The Banality of Celebrating Buhari
First a recall of a personal encounter with Chief Femi Adesina in his capacity as the media and publicity interlocutor to President Muhammadu Buhari and a remorseless witness of falsehood. Here he goes, “Akin Oshuntokun appeared on Channels television today and made the false claim that a bomb blast had gone off earlier in the day, killing about 88 people in Maiduguri… Apparently, enemies of peace and progress had expected a return to the infamous past, thus Osuntokun appeared on television with his bag of lies”- This was a press statement he issued on a programme I participated on Channels in which I spoke in English not Portuguese. I was taken aback. I could not recall saying anything about a bomb blast. So I double checked with Channels. They were equally flustered that such falsehood could emanate from Adesina within hours of the appearance in contention.
Significantly, Adesina had thus set me up for the malicious attention of the heavily compromised and politicised Nigerian military. Rather than prioritise the confrontation with their Boko Haram nemesis, they were looking to get me to come and clarify the allegation
of bomb blast in Maiduguri that only existed in the fevered imagination of the Buhari press Secretary. It was on account of this falsehood that another aide to Buhari would cite me as “making his dislike of Buhari a profession”.
Eight years of the ruinous presidency to the bargain, it is a citation I should wear as a vindication and badge of honour. With the increasingly alarming revelations of a spectacularly failed presidency, it is impossible to overstate the existential menace Buhari posed to Nigeria.You do not even need to scratch beneath the surface to get a surfeit of scandalous materials on Adesina’s demigod. They stare you right in the face.
Setting the ball rolling was the thumbs down salute (of his successor, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu), that for him, the transition from Buhari amounted to “moving from darkness to a glorious dawn”. This qualification was seconded by his National Security Adviser, NSA, Nuhu Ribadu who substantiated the idiom of his principal with the clarification that “We have inherited a very difficult country, a bankrupt country”. A recurring decimal of this bankruptcy is the instructive report that President Buhari moved Nigeria’s debt profile from N42tn to N77tn.
Contrary to the norm of the buck stops at my table leadership responsibility, Buhari thrives on distancing himself from responsibility. His constant refrain and ablution is “I’m not aware” -purporting to lose his sense of smell right inside his pit latrine reeking of the suffocating