My take on Buhari’s ‘wild popularity in the North’
Iread in the Daily Trust of Saturday, April 15, 2017, page 35, where someone termed President Buhari’s popularity in the North as ‘irrationally wild popularity among the Muslim north.’ The author of the article also called the popularity as ‘simply a mix of amnesia, emotions, and Muslim clerical tyranny in the north.’ The word amnesia means complete or partial loss of memory caused by brain disorder. Those contesting Buhari’s popularity went to the extent of suggesting that the northern Muslim worship him or adore him and are ready to die for him.
These are opinions of the writers, and every person is entitled to his personal view and based on this logic, I disagree with them totally. First and foremost, the word worship is not appropriate theologically to be used whether figuratively, metaphorically or literally. No one deserves this word but Almighty Allah. PMB is not popular only in the Muslim north; he is popular in the Christian south too because of his unbiased performance.
In the buildup to his electoral victory, northerners did not entertain or propagate segregated, naïve and unpatriotic statements like ‘Northern Muslims’ or ‘Northern Christians.’ It was a collective movement as evidence in his performance in many states that are supposedly populated by Christians. The president was overwhelmingly elected by Nigerians and if the last presidential election is something to go by, we had seen how the electorate, both from the north and the south cast their votes for him.
Notably, his acceptability in the South West cannot be contested, going by the number of votes he got from the region, irrespective of religious or tribal divide.
Even though the situation is different in the South South because Buhari contested against one of their own, the trend is now changing in the South East as evident in the way and manner key political actors of the region are gradually aligning themselves with the president and his ruling APC through mass defection.
Most importantly, PMB is not only popular in Nigeria; we are all living witnesses to how he was received warmly and intimately by world leaders before and after his victory. I therefore strongly believe it is unjustifiable to say Buhari is only popular among the Muslims in the north.
Specifically, Muslims or precisely northerners love Buhari not based on passion and emotion, religious or something else. They love him because he came to salvage the country from awful and dreadful insecurity which they were living with during the last regime. The apathy, insensibility, insouciance and the lackadaisical attitude of the previous administration towards some parts of the country had reached its apex of trepidation.
Despair and hopelessness were the prevailing conditions, especially in the North East region. The scoundrel elements were gaining ground day in day out. People were slaughtered and their properties plundered or burnt to ashes. The hapless citizens were treated as if there was no government in the country. It was a real disservice in addition to the scams and the malfeasance that characterized the arms purchase programme supposedly to address the hopelessness.
It is therefore unfair to say Buhari’s popularity in the North is because of his stand toward Shariah as mentioned in the article. I am also in discord with the statement that PMB’s popularity is simply the product of a mix of amnesic nostalgia visceral emotion and Muslim clerical tyranny in the north.
To me, this unwarranted assertion evinces insult and affront to the Muslim community and their clergies. People should be mindful of their utterances lest they hurt the feelings of the others.
They should be diplomatic in their approach; they should be skillful and tactful in dealing with sensitive matters. We should not be carried away by sentiments.
If PMB is said to be irrationally popular in the Muslim north, what would you say of exPresident Goodluck Jonathan in the Christian south? He got almost all of his votes from the South, particularly the South South and South East.
Ahead of the 2015 elections, Jonathan was packaged on the NTA and many other media outfits that shamelessly and ironically equated him with achievers and celebrated world leaders like Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah and so on while castigating Buhari and the North.
It was at that time that his wife, Patience, who should have used the campaign periods to build bridges across the divides ended up destroying existing ones by deriding and scoffing some parts of the country out of pretty antipathy and abhorrence.
What did President Buhari did to deserve unwarranted attacks? Consider the last national conference inaugurated by Jonathan in 2014 which was clearly unsymmetrical. If anything, Muslims were under represented despite the large number they have in the country. This complain was lodged to Jonathan by the Nigeria Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs led by its Secretary General Prof. Ishaq Oloyede but nothing was done even to strike balance.
Another clear evidence of lopsidedness in the Confab was that those who now call for referendum to actualize the resolution are from the South South and the South East, persistently seeking its implementation.
Surprisingly, with all his despicable qualities, Jonathan remains dementedly popular in the south. Therefore, I am telling those who suggested on Facebook as mentioned in the newspaper that President Buhari’s irrationally wild popularity in the Muslim north would require an entire doctoral thesis to explain. If one takes this for granted, Jonathan requires more than doctoral thesis, for he also needs post-doctoral essay to explain.
It is gratifying that the Northern Forum recently held a meeting in Bauchi and rejected the outcome, a clarion call to all those who are yearning for justice and longing for the country’s unity to jettison the report of the contentious conference.
As Nigerians, we should remain one and united and at the same time support our leaders to remain strong in the midst of daunting challenges and encourage them to be just. Sure, sentiments will take us nowhere. Any person of sound judgment should be kept abreast of the fact that Buhari endeared himself to Nigerians with his extolled qualities and attributes of patriotism, incorruptibility and his past track record.
He had held six extremely juicy positions in the country which no Nigerian ever had such opportunity but Buhari’s Spartan life style has not been compromised.
He was a governor, a G.O.C., a cabinet minister, a Military Head of State, chairman of the defunct PTF and now a president who was overwhelming elected. Is this not astonishing that still Buhari is an average Nigerian in terms of wealth?
Prof. Nguru is the Director-General/Chief Executive of Nigeria Arabic Village, Ngala, Borno State.