Fani Kayode in his recent opinion article titled: The Ailing President
And The Coming Conflagration In Nigeria, has described President
Muhammadu Buhari as a colorful creature called Gollum in 'Lord of the
Rings'. The former Minister of Aviation in the opinion article reacted
over the president's illness and the worrisome state of the Nation. Read
the opinion article after the cut...
The Ailing President And The Coming Conflagration In Nigeria
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 colorful creature
called Gollum in J.R. Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' and behaves more and
more like the goblins 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 entreaties 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 contemptuous 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 journalist 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 unauthorized 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
attend 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
opprobrium 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 cacophony 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 another 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-consuming as
Gollum'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 consequences 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 thewoodwork 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 particularly 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.
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