MONDAYLINE: Who locked up our president? By Lasisi Olagunju
“It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.” Someone should tell President Muhammadu Buhari to go and read what Sir Winston Churchill meant by that statement. Everywhere you turn, there is pain, poverty, bitterness and squalor. But the person hired to clear the mess and halt the drift is whining, drooling and dozing. President Buhari told Nigerians at a dinner for his party leaders on Thursday that he isn’t in a hurry to do anything because he is afraid of making mistakes. He also confessed that he is “locked up” in the Villa, shut out from the people. Weeks ago he said he had been asked to eat well and sleep well. And he says he does just that (even when his employers can neither eat nor sleep). He is slow at everything and he celebrates it. If you are slow you can’t win any race. One of the first lessons a pupil learns in school is how to be fast in what he does. “As you learn a trade, you learn smartness with it,” was how my teacher put it.
That Thursday, Buhari said so many other ‘great’ things in so few words. He again told leaders of his party: “You are closer to the people than myself now that I have been locked up here. Don’t allow anybody to talk of ethnicity. It’s not true…” Did that not sound like a hostage crying out for freedom? Who locked up our president? Is he a hostage to situations, to some shadowy people, to certain fears or expectations? We need to know! George Kohlrieser, psychologist, hostage negotiator and the author of Hostage at the Table asks, “Are you being held hostage without knowing it?” If a leader does not know that he is a hostage to power and powerful interests, it may be a little complicated trying to free him. The one who is asleep is the one that needs to be jolted back to life. But our own president knows he is “locked up” and far removed from us, and he is happy about it. He is a willing eleha (man in purdah). So, how do we help him and help ourselves?
The president of Nigeria is a very powerful ruler. He is supposed to be the one putting his ‘captors’ in captivity. But no; he is the one “locked up” with the wellness of the nation. Our laws ensure that the president’s actions and inactions impact on the wellbeing of all. And he is a general with the advantage of armoured emotions. He must thus appreciate the worthiness of fast-paced, mobile forces. What about a general in captivity? Hostage avoidance and hostage survival are supposed to be basic in the training of soldiers. Now, a general says he is locked up and he is celebrating the personal tragedy. Or are military academies no longer teaching smartness in operational deployments and manoeuvres? The one who is not slow in judgement, motion and action is the one alive to tell tales of battle. Governance, like war, is a job for the clear-headed. It does not shift for the tardy and the unsure and the one in captivity. This 21st century world is a fast-paced impatient phenomenon. It sees no reason why it must wait for a third-rate nation that chooses sleep over work. That is why I am worried that the president celebrated his slowness and helplessness before the whole world on Thursday.
If you are a Buharist (or a Buharideen) and you are a student, do not adopt your hero’s slow style except you do not want to pass any exam. If this (re)tired soldier is your role model, the examiner will log you out at time-out and the sorrow will be yours. As in exam situations, every president has a tenure. I’m not sure Buhari is aware that his tenure expires by May next year. I’m sure he doesn’t. I heard him on Thursday apologizing to those who helped him to power but got cold shoulders so soon after he got what he wanted. He would “ring” them soon, he promised. When a president or any person sees indecision as a virtue, then he has a problem which only he can solve.
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Darryle Pollack, popular American author and cancer activist, was a 14-year-old girl when she sat in a plane beside the world’s fastest human in 1964 without knowing it. She saw something fascinating about the man and demanded his name. He told her his name was Bob Hayes. “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Never heard of you.” The following morning, ‘Bullet’ Bob Hayes’ photo was on the front page of the Miami Herald as the world’s 100-meter dash Olympic gold winner, and Pollack saw it! Years later, she wrote that she could have asked for an autograph if she had known who he was. Lamenting that missed opportunity, she described herself as the “world’s slowest woman” — because she could not recognize gold when seated beside it.
I wonder how many missed opportunities Buhari has had in almost three years to lift Nigeria.
Sometimes I wonder what sort of books some people read growing up. In primary school, there was this story about a wealthy man who was blessed with a very slow son. All his efforts to get the boy to be smart were rebuffed. The rich man was not a happy man. And then he died and willed all his riches to his only son who by then lived abroad. The slow boy got a prompt message that his father was no more, but he was used to his life of tardiness. He would take his time to go home, at his own pace. He was very sure the world would wait for him, no matter how late he was. Eventually he set out for home, moving at his own measured pace. But there was no one waiting again to mourn with him when he got home. Worse, his inheritance had gone with the winds, forever beyond his reach. Weeping without consolation couldn’t help him. It was too late.
Friends of slow people would regale us with the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare. They would insist that slow and steady wins the race. They wouldn’t tell us what happens when the slow one is also unsteady. They would tell us that in that race of unequals between swift Hare and slow Tortoise, the improbable happened: Yes, slow Tortoise won. But they wouldn’t admit that Tortoise won because Hare in his arrogance wrote off his rival. The authors of the story say swift, proud Hare “lies down halfway through and goes to sleep.” They also tell us that slow Tortoise got the trophy not just because Hare slept on the way but because Tortoise, even in his slowness, was steady and clear on his mission. The slow one plodded along until he passed the sleeping Hare and breasted the tape.
At his current pace, Buhari cannot win any race. He cannot score any goal. If he scores any, it will be an own goal. And I’m not sure he hasn’t been doing just that. Our president’s almost three years have been epochal in indecisiveness. And the cost has been enormous in homes and in workplaces. Jobs have been lost and are being lost in corporate boardrooms. From Benue, to Plateau to Ogun states, lives get lost daily to murderous herdsmen. The drift is not arrested because there is no clear directive to paid arrestors. Toxic statements clash in our skies like nuclear warheads. Atrocious herdsmen kill with the swag of omo onile. The slurred body language of the Commander-in-Chief warns security operatives against being funny.
The world watches us and shakes its head. How can a country be this blessed and be this cursed? “Nigeria is a difficult country to govern, no matter who is president,” wrote Stratfor, a security platform based in the United States, at the height of Buhari’s illness last year. In another report, it noted that “though Nigeria boasts Africa’s largest economy, its march toward prosperity has always been a struggle, shackled as it is by political division, ethnic rivalry, militancy, theft and corruption.” All these problems demand a leadership that is aware of the kind of race the world around it is running. The world is not sleeping, not even slowing down or waiting for any sleeping giant. The race of progress and prosperity is a combination of a dash and a marathon. Slow, ineffectual leaders can’t run it. Our president was ill last year. Buhari has since come back, refurbished and almost brand new. He is no longer ill but he is holed up in his “go-slow,” celebrating it as an art. He continues to vacillate and oscillate when/where decisiveness is demanded. And he is not tired of ruling Nigeria as a captive of power and its complexities.
Nigeria cannot be great by remaining a colony of old, creaky overlords. What it needs are men and women with sound engines and strong, rolling chassis. No leader should feel he is in detention in the presidential palace. No leader should be convinced that he does not need to be smart and fast in what he is doing. No leader should lament his age as a limiting factor. Smoky engines and wobbly bodies can only compound the acute pollution of our politics, our economy and the prosperity of the people. We do not need slow men at work. Not anymore.
Dr. Lasisi Olagunju Phd, is an Editor and Columnist with the Nigerian Tribune
