If the United Kingdom’s Foreign Minister, Boris Johnson, can describe the Leader of
the Opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, as a “mutton-headed old mugwump” and
an “Islington herbivore” how on earth should we describe our very own President Muhammadu Buhari in Nigeria?
As each day passes he looks more and more like the colourful creature called Golum in
J.R. Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ and behaves more and more like the goblyns and orcs in that same book.
This is a man who came back from the United Kingdom as an ailing and fading ghost and who, despite all entreties and
pleas from men and women of goodwill, has refused to resign.
Since he came back he has not been seen in any public function, apart from the usual friday mosque prayers, and he has not
presided over or been able to attend any of the weekly National Executive Council meetings in the last three weeks.
Worse still when his high profile and once very powerful Secretary to the Federal Government, Babachir “the Grasscutter”
Lawal was asked what his reaction was to the fact that he had just been suspended
and Str!pped of his job by the Presidency, he asked, in a contemptous and condescending manner, “who is the Presidency?”
I worked in the Villa as spokesman to President Olusegun Obasanjo 13 years ago for three good years before I was appointed as a Minister and joined his
cabinet and I recognise the import of that loaded question.
Simply put the SGF was asking the journalist that put the question to him who exactly had suspended him in the Presidency because, as far as he was concerned, the
President was no longer in control and other individuals are now making unauthorised decisions in his name and on his behalf without his knowledge.
That is how badly things have degenerated in Buhari’s government as different forces
and factions are attempting to grab the space and fill the widening power vacuum.
Again three curious events took place in the last few days which all confirm this dangerous state of affairs.
Firstly a Punch Newspaper reporter was marched out of the Villa by the President’s
Chief Security Officer, without any reference to the President’s media team or aides, simply because he wrote a story suggesting
that the President’s ailment was getting worse.
Secondly as many as 20 Ministers and the President’s Chief of Staff refused to attend the last Federal Executive Council meeting
which was presided over by Professor Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President.
This begs the following questions: was this a well-orchestrated protest and boycott or
was it just holiday-time for all those Ministers that were absent?
Thirdly the lying Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, happily told Nigerians that the
President “needed to rest” and would henceforth “not attend NEC meetings” but would instead be “working from home”.
He also said that from now on all files that needed to be treated should be sent to the
Presidents sitting room!
Do we need to hear anything else before we can safely come to the conclusion that our President is no longer himself and is indeed
on his way out?
Whilst all this was going on and the confusion continued to brew another complicated and dangerous mess was
silently unfolding in the background.
This is of course the deadly, venomous and utterly shameful snake fight of double-
speak, treachery and betrayal that is going on between Ibrahim Magu and his EFCC on
the one hand and Ayo Oke and his NIA on the other with the National Security Advisor,
Babagana Mongunu, dancing somewhere in between.
With accusations and counter-accusations from all sides they are all dancing Nak3d in
the streets like madmen and bringing shame and opprobium to the institutions that they lead and to our nation and people.
This is indeed bedlam in its fullest and most pristine form. It is worse than the cacaphony of the loud, strange and divided tongues that bellowed and screeched from
the biblical Tower of Babel.
A situation where the intelligence and security agencies are merrily “Tarkaring” and “Daboing” themselves before the entire
world and exposing one another dirty little secrets all in a squalid attempt to gain the upper hand in an unfolding internal struggle for power and supremacy, is not
good for the country and is even worse for the government that they all claim to serve.
The bottom line is that the Presidency is in utter disarray and confusion and the health
of the President, despite all pretentions, is obviously getting far worse and is degenerating by the day.
Last week one rather bold commentator went as far as to describe him as looking
like a “bag of skin and bones” and
described him as a “walking ghost”.
