Within six months of inauguration, the man Nigerians elected
in a historic voter revolution has created an alarming pattern of absenteeism.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who is hyped as an orator of ‘’body language’’, has
been voting with his feet since May 29, 2015.
An audit of his overseas travel shows that, so far, he has
accumulated more than forty days and forty nights of elopement!
Though Buhari begged for and received from Nigerians a clear
mandate to help break the free fall of a nation that is disappearing into an
economic abyss, a Nigeria that offers the world one of the most frequent and
highest death tolls due to terrorist attacks, he shows that he can hardly
afford the discipline of sitting down long enough to master the desperate
emergencies of the nation.
With the recurring image of a lanky, bespectacled man
standing at the door of the presidential aircraft, waving and waving an
umpteenth good bye, Buhari has literally compelled the discerning to cotton up
to the fact that he would rather go elsewhere than fulfill the sedentary
lion-share of his job!
Time is the easiest to calculate aspect of Buhari’s
wanderlust: By checking his itinerary and adding small numbers, one can
determine that our brand new leader has notched a month plus stay abroad. The
monetary cost is different: It is hidden. Nigerian taxpayers do not know the
irreducible minimum amount of their money that grows wings whenever he leaves the
Nigerian airspace in his presidential glory.
What’s remarkable about Buhari’s incessant travels is the
customary festivity choreographed to celebrate every of his departure and
return. The ceremony dovetails with our uniquely Nigerian style. We don’t stage
plain stupidity: We bestow rich embroidery on it!
This is how it works…
A retinue of Buhari’s aides and senior government officials,
including the Vice President of the republic, abandon their posts to accompany
him to Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. They wear a sad, somber and
sober look; saying with the loudest decibel their frowns can muster that 175
million Nigerians would miss Baba!
Baba climbs to the door of the aircraft. He turns and starts
to wave. He smiles a beauty pageant girl’s strained and sustained compulsory
smile. He keeps waving. Waving unrushed and unhurried. Waving in avuncular slow
motion. The slowest photojournalist clicks half a dozen times.
Some days later, few minutes before his plane’s touchdown, a
phalanx of VIPs line up beside the sprawling red carpet. They wrench out
radiant warmth from faces that would rather not cooperate. They smile to say
that the whole nation had missed its Beloved President and is delighted to
welcome him back.
These grand rituals of presidential arrival and departure
ceremonies are faithfully covered and reported as… monumental national news!
Frankly speaking, it is shameful that Buhari, the individual
whose lot it is to hold the reins of leadership at such a time as this, made
himself the valid topic of flippancy. No one would have envisaged that, after
President Olusegun Obasanjo explored the world between 1999 and 2003, we would,
in 2015, return to the task of tallying the days of presidential abdication.
Some conjectures beg to explain the character of this
incumbent absentee president...
Buhari still has the hangover of excitement. He grabbed the
brass ring after four enervating electoral contests: He thrusts himself too
frequently into the sky to dramatize that he is on cloud nine!
Or Buhari likes to huddle with his counterparts. He would
not skip any fellowship of world leaders. He would not pass up the thrill of
embodying Nigeria in a room where a select few sculpts the fate of humanity. He
would not miss a photo-op that would enrich the album of his apotheosis as a
democratic head of state.
Or he has a breeding that conditions him to roam away from
home. He happens to hail from a background in which the main means of
livelihood is tied to restless motion and odyssey.
Whichever of the above that made Buhari a president who is
more conspicuous in his absence has also made him the anti-hero of adventures!
In this regard, he has not quite distinguished himself from
his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. President Jonathan attended international summits
with a mammoth crowd: In 2013, he had an entourage of 600 persons trailing! The
large company was his way of highlighting the status of the country he rules as
the most populous in Africa!
Buhari sets forth with a relatively modest number of co-travelers.
But that is a cold comfort. The high frequency of his departures roughly
cancels out his lean train.
To be sure, the President’s job description entails a
dimension of international travel. The world is a smaller habitation now than
it has ever been. Leaders of different nations must forge alliances and
implement decisions that shape the world order.
Yet, Buhari’s insistence on ubiquitous visibility, his
insistence on reporting for any conceivable foreign talkshop or diplomatic
gathering, his insistence on leaping at every invitation to jet out of the
country, is embarrassing. It smacks of gross irresponsibility.
So distressing is the situation that to commentate on the
cycle of Buhari’s flying out and his flying in, one would have to borrow the
byword the emcee repeats ad hominem at an auction: Going…Going…Going…Gone!
Buhari appears to feel obligated to be present wherever two
or three other heads of state are gathered. He would attend…even if the agenda
is not consequential enough to warrant his physical appearance: Even if there
are pressing domestic issues that need his personal intervention.
This week, Buhari jetted out to Iran to participate in one
gas exporters’ summit. He left behind a Nigeria in petrol drought. With
movement of man and goods frozen. The President who appointed himself ‘’the
substantive Minister of Petroleum’’ left and he took his Minister of State for
Petroleum along.
Buhari returned from Tehran, showed up at the burial of
Madam HID Awolowo, saw the fuel queues everywhere and flew to Malta.
His aides updated us about his feats in Malta. They
published photographs of the Nigerian leader ‘’sharing a joke with the Queen.’’
His coruscating wit worked: Elizabeth smiled back at him!
Well, that was supposed to pacify us. Buhari is not idling
away in Malta. Even though motorists have to keep vigils at filling stations,
the President cum ‘’substantive Minister of Petroleum’’ is serving us in a more
significant capacity. He is tickling the fancy of the Queen –on our behalf!
Of course, putting a smile on the face of an 89 year old
English woman is a more urgent endeavor than easing petrol circulation in Africa’s
biggest economy!
President Buhari has been more of a whinger than a
performer. He is either lamenting the ‘’empty treasury’’ he inherited or
bemoaning the rampage of corruption. He finds it easier to agonize than to
engender the paradigm of change he had espoused as a candidate.
His inordinate penchant for overseas travel might well
represent symptoms of frustration. He is seizing any available opportunity to
momentarily escape the drudgery of sitting behind his desk and staring at the
critical issues that plague Nigeria.
Distancing himself away from the country provides him
spatial divorce from the pressure to deliver on his soaring campaign promise he
made to increase economic growth, create millions of jobs and build critical
infrastructure nationwide. He gets to enjoy a pleasurable vacation. He immerses
himself in the environment of his host country throughout the span of his
visit.
When he attended the 70th session of the United Nations
General Assembly in New York this September, he spent time like he had plenty
of it to waste. He blew the equivalent of one week –shaking hands with this
president and posing with that president and loafing around in between!
The sight of Buhari flying out, returning to Abuja, and
flying out again, to grace all manner of appointments that can be handled by a
representative, haunts one with the irony of a General and Commander-in-Chief
flitting from one foreign refuge to another.
I fear that Buhari’s spiraling junkets is dictated by the
Fight-or-Flight dynamic. Animals tend to have two mutually exclusive reactions
to any palpable problem or threat in their surroundings. They would stay rooted
and confront the trouble: Or they would flee.
Buhari’s flights seem to be dictated by the Flight option.
And that’s a defeatist resort. Because he can’t successfully administer Nigeria
as a roving leader. No single national problem will shrink because he chose to
be a homing visitor.
It’s obvious that Buhari did not sufficiently prepare his
mind for the toughest job in the land. He had underestimated the demands of the
Nigerian presidency. But now that he has the job, he must sit back and square
himself to face the prevailing challenges…even if it’s only because he had
asked and shed tears for it.
President Buhari needs to suspend his overseas gallivanting
and spend more time tending to domestic matters. He just has to wander less
abroad and work more at home!
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