Parting shots to a tough year
APrayer for Yusuf Buhari
The moment I heard of Yusuf Buhari’s crash, our prayers as a family went out for his health and safety. We still pray for him. I love children. I can’t stand it when distress messes up their express joy and happiness. I hate to see sadness on their faces, and join a fight in defence of a child reflexively. Years ago in Kalajanga, a settlement on Bauchi Road from Gombe, a mother had reason to flog her toddler and chased after him by the highway as he ran. I swerved the car past them and over to their side, came out, my arms open. In a few seconds, he was in my protective arms in tears. His mother stood over me as if to flog me in transferred aggression.
I stroked his head-full of hair as he calmed down. I asked him if he did something bad to Mom. He said yes. What was it? He said he upturned the container of corn flour. And I can understand Mom’s anger if you’ve ever been to Kalajanga. You’d hardly pick groundnuts from the sandy dust of Kalajanga, much less corn flour. She was punitive. It pained. But the love of a parent was in her eyes.
Every son is described a bouncing baby boy but raising children is a long arduously bouncing experience. Ironically, the situation of parents is always a burden for children. If parents are poor, the children bear the brunt of lack. If they are rich, children have a hard task learning modesty. So even as the President’s son, Yusuf would rather love to be a young man, his own young man, preferably incognito, enjoying his set of friends, away from the pointing fingers of age mates and all the time hating concessions for being the President’s son. There are to contend with, envious bullies and opportunistic admirers and cunning situation exploiters. The pressure is neither light nor bearable.
Admirably, Yusuf and his siblings have been very reserved trying to cope with their father’s mien of strict simplicity modesty and selflessness, even as he is the all-powerful occupant of Aso Rock. Things cannot be said to have been easy for the first children.
Children of the first family deserve our prayers. Their welfare affects the decision making process of our leaders even for decisions that affect us. But fundamentally, we owe it to our faith to sympathise with those that are hurt and are in distress. More so for all children over whom we hold parental responsibility by default as adults and parents, as such tragic occurrences are common to ordinary citizens.
When I wrote ‘The Anguish of a Parent’, on this column, I likened a child to an arrow we have taken out of our quiver and have shot from our bow. You don’t run with the arrow. It’s gone, it’s gone. Much as we love the child to hit the mark. Sometimes we do not even know where the child is and can only wish and pray fervently for it to be well. As in this case, President Muhammadu Buhari and wife Aisha could not have thought for a moment that son, Yusuf was racing a power bike with friends on Abuja streets. I also raced a bike on Kaduna streets with my Mom in Numan in total oblivion of my high speed wee hour activities. My own are today living their lives away from me and their mother, and we can only pray, for as Frank Olise used to ask at 9 o’clock Saturday, do we know where our grown up children are?
I raise a prayer for Yusuf and all children and parents in distress. Do likewise. May God grant swift healing, Amen.
Adamawa Gubernatorial Aspirants are falling over each other to show that they are more loyal to President Buhari than one another, at least supposedly more than Governor Umaru Jibrilla whose associate former Vice President Atiku Abubakar recently carpet crossed to the People’s Democratic Party, ostensibly to seek the Aso Rock stool. Posters litter the landscape, in some cases without a party emblem, but set against a larger picture of President Buhari as saying my love for the President is the biggest and surest.
What a shame. It is a tired old trick that worked with Goodluck Jonathan and turned the PDP tables against Governor Murtala Nyako leading to his impeachment, that just might not work with President Buhari for many reasons aside the fact that being patronised this way is not known to impress the person of President Buhari. The dynamics this time are different. Today’s Aso Rock is not open to talk shops as in the past, no such living room in today’s Aso Rock Villa, where to sit and gossip Bindow this, Bindow that! See?
Will and should PMB contest in 2019? Is it in his interest? Is it in the national interest? Is it God’s will for him? Who decides? In any case, did President Buhari not win in Adamawa when PDP was at the helm? More importantly, has the basis of support for PMB shifted from the masses to the elite? I think not. I also think PMB knows. So to make an issue of being a guarantor of a Buhari 2nd term is hogwash.
Truth is, it is a ploy to access APC Governorship nomination for 2019, made particularly difficult because hate him as much as you want to, you must give it to Governor Umaru Jibrilla, the underdog has delivered on the APC Change mandate in the given two years, and this promotes President Buhari and the APC more than anything or anyone would. And as for the name dropping candidates, truth be told, once the purpose to secure nomination unseating Bindow at primaries for 2019 is not achieved, these same Buharisupporting aspirants will scamper to opposition parties, complete with their many words. Is it not said of the politician, that he’s a man of many words?