By Segun Ige
What could have made President Muhammadu Buhari to reschedule his medical trip to London? Was it because of the touted massive pressures unleashed on him based on unconfirmed report of plan by unknown groups to “harass” him out of London?
Mr. President was, again, due to travel for another medical trip in June, Friday 25. Suddenly and abruptly, it was reported that the flight had been postponed or rescheduled, leaving Nigerians, as it were, with grave suspects, suspense and sumpsimus.
Such truncation or abrogation, if you like, should have been precluded by one of his aides coming on board to tell us why the President is actually ‘staying back,’ especially in a genuine democratic process of transparency, accountability and responsibility.
The harassment notwithstanding, I don’t think there’s been any dramatic change since. (I did think it was a purposive harangue anchored on reforming and restructuring Nigeria, however.) Instead, the issue of insecurity and insurgency has increasingly towered, even towing away some brave and benign efforts in containing the epidemic, defaulting and designating Nigeria on the verge of disintegration and disillusionment.
This habit, not act, is sufficiently spurred by political apparatchiks who are perpetually also deafened and immune to common course of humanity – or what Nelson Mandela would describe as “ubuntu”.
How better or fortified is our healthcare system? Not surprisingly, when Buhari should be leaving the country is when medical practitioners are threatening to embark on another strike: Another trip, another strike! It’s a shame, isn’t it, that the lifeblood of a country is frequently locking down, simply because of the lackadaisical attitude of leadership; that is, of people in power?
Is it not diametrically striking and staggering that a whole president is or was leaving a crucial sector of nationhood exacerbatingly defunded and derobed? Now, what will the situation be like if the president had gone and the doctors had potentially embarked on their ‘bribery strike?’
Above all, it shows Buhari is not ‘listening’ and ‘watching,’ and a president who’s neither listening nor watching is definitely become a pariah yanked from the common affairs, common values and deep concerns of the people-led – because such government would be losing and wasting its time and tenure. So, the president should stay back to address this growing and chronic problem of critical importance and stop riding wishes while the country is riding roller coaster.
And as he hibernates, he should cement his backend reflection with his frontend preparation in order to maximise his experience of staying back. Notably disturbing in the country at the moment is the conundrum of insecurity which, as has been speculated, is collaboratively informed and inspired by the Nigerian military. Surely, Buhari stands a chance to prove this prima facie ad hominem otherwise – because it is unnerving seeing how a certain state’s security forces are literally surrendering to the brazen brigandage of banditry.
Failing to EXPLAIN exceedingly crucial matters might imply that, within ourselves, we’re technically nursing some group of political bandits or Boko-Haramites, who’re abundantly begrudging the doctrine of progress and “change”, fervently fuelling menace, malfeasance and decadence in the political firmament.
A government who fails to explain its actions and inactions, givings and misgivings, is clearly a “Divisor-in-Chief,” being counterproductive to the indispensable progress of INCLUSIVE POLITICS, which is the bedrock of nation-building and national development.
Since we have an ‘unseen’ and ‘unspoken’ president, I’m afraid we could wander in the bewilderment of some political wilderness. It’s not a crime, of course, to have a ‘spokesperson’ – but I’m even more personally distraught, in the meantime, that such ‘person’ is in all intents and purposes the “President”.
In particular, Buhari ought not to let one aide assume his constitutional communicative roles again. And so he needs to address the country – this time, not in a language “they do not understand” – but in a language of sympathy and empathy; language of hope and assurance; language of landslide victory and success over the epidemic of zonal havoc, sedition and civil unrest, ‘nominally’ wrought by “local bandits” – in that many are continually aggrieved and are sore wounded.
Buhari should stay and speak. He should stay and act. And he should live up to the expectations and expediencies of a tested-and-trusted president. In such a manner, the tension and clamour for geo-ethnic partition, that is arguably pro-partisan, notably of IPOB and a Yoruba group, perhaps to avoid ethnic cleansing, would be eased off, thereby building back better Nigeria ‘round about the table’ – and, in fact, the Buharistic ultra-manifestation of manifold “manufacturing of consent” would be utterly malignant to the letter.
*Ige, a Lagos-based freelance journalist, wrote via: igesegunadebayo5@gmail.com
Credits: Vanguard, Segun Ige.
