Poor Buhari

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This column this time was set to scan the recent televised talk by former deputy senate president, Ibrahim Nasir Mantu, in which he deployed grandiose schemes, half-truths, and abuse of logic to pass
him as a political ‘born-again’, having confessed to certain crimes and sins. But a genuine Man of God knows that ‘confession’, properly called and genuinely implied, is a thing of sterner stuff.
As I was pondering on why Mantu, apparently on a mission to seek andextract a dirty job most preferably from a troubled and politicallydepleted Buhari, embarked on the wrong road to Damascus, a nationalistic and seemingly catch-all outcry by Nigerian youths echoedfrom all national fringes, with the youths bleeding from an unkind andthoughtlessly brutish cut, as President Muhammadu Buhari made guineapigs of them, by unduly referring to them as “lazy and uneducated”, in a situation that demanded utmost caution and presidential discreteness.
Poor Buhari! The aftermath of that diplomatic gaff and faux pas hasproven too much for the President and his courtiers and palace men tocontend and vacate. For a man whose begrudging Presidency has put the country and its people through uncommon trials, unprecedentedtrepidation, turmoil, and a long season of grief, it is most unfortunate that foul speech rather than candour, kind words, and inspiration will gain his savvy and charisma at the most critical moment.
More than the unnecessary name calling and unprovoked malice andmudslinging that Buhari’s judgment of the Nigerian youths is, thePresident’s utterance actually fell short of the expectation of his host, and utterly begged the question and truth of the Nigerian situation at home and abroad. It is even worse that after chastising the youth population, and even denigrating them as “uneducated”, the President could not proceed to tell his host how much his administration has done to revolutionise education and reverse the trend of its rising cost and facilities decay; or the youth redemptionprogramme he has introduced to fast track youth education andengagement to step up national productivity.
As it is, passions are flying and emotions are high. The youths areapparently too angry to be sober to look at the other truth that President Buhari did not answer the question that was put to him correctly. He was confronted by an arresting and disarming moment of failure and he opted for the military trick of manoeuvre and decoy in the absence of reconnaissance cover. Thus, he blackmailed and lied against the youths, and succeeded in pulling a wool across the face of his host who could not interrogate him further on the colossal failures of the Buhari administration in Nigeria such as the spreading cemetery in the National space as a result of herdsmen savagery and bestial campaigns, and the obvious resolve by the same cannibalistic irredentists to collapse the Church right to its doctrinal foundations.
The truth that President Buhari does not know – which is not healthy for a President blindly seeking re-election, is that the Nigerian youths are hardworking, creative, resilient, and faithful. The uniqueness of Nigerian youths is the reason why the country – Nigeria – forges on while the state, typified by Buhari’s brand of Presidency, is failing. That is why Nigeria is a mystery with peculiar mystical and mythical myths. By every standard, Nigerian youths are the bulwark and beauty of the Nigeria Project; continental role models, and adorable global players.
For Buhari, it were better, perhaps, if the recent London outing did not come at all. It was one opportunity grossly mismanaged, and if thePresident and his no less hapless and disingenuous handlers are in doubt and unable to appraise the electoral implications of that diplomatic miscarriage, they will sure come to terms with this and other grating truths when Buhari would be roundly and popularlyrejected at the polls in 2019. Already ambushed for zero vote in states like Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Kogi, and other states where the spirit of those massacred by his ethnic herdsmen have refused to be
buried, it was the most inconceivable failure and self-immolation for the President to blackmail a chunk of the electorate in a moment of overseas diplomatic clumsiness.
Ever since, in the stead of the civilize and soothing option of apologising to the maligned and trivialised Nigerians, President Buhari and his men like Femi Adesina have continued to curdle foolhardiness and spin semantics from their own cocoon. It is so bad but laughable that the other day, Femi Adesina talked of the suspension of Nigeria from CHOGOM in the aftermath of Playwright Ken Saro Wiwa’s ‘judicial murder’ in 1995 as part of his defence of the President’s insensitive and false branding of the Nigerian youths. Adesina and co have been as dull and boring as the President himself appeared exhausted and vacant when he misrepresented the picture of the Nigerian youths to the world.
Poor Buhari! The odds are too many and mounting on the eve of election.

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