By Adeleke Adefioye.
In 2015, Muhammadu Buhari became the President-elect of the Federal Republic of Nigeria following his victory at the polls after three unsuccessful attempts. He finally resumed at Aso Rock, the nation’s Presidential Villa, as a full-fledged democratically elected President shortly after the inauguration ceremony where he took an oath of office.
As a President-elect, he had bragged that he would leave no stone unturned in ensuring that only seasoned technocrats and qualified professionals would be considered for cabinet and Aso Rock positions.
Aside looking out for super star technocrats and super-duper qualified professionals, a nation like Nigeria with tribe and ethnic heterogeneity would need to also match super stardom in professionalism with a considerable ethnic and religious balance while taking a representation of 36 states and six geo-political zones into consideration.
It was such a long expectation and an unusual endless wait for Nigerians. Matter of fact, it was the longest wait ever for any newly sworn-in President to appoint cabinet and economic team members. Expectedly, the endless wait generated a heated national discourse. A section of the nation was very frugal with comments. This section was optimistic that the delay meant that the President’s selection process was very stringent and as such would produce seasoned technocrats as envisioned by the President.
On the other side of the isle in the national discourse was another section of the nation. This section ran out of patience from the endless wait. Folks in this section argued that the President obviously didn’t know what he was doing. According to them, formation of a formidable cabinet was not contingent on unnecessary and unjustifiable waste of time.
In an attempt to justify running a national administration solely for such a long time, the President came out of his unending self-imposed stringent cabinet selection process only to respond to folks who thought he was wasting time unnecessarily. He furiously responded to his critics describing their assessment of his slow motion-like process as a great deal of impatience on their part. ‘Impatience is not a virtue,’ he reiterated while describing his unproductive foot-dragging selection process as a careful process of consultation that would achieve better results. At this point, he won some gullible folks over to his side as they gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Eventually and unfortunately, the supposed careful selection process lasted for six months. At the end of the sixth month when the names of the appointed cabinet members were announced, it turned out to be a blueprint for nepotism and national embarrassment. It was an inexhaustible list of political jobbers that ranged from recycled elements to incompetent demagogues.
The President’s earlier sets of appointments for the Aso Rock Team wasn’t any better and Femi Adesina, Special Adviser, Media and Publicity, was not an exception. Adesina shares the same ideology with Lai Mohammed, the Federal Minister of Information. They both lack the intellectual capacity to make statements that reflect logic or validity of inference.
Ask Adesina a simple question, his ever annoying response would whirl around like a feather-weight particle blown by aggressive wind. I’ve heard Adesina speak in support of the flagrant ethnic agenda of President Buhari. I’ve heard Adesina speak in support of the lopsided RUGA policy of the irresponsible government of Buhari. I’ve heard Adesina implore southern farmers to cede their farmland to Fulani herdsmen. His ignoble reason was that ‘it is better to be alive than to die over a piece of land.’ I’ve heard Adesina tell Nigerians to be thankful that the incessant bomb blasts that keep claiming innocent lives are not happening daily. Where is this guy’s heart? Sold to the devil?
Adesina’s recent rant in his latest article dedicated to the 78th birthday of his principal, President Buhari, was not a surprise. It was exactly what would be expected from a delusional psychopath. In this article titled ‘Buhari at 78: If only we knew this President,’ Adesina did not only argue illogically in support of the most unresponsive President Nigeria ever had, he sing-praised Buhari from the first to the last paragraph of the article for the wrong reasons.
For emphasis, I’ll highlight three stories from Adesina’s article. According to him, ‘In December 2015, I had lost my elder sister, a Professor of Dramatic Arts, in an auto crash. While I was crying like a wailing wailer, who was on the phone, consoling and condoling with me? Muhammadu Buhari.’
In yet another story, Adesina narrated an ordeal. ‘And before he became President, when my mother passed on in 2013, and we had a commendation service for her in Lagos, who flew in all the way from Kaduna to attend? Muhammadu Buhari. He sat through the Christian service. Yet, they say he’s a bigot.’
Another cock-and-bull story narrated by Adesina in the article was about a chieftaincy title conferred on him. According to him, ‘In January 2017, I was to receive the traditional title of Nwanne di Namba of Mmaku Kingdom, in Enugu State. Courtesy demanded I tell the President. This man, who prides himself as ‘very stingy’ gave me a handsome amount of money to ferry my friends and family to the ceremony. How much? I won’t tell you, lest you ask for a belated share.’
This is more than worrisome. Under Buhari’s watch, Nigeria went from largest economy in Africa with promising emerging opportunities to the poverty capital of the world. Under Buhari’s watch, security of lives has become a nightmare. Under Buhari’s watch, kidnapping is just two incidents away from being legitimized.
Personally, Nigeria is the only country I know of whose citizens are mercilessly massacred on a daily basis and the president would not address the humongous issue publicly and proffer a durable and a sustainable solution to this menace of insecurity of lives.
According to the most recent report released by the Debt Management Office, DMO, Nigeria’s Total Debt Stock both Foreign and Domestic stood at N31.01 trillion ($85.9 billion) as at June, 2020. This is a total of 8.31 percent increase when compared to N28.63 trillion ($79.3 billion) that was on record in March, 2020.
Obviously, Adesina is not bothered by all of these alarming national issues that have successfully crept into everyday living and fast becoming integral part of life. How more myopic can Adesina be if the only way he could evaluate a President’s performance is by the personal favors he receives from the President. Oh! The President is the best thing that ever happened to Nigeria because he called him when he lost his sister, he showed up at his mom’s funeral service and gave him money to travel to Nmaku Kingdom in Enugu State to receive a chieftaincy title.
Adesina – Where is your heart? Sold to the devil? So, what an individual needs to do in an attempt change from being a bigot to a latitudinarian is to attend a church funeral service? Whatever happens to action speaks louder than voice. Certain quarters in the country are now inhabitable for Christians as they are continually murdered because of their faith and the President never acted indifferently to this heinous crime and perpetrators are never apprehended. Yet, he’s not a bigot because he attended the funeral service of Adesina’s late mom.
A total of 43 rice farmers were massacred recently and while this has become a routine occurrence that reflects the magnitude of insecurity and the worthlessness of human lives in the country, the President has flagrantly refused to address Nigerians on what his administration is doing to generally ameliorate the unprecedented hardship contending with Nigerians or specifically rollout a sustainable plan to forestall the worrisome insecurity of lives that has earned the country a spot in the blacklists of religious freedom and rights to life as all paths to the pursuit of happiness continue to close for Nigerians under Buhari’s watch.
He even flipped the middle finger at the members of the National Assembly when he refused to honor an invitation to a joint session to deliberate on the alarming rate of insecurity of lives in the country. Yet, he has successfully checked off all the boxes by Adesina’s standard as long as the President gives him money to transport his friends to Enugu for a chieftaincy title ceremony.
The way Adesina reasons is reminiscent of an analogy that I made in one of my articles on a different topic. It’s more like a man whose son-in-law maltreats and abuses his daughter physically and mentally. And when people came to report to him that his son-in-law would kill his daughter if she’s not rescued from the abusive marriage. The man’s response was that his son-in-law is a very generous man because he sends him money periodically for upkeep. This is typical of delusional psychopaths. Habitually, they place a higher premium on personal gains over other people’s well-being.
Earlier on in his article, Adesina solicited for support for the President asking Nigerians to show the President some kindness. Adesina, I wish you are brave enough to switch the direction of your request and ask the President to show Nigerians some kindness. It sounds more like you are not smart enough to realize that a President is not elected to be shown kindness, a President is elected to show kindness to the citizens.
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