Buhari, His Media Men And Gov Ortom

Nigeria has overcome many travails in the past that some Nigerians and those who watch them say God is a Nigerian. We went through a very tragic three year civil war very early in our independence, we came out of it. We went through a political crisis in the Western Region; we came out of it. We had a popular presidential election in 1993 that was annulled for ethnic reason which the ethnicity that felt cheated resisted in a way that threatened the continuity of the nation; we came out of it. We had General Sani Abacha as military ruler in a very specialized draconian experience where many Nigerians were killed. Rather than Nigeria go down with it, it was the architect of that draconian rule that died in a way that locals and foreigners considered miraculous. Olusegun Obasanjo, ex-military head of state, who was jailed escaped a planned lethal injection and a framed phantom coup to lead Nigeria's fourth republic.

Now that fourth republic that Obasanjo pioneered and that is on its 24th year is so severely threatened that Nigerians will have to pray to their God to come around for help again. It may be difficult this time round. Many Nigerians are saying they can no longer depend on prayers, that they have to fight their way out. They say it is their reliance on prayer that has encouraged their leaders to take them for granted. Nigeria in the hand in Major General Muhammadu Buhari, who mounted the saddle in 2015 after he defeated the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in an election that some Nigerians considered controversial, has been like a nation under a curse. The power mongers around Goodluck Jonathan advised him not to leave power but the God of Nigeria persuaded Jonathan to concede defeat and leave. Even the All Progressives Congress (APC) of Buhari that seemingly defeated and replaced Goodluck Jonathan seem to be admitting he should not have left. The APC considered the former president who is not a member of the APC but of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a veritable candidate to run on its platform for the upcoming 2023 election as president. Ironic. Why the agreement broke down is not known yet but Bola Ahmed Tinubu in rounds of political horse-trading which include alleged exchange of mountains of dollars in the usual Nigerian manner became the party's presidential candidate. Now Bola Tinubu is running a Muslim-Muslim ticket and half the country's population who are Christians are crying war.

Muhammadu Buhari seem determined to ruin whatever is left of Nigeria, after the sixteen years of PDP's pillage of the nation. Nigerians are saying their country has never had it worse. That was not the message Buhari and his handlers in the campaigns of the 2015 gave to Nigeria. The nation was not new to the man out of military khaki that plan to rule them. In 1984 he came through the barrel of a gun, shot his way through to become the nation's military head of state after President Shehu Shagari was removed in a military coup. The government of Shagari had brought the ship of the Nigerian state to the rocks which Nigeria's foremost political and economic thinker, Chief Obafemi Awolowo had predicted about a year before that coup.

Nigerians were saved the full experience of the stuff Buhari was made of when then Major-General Ibrahim Babangida, another ambitious military officer removed Buhari after eighteen months in power. Babangida had declared that the coup that toppled Buhari was due to alleged mismanagement of the nation's diversity and refusal to consult his colleagues and a draconian posture by the regime. Since the return of power to the civil population in 1999, Buhari has contested election to be president of Nigeria three times and on the three occasions he failed. This shows a hunger for power that explains what Buhari is doing today. On the fourth time, Bola Tinubu, with a self-confessed life-long ambition to be president aligned with Buhari to form the APC and the party won. A new Buhari was packaged for Nigerians with promise for a turn around of the nation. He was called a disciplined man who will tame corruption which had virtually brought Nigeria to its knees. He would sell all the jets in the fleet of the presidency and travel by commercial airlines, he would spend all the money recovered from corruption cases to give Nigerians education, and he would ensure one naira to one dollar exchange rate. Also, he would end the insecurity in the nation in six months, he would build new refineries and the nation won't import refined petroleum products again and thus the racket from petrol import subsidy will cease. Finally, he would end incessant Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strikes and give smiles to the university students.

But seven years into his eight years in the saddle, not one of these promises has been accomplished. Government has become more undisciplined and corruption is wider and deeper than before Buhari got to power. By 2023, about 90 percent of Nigeria's projected revenue will go to service debts. Nigerians are crying for divine intervention so that the nation will not go down.

A Nigerian woman, obviously a Christian, traveled all the way to "Gadara Mountain" in Israel where Jesus healed a mad man and with the flag of Nigeria went to pray that the madness in Nigeria be stopped. She believed that as Jesus healed the insane man at Gadara, the madness of insecurity, youth misbehaviour, banditry, Boko Haram, economic malaise, corruption, Buhari's obsession for his Fulani ethnicity and love for his cousins in Niger Republic where he has spent Nigeria's scarce naira to extend a railway line and where he recently gifted 25 cars to the government will be healed as Nigerians joined her in the prayer. She was seen on a WhatsApp footage waving the Nigerian flag at the same spot where Jesus healed the insane man.

May the nation be healed but Buhari seem to be on a revenge misison. Virtually all Nigerians including a sizable population from Buhari's North are saying he is perhaps the worst leader to have ruled Nigeria. Few weeks ago, he was seen on television promising APC governors who visited him at Aso Rock, the seat of government, that Nigeria will see changes in the next six months, that they will know he respects them. Nigerians won't be taken in by that antics again. If all he could do in seven years is to divide their country, they doubt he could pull anything through in six months. The first sign that Buhari will be parochial and divisive came very early in his administration. He appointed two media aides at the same time, the first time anybody will do that in the nation. Femi Adesina has been an associate and friend of Buhari. He was at the burial of Adesina's mother, then he was not president yet. Buhari made Femi Adesina the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity. Then he appointed Garba Shehu, from Dutse in Jigawa State as well. Both of them are accomplished journalists but why Buhari would have two senior journalists as his media aides was never questioned. Does it mean Buhari has overcome his taciturnity? and want to engage with the Nigerian public. That would be a great change and a great welcome.

But that will never be. Buhari is more withdrawn than ever before. It took great cries to have him engage with the nation on few occasions, due to the insistence of Nigerians and on each ocassion he came out, it was with great verbal somersaults, one after the other. But the real reason was to come out in many subsequent Buhari actions. It appears that Buhari could not trust any southerner. Femi Adesina is his friend, he cultivated him most likely because he needed friends from the south, especially from the fiery southern press but Buhari could not trust Femi Adesina. He had to have Garba Shehu, a Northerner, on the side, possibly breathing down on Femi's neck. And that has dogged the heels of the two gentlemen in their offices.

The two of them are in public relations for the president. They are to make friends for him. But what Nigerians have seen is combative press engagement, a kind of "fire-for-fire" engagement. When especially issues touched Fulanisation or Islamization programmes that is at the heart of the Buhari administration, Garba Shehu comes in. Samuel Ortom , governor of beleaguered Benue State who was in APC with Buhari before he crossed over to PDP is a sworn enemy of the Buhari administration, courtesy of the fire-for-fire press engagement and Buhari's nepostism and religious bigotry. Benue State has become the target of some Fulani herdsmen for destruction and they have found support in the president, due to his acts of omission and commission.

Recently, Governor Ortom returned from a tour of some Nigeria's political leaders to London, Paris and Dubai, a tour Nigerians have put down as political junketing, and told Nigerians that a top security aide in Buhari's presidency has told him that there is an instruction from Buhari that nobody must touch the Fulani whatever crime they may commit. That is not news to Nigerians because they live with the consequence of that instruction daily. It was what led Sunday Igboho, the Yoruba freedom fighter to take up arms against the Fulani herders in his homestead of Oyo North when no security dare respond to the report of constant harrasment of the Fulani herders. In Lagos, some Fulani motorcycle riders who were said to have been arrested over the murder of a young Nigerian were subsequently substituted with other innocent Nigerians. A Yoruba man who was in charge of the arrest circulated his resignation from the security police on social media. He said he was fleeing Nigeria. In Lagos, you dare not go to any police station for a case against any Fulani. Police officers take orders from the Miyyetti Allah head around Abule Egba/ Agege axis.

But Garba Shehu has dared Governor Ortom to name the top security officer. Who would do that against an officer who gave information in confidence and who is still serving? A list of some arrested and investigated sponsors of Boko Haram insurgency is said to have been given to the president but up till now nothing has been done with the list. While their counterparts in United Arab Emirates, Dubai have been arrested, tried and jailed, nobody knows the whereabout of the ones in Nigeria. A top naval officer came on television shorly after his retirement to declare that he was in charge of the investigation and that he gave the list to Buhari. Nothing has been heard of that list. Many Nigerians are of the impression that Buhari’s role as Patron of Miyyeti Allah may have given some criminal elements among the herdsmen a free reign.

This is the only explanation Nigerians could give for the silence of Buhari and for the fire-for-fire approach of Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu. But Nigerians have refused to be intimidated.

Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Masters degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.