If the United Kingdom’s Foreign Minister, Boris Johnson, can describe the
Leader of the Opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, as a “mutton-headed
old mugwump” and an “Islington herbivore” how on earth should we describe
our very own President Muhammadu Buhari in Nigeria?
As each day passes he looks more and more like the colourful creature
called Golum in J.R. Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ and behaves more and
more like the goblyns and orcs in that same book.
This is a man who came back from the United Kingdom as an ailing and
fading ghost and who, despite all entreties and pleas from men and women
of goodwill, has refused to resign.
Since he came back he has not been seen in any public function, apart from
the usual friday mosque prayers, and he has not presided over or been able
to attend any of the weekly National Executive Council meetings in the
last three weeks.
Worse still when his high profile and once very powerful Secretary to the
Federal Government, Babachir “the Grasscutter” Lawal was asked what his
reaction was to the fact that he had just been suspended and stripped of
his job by the Presidency, he asked, in a contemptous and condescending
manner, “who is the Presidency?”
I worked in the Villa as spokesman to President Olusegun Obasanjo 13 years
ago for three good years before I was appointed as a Minister and joined
his cabinet and I recognise the import of that loaded question.
Simply put the SGF was asking the journaliat that put the question to him
who exactly had suspended him in the Presidency because, as far as he was
concerned, the President was no longer in control and other individuals
are now making unauthorised decisions in his name and on his behalf
without his knowledge.
That is how badly things have degenerated in Buhari’s government as
different forces and factions are attempting to grab the space and fill
the widening power vacuum.
Again three curious events took place in the last few days which all
confirm this dangerous state of affairs.
Firstly a Punch Newspaper reporter was marched out of the Villa by the
President’s Chief Security Officer, without any reference to the
President’s media team or aides, simply because he wrote a story
suggesting that the President’s ailment was getting worse.
Secondly as many as 20 Ministers and the President’s Chief of Staff
refused to attend the last Federal Executive Council meeting which was
presided over by Professor Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President.
This begs the following questions: was this a well-orchestrated protest
and boycott or was it just holiday-time for all those Ministers that were
absent?
Thirdly the lying Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, happily told
Nigerians that the President “needed to rest” and would henceforth “not
atted NEC meetings” but would instead be “working from home”.
He also said that from now on all files that needed to be treated should
be sent to the Presidents sitting room!
Do we need to hear anything else before we can safely come to the
conclusion that our President is no longer himself and is indeed on his
way out?
Whilst all this was going on and the confusion continued to brew another
complicated and dangerous mess was silently unfolding in the background.
This is of course the deadly, venomous and utterly shameful snake fight of
double-speak, treachery and betrayal that is going on between Ibrahim Magu
and his EFCC on the one hand and Ayo Oke and his NIA on the other with the
National Security Advisor, Babagana Mongunu, dancing somewhere in between.
With accusations and counter-accusations from all sides they are all
dancing naked in the streets like madmen and bringing shame and opprobium
to the institutions that they lead and to our nation and people.
This is indeed bedlam in its fullest and most pristine form. It is worse
than the cacaphony of the loud, strange and divided tongues that bellowed
and screeched from the biblical Tower of Babel.
A situation where the intelligence and security agencies are merrily
“Tarkaring” and “Daboing” themselves before the entire world and exposing
one anothers dirty little secrets all in a squalid attempt to gain the
upper hand in an unfolding internal struggle for power and supremacy, is
not good for the country and is even worse for the government that they
all claim to serve.
The bottom line is that the Presidency is in utter disarray and confusion
and the health of the President, despite all pretentions, is obviously
getting far worse and is degenerating by the day.
Last week one rather bold commentator went as far as to describe him as
looking like a “bag of skin and bones” and described him as a “walking
ghost”.
Many, including some of those around him, are wondering why he does not
just resign, hand over the reigns of power to his Vice President and go
back to Daura to take care of his health.
Does he find it so difficult to let go? Has his desire to hold on to power
at all costs become as obsessive, compelling and all-consumming as Golum’s
“precious ring?”
Does our country not deserve to have a president that is physically and
mentally fit and that is hale and hearty?
The fact of the matter is that for those of us that are not in the
corridors of power but that are in the know, all this is very disturbing.
The truth is that the consequeces of such confusion and turbulence for a
nation that is not only suffering the worst economic recession in its
history but that is also going through the greatest pain, trauma,
division, strife, butchery, hardship and suffering since its civil war,
are dangerous and unimaginable.
Yet sadly it gets even worse. The most troubling assertion that is making
the rounds is that the President has lost it to such a degree and that he
is so incapacitated by his health challenges that he is hardly ever lucid.
We are told that consequently the country is now being run by a small band
of unelected, dark and evil men and an obsessive, paranoid, unstable,
dangerous, volatile, ruthless, power-obsessed, ethnic and religious
ultra-conservative cabal who have simply refused to let him resign in
peace and who are covertly making all the decisions and are actually
running the country.
When one marries this explosive cocktail to the fact that many are fully
aware of what will happen in our country if Buhari dies whilst on the
throne it is enough to give us all sleepless nights about the future.
That fear is compounded by the utterly chilling and callous public
comments made by one Inusa Saidu Biu who claims to be an officer in the
Nigerian Police Force.
A few days ago he said that Buhari had been “poisoned by his enemies”
(meaning southerners and Christians) and that if the President dies he
would personally “shoot 200 people dead”.
His assertion and threat, made openly and publicly on his Facebook page,
in full police uniform whilst carrying weapons and hardware, says a lot
and invokes deep concern.
The truth is that Biu’s words betray the mindset and reflects the thinking
of millions of people from Buhari’s core northern constituency, who think
like him, who do not give a damn about anything or anyone other than
Buhari, who see the President as their god and who are ready to kill for
him at the drop of a hat.
There are literally millions of murderous and genocidal maniacs like Biu
crawling all over the landscape and under the woodwork of the core north
and who are waiting to vent their spleen and anger and shed oceans of
innocent blood in the event of anything untoward happening to the
President.
Sadly all this sounds familiar.
Does anyone remember what sparked off the genocide that took place in
Rwanda in the 1990’s?
It all started when the Hutu President was killed in a plane crash and the
Hutus were told that the plane had been shot down by their rival Tutsis.
The result was that in the space of one month close to one million Tutsis
were hacked to death and butchered in their homes by Hutu mobs who were
motivated by nothing but hate and a desire to effect revenge.
The rhetoric of people like Biu points in this direction. Only they will
kill far more than one million if given half a chance.
The truth is that we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder in this country and
I sincerely hope and pray that the Presidents health improves and some
measure of order, predictability, sanity, peace and stability is restored.
If this happens we will have the historic opportunity to organise
ourselves and vote the APC out in a peaceful election in 2019 but if it
does not and Buhari dies before the end of his tenure, no-one in his right
mind should expect a smooth transition of power to the Vice President.
This is because the cabal and Buhari’s hard-line supporters and
footsoldiers simply despise him and will not allow it to happen.
If the President dies whilst on the throne there will be chaos, carnage
and destruction on an unprecedented and massive scale in our country
because his core northern support- base will unleash mayhem on Nigeria and
particulary on southerners and Christians that reside in the north.
What they fail to appreciate is that if that were to happen there will be
an equally massive and unprecedented retaliation from the south and from
the people of the Middle Belt and Nigeria will not survive it.
It is unfortunate that things have come to this but let no-one make any
mistake: the will of the south must not be tested.
We are ready for the very worse and whether anyone likes it or not
southern unity and solidarity is on the rise.
Gone are the days that our people will be butchered at will in the morbid
quest for northern Muslim power and in an attempt to perpetuate
Hausa-Fulani hegemony without a robust and equally devastating response.
We pray for our President: that God will forgive him of his many sins,
grant him good health and spare his life but we also warn those that are
planning to harm our people to sheath their swords before they set off a
chain of events that will cause an unprecedented, historic and massive
conflagration on the African continent, the likes of which have never been
seen before.
May God help us all.