MOA:
Well said. I think Buhari learnt from the Abacha situation and the Yoruba saying:
'Ehinkule l'ota wa, ile l'aseni ngbe.' (Those who will compromise you lie in wait amongst those who surround you.)
I back Buhari' strategy in this regard for the sake of the stability of Nigeria. Imagine if any of the legions of his corrupt enemies bribe any of the staff of a multi billion DOLLAR Clinic he might build in Aso Rock. He would stand no chance. Then Nigeria is back to square one (God forbid!)
We want him to SURVIVE his presidency and peacefully hand over AT ALL COSTS (No cost can be too high!)
Buhari administeation represents Nigeria at the crossroads ( of social re-engineering). Yes, he must continue to be held to account by the likes of Kperogi.
As they say " eternal vigilance is the price of liberty ( both for the leader and the led.)
OAA.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: 05/11/2019 10:20 (GMT+00:00)
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Buhari's Obsessive Compulsive Runawayism
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com) Add cleanup rule | More info Farooq -
As always, good write-up. You sure have a penchant for neologism, an unlimited repertoire of word creation from your intellectual storehouse. At least to the best of my limited knowledge of the English lexicon, "runawayism" is new to me and even if it does exist, you used it nicely.
Having said that, let me tell you how much I do not believe Buhari meant all these jocular pronouncements of escapism from the home base. I know I have said this to you in your past write-up on the subject. Look, the man seems sick. He is convinced beyond all reasonable doubts that his salvation lies outside Nigeria (honestly, if my wife or myself suddenly falls sick, I am not going to UCH - the best teaching hospital around, where I have many relatives working on the senior medical staff; I am running straight back to you guys in the US); and as my people would say, "ęmí ò láàrò (life has no duplicate), you have to do what you have to do to prevent yourself from going six-feet under to the very best of your ability, and of course, when the Owner says, 'gentleman, it's closing time," there is nothing you can do about it. I have not read everything you've written in the last few years but at the risk of sounding tautological (since I believe I raised some, if not, all of these before), I think questions you should be asking are:
1. For crying out loud, why can't the President build a state-of-the-art hospital that could be even better than anywhere in the world just for him to check in to in times of health distresses?
2. Does he have advisors who counsel him about small things like getting facilities locally that would cater for his health and that the bone density of a frequent flyer, most especially a septuagenarian, thins out in flight and should be minimized as much as possible?
3. Why do we have to be in the dark about the health conditions of our sitting president?
4. Why should we not know exactly how much we, as the people, spend on the maintenance of our president's health?
5. Why can't the multi-billion Naira Aso Rock Clinic be sufficiently equipped to cater for our president's health needs (at least, from what we read two or so years ago, the budget for the clinic was in the billions of Naira)?
My point: Farooq, please leave Buhari alone about being an "Ajala-travels" (with homage to Ebenezer Obey) and let's focus on the real thing. Isn't what you book people call "problematization"?
Well, let me stop here and hear if you have something to say.
Either way, stay well, and keep writing. You write well!
Michael O. Afoláyan
(FYI, I am NOT a Buharist by any shred of imagination. I am among the few living Nigerians who vote across parties - depending on your manifesto that I read)
On Saturday, November 2, 2019, 7:24:19 PM GMT+1, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:
Saturday, November 2, 2019
Buhari's Obsessive Compulsive Runawayism
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Muhammadu Buhari's inexplicably frenzied globetrotting at a time when his government proclaimed a new policy that reduced the frequency and duration of foreign travels by ministers reputedly as a "cost-saving measure" recalls my September 16, 2017 column where I wondered if Buhari's wanderlust is actuated by his resentment of Nigeria itself. I've reproduced a slightly reworked version of the column here:
Muhammadu Buhari is held prisoner by what appears to be an obsessive-compulsive impulse to desert Nigeria when the going gets tough. On at least two occasions, he has publicly confessed to feeling the urge to abandon his job in midstream.
The first time he gave public expression to this runawayist emotion was in November 2016 when he addressed senior management staff members and "Senior Executive Course 38" graduates of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies who paid him a visit at the Presidential Villa. "Actually, I felt like absconding because 27 out of 36 states in Nigeria cannot pay salaries and we know they have no other source than to depend on salaries to pay rent and do other things," he said.
He expressed another urge for runawayism when he met with traditional rulers in the Presidential Villa on September 11, 2017. "We are lucky this year that last year and this year the rainy season is good," he said. "If it were not good, I must confide in you that I was considering which country to run to. But God answered the prayers of many Nigerians."
Buhari might very well have been joking. But it is also true that human beings ventilate uncomfortable truths through humor. In fact, an English proverb says, "Many a true word is spoken in jest." So it's fair game to interrogate Buhari's predilection for wanting to abandon the nation in moments of strife and uncertainty.
This is particularly troubling seeing that Buhari appears to be more comfortable outside Nigeria than he is inside it. This is a man who will leave Nigeria for anywhere at the drop of a hat. He spent most of 2015 and 2016 traveling the world (for no justifiable reason, in retrospect) and a good bit of this year on "medical vacation" in London.
So when he said (or, if you will, joked) that he felt like "absconding" after the enormity of the task he was obligated to do stared him in the face, he wasn't being faithful to the facts. He actually did abscond. How else would anyone characterize failing to appoint ministers six months after being sworn in—and leaving most governing councils of government agencies unfilled more than two years after— while aimlessly traveling the world?
And when he said he was "considering which country to run to" if the rains weren't forthcoming, he also forgot that he actually did "run to" another country for more than 100 days for a different reason. He went to London to get UK doctors' second opinion on his already treated ear infection and, thereafter, to treat an undisclosed ailment—exposing Nigeria, in the process, to one of the worst possible international embarrassments any nation could face.
Given Buhari's penchant for runawayism, it's hard to tell if his long stays in London were indeed medically warranted or if he was just "absconding" or choosing to "run to" other people's country because he couldn't take the heat of governing, which, in any case, he has illegally entrusted to Abba Kyari.
Plus, his health has now become an effective national emotional blackmail tool: he "absconds" for days on end without communication with the people he is supposed to be ruling, allows morbidly ill-natured rumors about him to fester, then causes photos of him to be posted on social media, which inflames more ghoulish speculations, and then a stream of extortionately costly but pointless visits by government officials to London ensues, and, of course, the nation is whipped into a frenzy of prayers for his convalescence.
When he returns, poor, mentally low-wattage citizens, who are the victims of his government by "abscondment," gyrate wildly in futile, impotent exultation. This melodrama anesthetizes the citizens and helps to conceal or excuse the man's incompetence for a while, and life goes on.
This is particularly interesting because more than three decades ago, Buhari famously said, "This generation and indeed future generations of Nigerians have no other country they can call their own. We must stay here and salvage it together."
Apparently, he never believed a word of what he said because in February 2016, Buhari told Nigerians in the UK that he had been using his UK doctors "since 1978 when I was in Petroleum" [i.e., when he was Petroleum Minister. His daughter also recently told BBC Hausa that she doesn't speak fluent Hausa because she lived mostly abroad "with white people" when she was growing up.]
You can't "stay and salvage" your country, especially as a high-ranking government official or a president, by perpetually disdaining your "country's best hospital for medical care in Britain," as the Los Angeles Times of February 20, 2017 said of Buhari, perpetually vacationing abroad, and sending all your children to school in the UK.
Given what we now know of Buhari, it's evident that his 1980s patriotic proclamation was just hollow sloganeering. Recall that on April 27, 2016, he also said, "While this administration will not deny anyone of his or her fundamental human rights, we will certainly not encourage expending Nigerian hard earned resources on any government official seeking medical care abroad, when such can be handled in Nigeria."
Less than one month after this "patriotic" declaration, Buhari went to London, not to treat his ear infection (because, according to a news release signed by Femi Adesina, it had already been "treated" in Nigeria), but to have UK doctors examine his already "treated" ear "purely out of precaution." Can you beat that quantum of hypocrisy and insensitivity?
What does it say about Buhari's interest in, and preparedness for, leading Nigeria that he loves to make glib remarks about wanting to run away from the country he actively sought to rule four times in a row? What sort of leader tells (or jokes to) his followers that he almost ran away—and actually does run away— when the country he is mandated to rule gets hot?
Buhari won election in 2015 precisely because the country was in a terrible shape and people thought he truly meant it when he said he would turn things around if he was given the chance to rule again. If the country wasn't as bad as it was in 2015, he wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell of defeating an incumbent. That was why he lost against Obasanjo in 2003, against the late Yar'adua in 2007, and against Jonathan in 2011.
To have expected that he wouldn't contend with the depth of the rot he interminably whines about betrays a sad, embarrassing, and disquieting naivety that shows that he wasn't worthy of his 2015 mandate. And that's why he lost reelection in 2019 but rigged the process before, during, and after the fact to illegitimately hang on to power.
Does Buhari, perhaps, imagine that the presidency is some sort of a retirement gift to him? Or that he is doing the nation a favor by agreeing to be a "president"—a weak, bumbling, divisive, ineffective, and hypocritical "president"?
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Journalism & Emerging MediaSchool of Communication & Media
Social Science Building
Room 5092 MD 2207
402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
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
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAPq-FWt6OQfyM_x%3D4YGximvr0PmGQUj55TLz0rDoupg-KcQEEg%40mail.gmail.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/29740913.847580.1572941703722%40mail.yahoo.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment