I have repeatedly said that in a 21st Century world, a generation driven by technology, a president like General Muhammadu Buhari does not fit into the thought-process of this age. We need a hands-on President who understands our collective feelings, nuances, emotions and sobriety each time he talks to us. A president that is communicative and interactive will serve our idiosyncrasies better than one that sweats profusely each time the urge to speak to us comes staring at him. At difficult moments such as the one at hand, the president should encapsulate the totality of our hopes and political will to give a sense of direction where there seems no way. He has a responsibility to market and dispense hope as a way of reassuring the citizenry that he shares in their aspirations. His spokesman, Femi Adesina had earlier told a befuddled nation that president Buhari has his “style” of delegating responsibility, the more reason why speaking to Nigerians does not make any item on his menu list.
Each time we are faced with a huge challenge that often tests our collective will and resolve, the president plays the ostrich, some kind of hide and seek game. Each time we desire to hear from our president, he makes speaking look like a tall order. He turns everything into a melodramatic display, that easily instigates negative thoughts in our consciousness. Even when he ended up speaking, there is too much doubt about its originality and genuity, both in terms of context and location. Everything has become a script, well-oiled by presidency halleluyah boys, just to fill a void. When there was explosion in Abule-Odo area of Lagos, President Buhari was visit-shy. We saw report of the Lagos state Governor, Babatunde Sanwo-Olu, showing the president the picture details of the monumental carnage. After the pictures, end of story. This was well at a time the coronavirus pandemic was already baring its fangs across the world.
President Buhari’s speech or address to the nation on Sunday, March 29, was a reharsh of familiar rigmaroles that never inspire hope. It was more a pandemic of a speech. It opens the gory sores of a nation that is being led by a man who cannot elicit any confidence of being in charge of state affairs. Rather than cease the occasion to ignite passion and inspire hope, he bungled the opportunity as another platform to farm rhetorics, leaving the real issues to wander about like the coronavirus itself. President Buhari did not tell us anything new. He only re-emphasised what the Lagos state Governor had repeatedly told us. He gave a directive for total lockdown for two weeks in Abuja, Lagos and Ogun, without telling us the palliatives. He did not spell out what to expect or undertake to mitigate the ferocity of this unseen guest that has become the most notorious death knell in the world. He left me further confused, when he mentioned school feeding programme as one of the palliatives to cushion the impact of this lockdown, but the schools have since been on forced holidays, in response to the pandemic . Are we expected to feed the students in their homes or what was the import of that reference?
He mentioned the paltry N15b package that is yet to be released to the appropriate agencies. He made reference to the tradermoni and conditional cash transfer; initiatives that have been dogged by accusation and counter-accusation of corruption and financial malfeasance, skewed in favour of a particular zone. The president was mortally silent on what to do with the over 100 million Nigerians feeding on less than $2 dollars a day, especially those who normally toil from dawn to dusk to eke a living. It is good to advise Nigerians to observe the stay at home order, no matter how illegally pronounced, but to leave them to their fate, and in such helpless awe, is to use a supposed solution to create another pandemic, in a country that has assumed the unenviable status of poverty capital of the world. If there are no incentives to cushion the economic implications of the stay-at-home order, it will be pointless using that option in the first place. Hunger, poverty, deprivations and all their variants, will further cripple the ordinary folks out there and worsen their already complicated situation. Malnutrition will set in especially in IDP camps and amongst rural folks who cannot boast of a meal a day.
Aside from the exposé which the handling of the coronavirus has wrought on the system, it is obvious that the presidency is perpetually troubled. The Vice President, Professor Yemi Osibanjo, such a cerebral voice, has maintained an undignifying silence. Rather than given the responsibility to coordinate the Presidential Task Force, as the number 2 citizen, he has been isolated in isolation. The health sector further got exposed by its manifest infrastructural decay. Imagine a country of 200million people, with superlative scientists and professors of medicine everywhere, can only boast of 5 molecular Laboratories in the entire federation. The Aso Villa hospital, despite huge budgetary allocation has remained a mere consulting clinic, thoroughly abandoned like every other hospital across the country without the relevant medical equipment. Testing kits for coronavirus are short in supply, thus limiting the number of persons being tested for this infection. It is a shame on us that less than 400 persons have only been tested in a population of 200 million. That does not only expose the crudity of our reality, it underscores the primitiveness of a system that has been swallowed by inertia.
If coronavirus unleashed its fangs on us, president Buhari and his team of complacent lieutenants must be held responsible. Aside from the delay in mustering the political will to close our borders almost immediately we had the first index case, the snail-pace approach to setting up the required molecular laboratories in major cities of the country, is another pain in the neck. Despite the growing number of cases from the very few numbers of tested persons, we only have 5 laboratories thus far whilst nothing is being done by the Federal Government as at today, to build isolation centres in identified stadia across the country. I can bet that before the release of the N15b support package announced by the Federal Government, the purpose for it and the urgency would have been defeated by bureacratic bottleneck that is often common with our redtape civil service. By the time the pandemic escapes from our fatherland, the blame game will now manifest. That is Nigeria for you, especially under a leadership that is taciturn, hidden, withdrawn and reclusive like our “baba go-slow”.
President Buhari often leaves room for us to doubt his ability, understanding and reading of situations each time the call for result-driven leadership comes knocking. His “style” shows symptoms of a man unwilling to lead. His demeanor often complicates what should ordinarily be a simple issue. His conduct makes the citizenry to harbour the feeling that he does not care for the people, such sense of unfeeling, which typifies leaders that are not in charge of their socio-political milieu. This “style” has wrecked his reputation and dented his image. Rather than manage the image of the country, we are now busy managing the image of the president. If we have to literarily beg the president each time we are desirous of knowing our compass, it goes to show how much withdrawn president Buhari is from the power rostrum. The people must be resolute in taking their destinies in their own hands by bracing all odds to make a way out of the coronavirus pandemic. We must self isolate, observe social distancing and apply the hand sanitizer religiously while also washing our hands with soap. Coronavirus cannot kill our aspirations or our dreams. We will outlive it irrespective of whether President Buhari delivers an A-grade speech or not.
NB: Prince Kassim Afegbua, a former Commissioner for Information and Orientation in Edo State wrote in for The New Diplomat from Abuja.
