By Louis Odion,
FNGE
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 had inadvertently made himself vulnerable to accusations of
"moonlighting" away in London while the situation at home was growing
precarious.
Carried away apparently 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 a certainty those pesky Nigerians, who had secured 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 omni-potence,
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 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 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.
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| Odion |
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 centre? 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 centre 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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