by Pius Adesanmi.
1) I didn’t want to weigh in on this until a translation was made available. Thanks to Sahara Reporters for finally making a transcript available in English. The translation is credited to Nishadi TV. The grammar and syntax are so jumbled they almost make meaning inaccessible. The translators did a direct transcription of exactly how she spoke in Hausa and added their own inadequate grasp of the English language to create a nightmare. However, we have to make do with what we have.
2) I salute Mrs. Buhari’s courage for being able to throw up her arms and admit that things are not going well and that her husband has been hijacked by opportunists and careerists with no vision. Mrs. Buhari’s admission will not prevent the career Buharists who know Ojo more than Ojo’s mother from hitting town with the usual Baba can do no wrong and all is paradise in Nigeria refrain. But we shall be able to ask them whether they know him more than the woman who has woken up on the same bed with him for 27 years.
3) Mrs. Buhari says that the President hardly knows any of the people he has appointed. Her estimate of the strangers holding her husband hostage stands at 45 – 50. And she says, perhaps, he knows only Fashola, Amaechi, and few others, the rest are unknown. In doing this, she creates the impression of her husband as a hapless victim of sinister circumstances and an unintended twist of events. You are almost drawn to compassion for the president. But we must not allow this sort of rhetoric to gain a foothold on public consciousness. It infantilizes the President and absolves him of responsibility. President Buhari is not a child. He is a septuagenarian in full possession of agency and in full exercise of all his faculties. He, alone, is responsible for his own appointments and the consequences therefrom. If his actions have led to stasis, it is his responsibility to free himself from the dead wood around him in the interest of Nigeria. Nobody should create the impression that he is helpless. Investigative journalists, patriotic Nigerians, and the masses have been telling him these truths at the price of being hounded by the most fanatical among his supporters. He has remained stubbornly deaf to counsel. How is he then an innocent victim?
4) Mrs. Buhari says she fears the uprising of 15.4 million people. I commend her for being one of the very few in the ranks of the Nigerian elite to understand that something is looming in the horizon. A dam is about to burst on their heads and on the heads of their children. I have written that the elite has no consciousness of this social dynamic because they have been rendered obtuse by privilege. Their instinct, therefore, is to believe that the suffering masses will continue to adjust and nothing will happen because the Nigerian is said to love life too much to rebel. One bad news for Mrs Buhari: I do not know how she arrived at 15.4 million as the population of the looming uprising. The dam that will eventually burst is much bigger. There shall be a rude awakening for the Nigerian elite and who no know go know.
5) Mrs Buhari says, “we are just starting, we have not finished.” The assumption of a perennial start in quarters so close to the President is dangerous. At one and half years into the life of an administration, it is dangerous to think that you have just started. It is possible that the President and his people are only counting from when he eventually named a cabinet but the snail pace to the naming of the cabinet is their own making and their own funeral. The race started on May 29, 2015 and once you get beyond the one year mark without making an impact, you are technically finished. Mrs Buhari would do well to change her perception of things from “we are just starting” to “time has run out for us”. That sense of urgency may help refocus her husband.
6) Again, I salute Mrs. Buhari’s candour. It is not easy. And the sharks are likely to go after her. As my brother, Victor Ehikhamenor, always says, in Naija, you are safe “once you nor threaten the pipeline.” Victor is not talking about oil pipelines. He is talking about the metaphorical pipelines from Aso Rock to the bellies of vested interests and evil cabals. This interview is not good for the pipeline and I fear and pray for her.
7) However, Mrs. Buhari needs to get closer to her husband’s ears and wake him up to the smell of the coffee. “I don’t have to tell him anything” or “I don’t know what he knows or does not know” are not reassuring answers. She also needs to constantly let her husband know that the buck stops with him. The attempt to paint him as a victim of hijackers is of no moment. He has even refused to do anything about constant allegations of corruption against the hijackers. He is the one who used his hands to hire hijackers. Let him use his hands to fire them. Until he does that, he is their facilitator, not their victim.
Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
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