The coincidence of President Muhammadu Buhari’s failure to touch down in Nigeria last Sunday and be at work on Monday, as scheduled and the announcement by the popular musician, Tuface, that he had called off a planned protest could also imply that the president did not want to embrace a protest on his first day in office after leave. As though Tuface had an inkling of his failed return, he cancelled his protest. Both men had other reasons for their actions. Those are in the public domain. The coincidence and the insinuation are tempting. The protests held in spite of Tuface, a clear manifestation that it had grown beyond him and the people had found their voice.
Acting President Yemi Osinjanjo said he heard the people ‘loud and clear’. If the president did not see or hear them, the acting president did. The matter of the protest being loud and articulate to meet the original intentions is another matter. The man who muted the idea backed out when the police and other security agencies made it clear that it would be hijacked and lives and property might be lost in the process. He remembered the famous phrase used frequently by former president Goodluck Jonathan to the effect that his ambition to remain in office was not worth the life of any Nigerian. Tuface, also known by his admirers as ‘2Baba’ said he would not lead out people, who might eventually lose their lives in the process.
There are talks that the popular musician might have been blackmailed into quitting. But the protest did not die. In the streets of Abuja, Lagos, Osogbo, Calabar and a few other places, people marched to say they were being strangulated by the recession and it appears the word clueless, which was latent in driving the former president out of office, has now found another abode in the current regime and what it has done with the economy. The nation’s economy is probably in its lowest ebb, with attendant job losses and unfathomable inflation.
The acting president said he heard the people loud and clear. Government response in the days ahead is sure to show how well it heard the people. The point being that the people has found their voice and are willing to shout to be heard.
The Arab spring, which saw the end of regimes in Egypt, Libya and few other places showed that docility had limits. The tendency is for people to see Nigerians as those who would rather turn the other cheek in the midst of bad governance or impunity. The end has come, which is why anyone in the saddle must never take the people for granted.
But the matter of President Muhammadu Buhari’s health status seems to be one which the government does not seem to have heard the people loud and clear. Clearly, it would be against the tide of nature for a 74-year-old Buhari to be as strong as he was in his first outing in 1984. No one expects that he would never fall ill or seek medical attention.
By virtue of his position, the president has lost a large portion of his right to privacy. Contrary to some opinions held by some people in government, the matter of Buhari’s health is not a private affair. He is the leader of the nation and his health status ought to be known to the people he presides over. Most of the foregoing is captured in a statement issued by Minister of Information, Mr. Lai Muhammed, when he was in the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
Here’s what Lai Mohammed of then ACN said on Yar’Adua’s health issue on December 21, 2009:
“The Action Congress (AC) has renewed its call on the Federal Government to give Nigerians a daily update on the health of President Umaru Yar’Adua to stem the growing rumours, surrounding his state of health. In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the current situation whereby ministers and aides of the president give out uncoordinated information on his health, is doing more harm than good.
“Therefore, a daily briefing by the Minister of Information, based on authentic details provided by the president’s doctors, should start forthwith. As we have said many times, the health of the president, as a public figure, can no longer be of interest only to his family and friends. Nigerians have a right to know.”
As I wrote last week, the hunter is now the target. The president went on a ten- day vacation, which would include medical check. Now, it is obvious that he is on medical leave given his request for an indefinite extension occasioned by tests that are being awaited and could result in further attention. If the president was on vacation in the first ten days, his continued stay now is for medical reasons and Nigerians deserve blow- by- blow report of his status. Something good must be said about his obeying the law in the process.
The late President Yar’Adua did not hand over to the vice president, necessitating the doctrine of necessity, a pedestal on which Jonathan acted until his boss passed away. Although the late president explored a constitutional lacuna, Buhari has done no such thing. That portion of the document had long been amended. In spite of that, the president’s health condition should be in the public domain to stem the increasing tide of rumour in the polity. This is more so with the litany of rumours and outright lies dished out in the social media. His medical team ought to give a time frame to his tests and possible treatment and not the vague and loose extension.
I have severally berated the idiotic death rumour and wish. It is political low life. But the continued secrecy around the matter, would foster more wild rumours. Such rumours would find no space in the face of barrage of information from the appropriate authorities. Since Lai Muhammed is the minister of information, he has become the physician who must heal himself. The sound bites on the president’s health are not loud and certainly not clear.