The Chairman, Editorial Board of the Nation Newspaper, Sam Omatseye, has expressed his views concerning the recent use of the term Buharists or Buharism, describing it as “the use of the opacity of language to advance personal or selfish ambitions.”
He said this in reaction to comments by the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai that there is a group of persons including governors called ‘Buharists’ who are pushing for the President to contest and return in 2019.
Omatseye stressed that for such terms to be appropriate, there has to be a clear philosophy or method of operation around the ideology that has a positive influence on the state of the nation, be it in the political or economy sphere.
“We have not heard of anything called Buharism or Buharist in any clear, philosophical or methodological fashion. So for you to talk of Buharist or Buharism, there must be some sort of method to him that connotes some kind of positive energy or vibe on the political arena or on the economic arena. What we have now is virtually chaos, unless they want to say that chaos is now Buharism and that will not be selling their ideology.
“It is one thing for you to say that you want to fight corruption and it is another thing for people to believe that the whole of your heart is there and there is a method to your fighting corruption. When you say you are fighting corruption and your EFCC man and your AGF are not on the same boat, your EFCC man and your own party’s Senate leader are not on the same boat, when your security adviser, the chief of staff and your DSS are not on the same boat on the war on corruption, if you say that is Buharism, that is chaos,” he asserted.
Reacting to comments by the Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha al-Hassan, Omatseye said rather than Nigerians describing it as an act of betrayal, there should be an investigation as to why the situation is the way it is.
“When a person says that, and people have not investigated this very well, what did Buhari not do or what did Buhari do to the person that he gave a job or the opportunity to serve on a very high pedestal that makes the person say, ‘I will not continue with you’? The first thing is for people to shout betrayal and we do that in our politics all the time.
“The first thing we have to ask is what went wrong,” he stated.
Speaking further, he described what the Women Affairs Minister did as “a dress rehearsal for the interview that her mentor Atiku Abubakar granted the Hausa Service I think of the BBC where he actually laid it out that he was not in synch with Buhari anymore.
“I remember in the early days of the Buhari victory that he was with Buhari and he described Buhari as the father of the nation and I don’t know how things descended from that paternal height to this adversarial low – that is the question we should ask. I don’t know who erred or who didn’t err.
“The question is let us investigate, we cannot start throwing out the easy word and say it is betrayal. There is betrayal of principle and there is betrayal of persons and sometimes the betrayal of principle contradicts the betrayal of persons and when it comes to that, you have to make a choice – are you going to betray the principle or betray the person,” he said.
