation for leadership, we all thought the stamina to execute his tasks was in place. It wall clear that it was mere braggadocio; as soon as he mounted the podium, delay in taking decisions became the order of the day. In president Buhari’s second term, he has not been able to visit 10 states to ascertain challenges of the Nigeria state. He prefers to travel overseas to enjoy the sweet aroma of well rendered leadership responsibility.

Within Nigeria, President Buhari has not covered a distance of 100 kilometres by road to experience the real situation of our roads. His people bring beautiful pictures of scripted drawings for him to see what is happening. He never gets to see things first hand. By the time he would be departing from the protected walls of the Villa, he would be wondering how time flies in such a manner.

He would wonder what has been his impact and contributions to solving the problems met on ground. He would not have the nerves to condemn his successor if the latter is not doing well.

 

The easy response would be that all the bile were inherited from a tactless President Buhari, who was unable to articulate the issues and chart a roadmap. It is the tragedy of a nation and an individual who refused to sparkle each time he was called upon to do so.

 

President Buhari’s last limb is a miasma of sour grapes. A journey that we would have endured for eight years by May 29th, 2023; a journey of bitter lessons and poor leadership on all fronts. It has been a journey of hunger and poverty! A journey of abandonment and corruption.

 

It is a journey which we will pray to never take again. As we prepare to go into fresh polls in February 2023, Tinubu with a sense of creativity, ingenuity, planning and diplomacy might be a fitting person to redirect the country on the path of renewed vigour. Who knows? You never can tel

Read Previous

Ex-Trump lawyer, Giuliani, targeted in Georgia election probe

Read Next

Prosecutors oppose releasing Trump search evidence

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *