Of greater importance, whatever Buhari has accomplished on Boko Haram he has compromised by his failure to respond appropriately and adequately to the herdsmen challenge

This is what makes the Buhari government dangerous, and it is the reason why each time the government boasts about its achievements, something immediately emerges to puncture its ego. For instance, it is just three weeks ago in Abuja that Buhari bragged to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) that Nigeria is safe and secure for tourism, brandishing “improved security” and Nigeria’s “burgeoning” economy.

Burgeoning? A new report by The World Poverty Clock immediately appeared showing Nigeria now the country with the most extreme poor people in the world.

Tourism? Buhari’s falsehood about national security were immediately pushed back down the throat of the government by the Plateau massacre.

And how did Buhari respond last week? As usual, he held meetings with top legislators and security chiefs.

One of them must have been IGP Idris. And how did Idris respond? The man who refused a presidential order to go to Benue and was subsequently tripped up by the word, transmission, transmitted one of his deputies to Plateau.

Buhari was further exposed last week when Amnesty International (AI) reported that over 1800 Nigerians have been killed in communal clashes, the Boko Haram insurgency, banditry and the so-called herdsmen-farmer conflicts, since January. AI noted how the attackers, “often in their hundreds, spend hours at the scene without any intervention from the security forces.”

But desperately clinging to his fiction, Buhari said on Thursday that his government has had “notable successes” in tackling insecurity.

A patently false narrative. With Buhari clearly unable, or worse still unwilling, to do anything to protect lives and property, we are reminded of last March’s eerie prescription by former defence minister, Theophilus Danjuma.

“You must rise to protect yourselves from these people,” he told Nigerians. “If you depend on the armed forces to protect you, you will all die.”

And in case you missed it last week, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, blasted “frightening proportions” and “horrific incidents” of police brutality, inordinate arrest, detention and extortion of innocent Nigerians nationwide.

That is Buhari’s “secure” Nigeria, but it sounds like anarchy in full bloom.

Buhari said the past was prologue. Pity we didn’t ask him what he penned as the colour of our future. • sonala.olumhense@gmail.com • @SonalaOlumhense