Sv: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Coronavirus: Why Buhari Won’t Address Nigerians

​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 Kperogi 

What 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   

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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:

Buhari's Physical and Mental Health is Now a National Emergency

The Tragedy of the Abba Kyari Surrogate Presidency

Buhari Doesn't Rule Nigeria. His Wife Conforms It

Aisha Buhari and the Evil Aso Rock Cabal

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author 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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