No matter the situation or circumstance, I have never doubted the fact that our dear president, Muhammadu Buhari means well for this nation he controls. Nobody asks to run a hydra-headed monster called Nigeria without a plan. In the case of Muhammadu Buhari, he made three unsuccessful bids before luck finally smiled on him. He is the classical example of how not to give up on your dreams. I congratulate my president for persevering and for winning the confidence of people so much that they have given him a second chance.
It is unfair to remember that in his first term, it took him six months to find suitable candidates to suit his ministerial logbook. We must also forget that a few times when he opened the book of integrity in search of people to serve, he discovered that most of them were long gone. In other words, he was not aware that these friends of his, were dead. As they say in mental health – amnesia is real! You can imagine what happens to selective amnesia.
People have accused the president of attending every foreign jamboree. The truth is, once you’ve given your job to experts, you let them handle it. Buhari has never left the country rudderless. He has ministers working for our welfare; government agencies have boards members. I agree with hailers that the nation has never been left on autopilot.
Our president means well and trusts easily. He expects that if any of his officials is faced with a challenge beyond their pay grade, they would call his attention to it. Whenever he is aware of a difficulty, he quickly works to solve it. A few historical examples would suffice.
Buhari’s first budget came in 2016, one year after being sworn in. Nigerians have been doing the dance with their overpaid and highly ineffective legislature over budgetary matters. These bloated drones always make sure to add chunks of their own to these budgets. In the Three Arms Zone, it is known as ‘padding’. After presenting the budget, the president travelled to London to winter there. The budget returned to him was overtly padded because he was not aware of padding. You can’t fault presidential ignorance of padding, the executive is a different arm.
In January 2018, the President ordered now retired IG Ibrahim Idris to move his operational headquarters to Benue. It was to end the wanton killings there. Idris saluted his commander-in-chief and drove towards Makurdi. Halfway there, he camped in Lafia, which means peace. Gossips squealed about it knowing that in the military, it would have been called insubordination, but Idris is not a soldier.
Confronted with the disobedience of lawful order, Femi Adesina, the president’s most loyal mouthpiece told the media that the president is not aware adding that the president is not – omniscient. That settled it once and for all for those of us who thought he was. It was obvious that the president was not aware of the need to punish disobedience. The matter ended there but death did not cease in Benue.
That same year 2018, non-academic staff of Nigerian universities went on strike, crippling higher institutions. Naturally, President Buhari’s children do not university at home. They prefer elite British schools where strikes are rare. But Buhari has a good education minister in Adamu Adamu. He believed he could handle the educational crisis without telling his boss. The president escaped criticism because he was not aware.
Fast track to January 2019, Daily Trust reported that the Army was moving to retake Baga town in Borno State. The military did not like newspapers acting as its unofficial PR and launched the first Operation Seal off Daily Trust. The jackboot gangsterism lasted almost twelve hours. Buhari’s media aide, Garba Shehu swore that the president was – not aware of the operation. He probably informed the commander-in-chief who ordered his troops back to their barracks. A similar adventurism happened last week when the army kidnapped and later released Tunji Omirin.
Some people have alleged that Buhari hated ex-chief justice Walter Onoghen. They forced his resignation for not truthfully declaring his assets and charged him to court. When the story hit the media, Buhari’s second in command, Yemi Osinbajo, a pastor, professor, lawyer and learned silk told the nation that Buhari was not aware that the nation’s Chief Judge was being tried.
You can’t fault Osinbajo. As a man of God, he cannot lie, because the scripture says that no liar shall enter the kingdom of heaven. As a learned silk – Osinbajo understands the effect of perjury in court. As Vice-President, he is the closest non-cabal member to the president. Therefore we must believe that – Buhari was truly not aware.
Street people call Nigeria the kidnap capital of the world; people even fake their own abduction. We know that Boko Haram has taken ‘technically’ from defeated; ritualists and herdsmen are on our backs 24/7. But our President is not aware of all these challenges.
Somehow, someone whispered in his ear, the state of national insecurity and being the proactive ruler that he is; he summoned his security chiefs to a closed-door session. There over abundant tea, coffee, biscuits, bitter kola, kolanuts and sumptuous meals Mr. President must have thanked his service chiefs for doing a very good job of sleeping on duty. One guessed he must have implored them to wake up.
We owe our president and his service chiefs loads of gratitude, not calls for their resignation or removal. After all, this president won our hearts with his superlative performance to get a second term. His party has been raking up what they didn’t get by polls in the courts at every level. No other president has performed so well. This president’s parley appeared to have ended as usual with good intentions. If a communiqué was immediately issued – we were not aware!
