BUHARI'S STRANGE LEADERSHIP IN COVID-19 CRISIS
Many states have begun to shut down in efforts to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus disease that has, at last, found its way to Nigeria, sending jitters across the length and breadth of our national existence. Clearly, the Federal Government in its consistent negligence responded too little too late. But most worrisome is the disposition of President Muhammadu Buhari at this most critical time of unprecedented but clear danger.
Don't get it twisted; the coronavirus disease, otherwise called COVID-19, is already a pandemic. No country can boast of its immunity. Even in very few countries without the first case, their economies are already bleeding fast and furious. The first case is only a matter of when. Nigeria did hang on till February ending when the Italian index case tested positive. About three weeks later, Lagos, Ogun, Ekiti, Benue, Kaduna, public and private schools, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), and the airspace have literally shut down to contain the spread. We commend all governors, and state actors that took the proactive measures.
Like in other aspects of life, time is central in the spread and control of this Frankenstein monster. Besides the conspiracy of who engineered what between China and the United States, poor response to this unusual emergency has been a major bane of its spread across the world. State's denial of the problem before its acceptance is why over 10,000 have died, with Italy of 60.5 million people now taking an unenviable lead in the death toll of more than four thousand.
Nigeria had a two-month window period to learn valuable lessons and get prepared. A month before the Italian index case, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned the likes of Nigeria with weak healthcare systems that it is a virus like none other before it. Concerned stakeholders also tabled proactive preventive measures like either a shutdown of the airspace or restriction of air movements to only two airports for proper monitoring of all inbound travellers. The Federal Government of Nigeria could not be bothered.
The Senate Committee on Health during an oversight function to Lagos airport and Apapa port were indeed shocked and immediately raised the alarm that the foremost ports of entry were not secured. The Lagos airport for instance had only a doctor on duty, amid inadequate support staff, screening equipment, just as operating airlines were not complying with basic control directives of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority. Nigeria, like others currently ravaged by COVID-19, continued to live in denial until the pandemic stared us menacingly in the face.
But unlike others that also came too late to wisdom, the presidency under Buhari has continued to care less. Across all paid-TV channels today, the common feature is presidents debriefing the country on where the virus stands and efforts at its control. Like true commanders-in-chief, they are seen talking to the people, encouraging first-line responders and preaching hope in speech and conducts. That is real leadership. It is, therefore, a no-brainer that Nigerians are asking, where is President Buhari in all of these?
Till date, Buhari has not made any state of the nation's address on coronavirus pandemic and that is strange, though not unfamiliar. It is no longer news that President Buhari's aloofness is remarkable. He enjoys talking to us from overseas as if Nigerians were leprous. After all, he did not care when citizens were getting killed in Benue and even in his home state, Katsina. He could not be troubled when Abule-Ado community in Lagos exploded and more than 20 killed the other day. He did not bat an eyelid even when his presidency was nearly going up in flames over rift between the national security adviser and chief of staff.
But the new coronavirus is a different animal. The modern world and its civilisation has never been this shaken to its foundation like now. It is also a time for true leadership with compassion – showing those capable or incapable of it. The closest our president has come in this matter was to launch an emergency toll-free number, 112, and have press secretaries issue releases. Indeed, Buhari is not the most eloquent of men. But he has been elected to occupy the seat of the commander-in-chief, traditionally made for times like this. Health experts have their space in this context and leaders have theirs for motivation and direction.
The sensitivity of this time more than ever exposes the manner of the presidency Buhari leads. The president is the father of a fearful nation. What manner of paterfamilias will not bother to visit his children when they are down in the hospital or move a limb when his entire economy goes on life support? Yes, he has sent them to the hospital and getting feedback from the clinical services, but what of compassion and empathy? What of leading by example in most critical times of his family life?
Is he even worried, if he is aware that he has very limited chances of another UK hospital treatment should his health fail at this time? Where is enlightened self-interest in this presidency? Has age and concomitant factors so shackled our leadership that the general has forgotten how to rally his troop to chances of victory? There are certainly more questions than answers at the moment. However, what is certain is that the response from Buhari is unpresidential and unacceptable.
Due to consistently poor leadership, we have lost ample time for self-fortification. Nevertheless, it is not time to despair as a people. It is time to be strong, well-enlightened, share knowledge, cooperate with authorities, be our brothers' keeper and have faith. Given what is already known of coronavirus to date, Nigeria is at the vantage position to lead the rest of Africa not only to resist the pandemic but also to cure the world. The so-called superpowers have shown their frailty, if not buffoonery, before an infinitesimal virus that should ordinarily not survive in African warm climate. The very low rate of its infection among Black Africans is a testament to that assertion.
For us, this is the time for bodies like the Nigerian Academy of Science (NAS) and virologists to be most active in finding control measures and cure. Once there is an index case at hand, good researchers, not politicians in lab wears, already have research materials for vaccine development. Our scientists cannot afford to be as bad as our political officeholders. We recognise efforts of the likes of Maurice Iwu, a professor of pharmacognosy, (a branch of knowledge concerned with medicinal drugs obtained from plants or other natural sources) in this regard. Their contributions should be institutionalised in accordance to their clinical merits. This is a golden moment for Nigerian exceptionalism to make a statement for Africa, especially in the face of inhuman international politics of attrition.
Now and more than ever is the need for properly coordinated national emergency response team. With 27 positive cases already on ground, and over 1000 on surveillance list, all medical and paramedical hands must be on the deck and eyes on the target. We have a long haul emergency that requires the presence of mind of all and sundry. It is already bad that there are only three test centres in all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Meanwhile, it is not a time for any arm of medical practitioners to down tools, press for additional welfare or officials to be at loggerheads.
Besides, it is not a time for religious leaders to place misleading spirituality over scientific facts and timely medical treatments. While we do not deny the place of higher forces and efficacy of prayers in situations, we have more of a human and medical problem that should be dealt with accordingly. Our religious leaders, besides prayers, should use their pulpits to preach personal hygiene, practical safety measures like social distancing, hope and patience, as their social responsibility to our collective survival.
Someday, and in not too distant future, Nigeria and the world at large will overcome this existential plague. True leaders that rallied their troops of medics, responders, researchers and strategists to victory for humanity will mount the podium of posterity to be decorated. Pretenders to the throne, villains that dashed hopes, and let down their people, will also have their lots in the dustbin of history
--Many Nigerians will not succumb to Farooq Kperogi's Manichean unreason because they see him as a bombastic and a harmless buffoon. Characterised by constantly distorting reality and truth makes it seem as if he is afflicted with, what psychiatrists and psychologists call, paralogism. Guessing on why Buhari won't address Nigerians on Coronavirus, Farooq Kperogi wrote, "In stressful, uncertain moments like this, people look up to their national leaders for assurance, for psychological comfort, for emotional stability, for guidance, for good cheer. Most leaders have lived up to this expectation. They have addressed their compatriots in national broadcasts and become consolers in chief. Well except Nigeria's Muhammadu Buhari. If most leaders, according to Farooq Kperogi, have addressed their citizens on Coronavirus, then there ought to be some leaders in the world that have not addressed their citizens by national broadcasts on the virus. Therefore, it is pure paralogism to turn around and claim that, contrary to afore-stated most leaders, all leaders except Nigeria's Muhammadu Buhari have addressed their citizens in national broadcasts on Coronavirus.
Why would Buhari not address Nigerians on Coronavirus, Farooq Kperogi asserted, "Buhari is not well. A televised broadcast, however short, might expose and aggrandize this fact more forcefully than ever before." Since Farooq Kperogi admitted that some leaders in the world, like Muhammadu Buhari, have not addressed their citizens on Coronavirus in national broadcasts, is he asserting that those, some leaders are also not well as Buhari? Farooq Kperogi continued, "Notice that in previous broadcasts that his handlers felt compelled to ask him to make, he (Buhari) evinced noticeably low energy and slurred his speech." Which of Buhari's previous broadcasts is Farooq Kperogi referring to? Can Farooq Kperogi please tell readers the names of Buhari's handlers that were compelled to ask him to make the broadcasts? Can Farooq tell readers what constituted evinced noticeably low energy and slurred speech in his previous broadcast?
On November 23, 2018, I twitted about my encounter with a doctor who met Buhari in a non-medical context and told me …… he was convinced Buhari has dementia …. - Farooq KperogiWhat prompted the doctor to meet Buhari since the meeting was not for medical purpose? Could Farooq Kperogi not have invented a doctor, I mean an imaginary doctor, declaring Buhari demented without medical examinations so as to conform with Farooq Kperogi's own fabricated medical quackery on Buhari? "Now even close aides of Buhari admit in private that I (Farooq Kperogi) was right (that Buhari is afflicted with dementia)." All close aides of Buhari have been publicly lampooned, abused and insulted by Farooq Kperogi yet he wants readers here to believe that the same Buhari's aides met him privately to admit that their boss is demented. Kperogi's acclaimed gossipers are not limited to Buhari's aides which caused him to write, "People who have had a chance to interact recently also concede that Buhari appears to be wracked by an irreversible mental decline and loss of control." There is a big difference between *Buhari is wracked,* and *Buhari appears to be wracked,* by irreversible mental decline and loss of control. The former is certain while the latter is speculative.
Farooq Kperogi is emotionally rigid and narrow because he is a psychopath. He is not only boastful, but he is full of braggadocio. He fancies himself superior to other people and demands always that people he imagines himself superior to should accept his deluded self-assessment. If one humours him by going along with him and treats him as if he is a superior person, he feels fine and gets along with one. Should one call his bluff and tell him he is a naked emperor pretending to be robed in diadem, he feels angry at one. When his pride is pricked, he experiences narcissistic injury and exhibits narcissistic rage. He will exhibit such temper tantrum that will make one think he is developmentally arrested (he is under ten years old). Buhari has not addressed Nigerians on Coronavirus, but his government has banned people from 15 countries from coming to Nigeria and Nigerians coming from those countries will be quarantined for fourteen days before being allowed into the society. Buhari is neither a physician nor a virologist but the albino who sees self as a Whiteman in his characteristic style of paronomasia is declaring Buhari demented for not broadcasting to Nigerians. I beg to disagree with the misanthrope.S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 21 mars 2020 03:51
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Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Coronavirus: Why Buhari Won't Address Nigerians--Saturday, March 21, 2020
Coronavirus: Why Buhari Won't Address Nigerians
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
In most parts of the world, it feels like the world has come to, or is coming to, an end. Routines have been displaced. Familiar reality has been ruptured. Even habitual perceptions of the world around us are being disrupted. And people are gripped by immobilizing panic and anxiety.
In stressful, uncertain moments like this, people look up to their national leaders for assurance, for psychological comfort, for emotional stability, for guidance, for good cheer. Most leaders have lived up to this expectation. They have addressed their compatriots in national broadcasts and become consolers in chief. Well, except Nigeria's Muhammadu Buhari.
Amid spiraling apprehension about the new coronavirus and the uptick in the number of infections in the country, there has been unnervingly loud silence from the man who calls himself Nigeria's "president."
The quietude from the Presidential Villa in the midst of potentially one of the world's worst pandemics has been so disturbing that citizens have been literally pleading to hear from the man who claims to be their president.
Even Nigeria's infamously pliant, "rubber-stamp" Senate, which takes pride in being at the beck and call of the executive, has called on Buhari to address the nation. But one of Buhari's media aides said such calls from the senate amounted to "populism and cheap politics"!
Why can't Buhari address the nation? What's the big deal about a 5-minute (or less) televised address to the nation that someone will write for him? Well, the truth, which I've been pointing out since 2018, is that Buhari is too steeped in battles with his own personal demons to care about Nigerians.
Buhari is not well. A televised broadcast, however short, might expose and aggrandize this fact more forcefully than ever before. Notice that in previous broadcasts that his handlers felt compelled to ask him to make, he evinced noticeably low energy and slurred his speech.
On November 23, 2018, I tweeted about my encounter with a doctor who met Buhari in a non-medical context and told me, based on his treatment of and interactions with dementia patients, he was convinced that Buhari has dementia which, as I've pointed out before, is often characterized by repetitiveness, unawareness, mental deterioration, impaired memory, diminished quality of thought, slurred speech, and finally complete helplessness.
When I first pointed this out, a few people thought I was being malicious in the service of my opposition to his reelection. Now even close aides of Buhari admit in private that I was right. People who have had a chance to interact with him recently also concede that Buhari appears to be wracked by an irreversible mental decline and loss of control.
He stays no longer than 10 minutes at Federal Executive Council meetings and goes there only for photo ops to deceive Nigerians into thinking that he is in charge when, in fact, he is a sick puppy. It isn't his fault that he is sick. Anyone, including me, can fall ill. I concede that. But Nigeria is too complex to be governed by a sick, insentient person.
If Buhari had any honor, he would have declined to seek a second term on account of his health and for the love of the people of Nigeria. But his ambition and greed are greater than his patriotism and integrity.
Now, Nigeria is officially "presidentless" not just because Buhari's current mandate is brazenly rigged and therefore illegitimate but because Buhari has no mental presence to rule. Abba Kyari, his Chief of Staff, no longer conceals the fact that he is the one who calls the shots in the Presidential Villa—and in Nigeria. A March 10, 2020 news report in ThisDay, for instance, said Kyari was in Germany on behalf of Nigeria to hold talks with Siemens "on improved power" in the country.
That's not the duty of a chief of staff. But anyone who doesn't know by now that Abba Kyari is Nigeria's unelected (perhaps unelectable) surrogate president must be living under the rock. But because he isn't officially the president, not to mention the fact that he has severe speech impediments, he can't address the nation.
So the first reason Buhari won't address the nation is that doing so would expose his state of mental and physical health. A sick, ghostly "president" slurring his speech in a televised national broadcast would probably spook the nation more ominously than coronavirus can.
The second reason is that Buhari is in a grievous bind now. He was supposed to go to London for a medical checkup in February, but the leak of this information on social media and on fringe news websites caused his handlers to postpone it by a few weeks— after, as usual, declaring that the leak was "fake news."
The halt of all air travel to the UK—and, of course, the fear of contracting coronavirus in London—has ensured that Buhari can't go to London. This must be one moment when he wished he built at least one state-of-the-art hospital in Abuja.
Given the horrible state of healthcare in Nigeria (which was made even worse by Buhari's serial neglect of the sector in the time he has been "president") and the inability to go on medical tourism anywhere else in the world, I would be shocked if Buhari is even remotely in a position to address the nation.
So Nigerians eager to hear from the man who says he is their president will have to contend with dishonest presidential press releases that purport to emanate from Buhari's words, but which are actually ordered by Abba Kyari. Yemi Osinbajo is of no consequence any more.
Of course, even when Buhari was healthy and mentally alert, empathy, compassion, and fellow feeling were not his strong suits. He is a solipsistic narcissist who has no capacity for vicarious identification with the plight of people who are not directly related to him.
So it's unfair to implicate only his physiological and mental decline in his insensitivity to the anxieties and dread of everyday people. His ill health only brought his cold detachment from people into bolder, more visible relief.
To be fair to him, though, people who are worshipped by as many stupid people as Buhari has been worshipped most of his adult life tend to suffer compassion deficit. A lot of his worshippers are now realizing that they wasted their emotions on a man who doesn't care a tinker's damn about them. But the most hopeless of them persist in their folly.
In Nigeria, the new coronavirus isn't just threatening people and upending their ways of life, it is also exposing the crying leadership deficit in the country and the fraud that is packaged as the country's "president." I hope we all come out of this alive.
Related Articles:Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorJournalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogiAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
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