BUHARI’S BODY LANGUAGE

The visual act of the president is sending positive changes, argues Nnamdi Ebo

Literally, body language means communication via the movements or attitudes of the body. It also means communication that relies on vision; what you can see – visual signal. Before Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.) metamorphosed to President Muhammadu Buhari, no Nigerian had any inkling that two words spoken or written down could ever become part of statecraft. ‘Body Language’ as a 12-lettered two-word amalgam in English is a trite or obvious remark that has been spoken over the course of several millennia. While body language is mostly associated with negativity, as when an adult is showing a bad example with his body language to children who are of impressionable age, it is a potent means of communication which sends visual signals eliciting mostly acceptance than rejection. Can one safely say that this corruption-riddled country of ours and corruption’s endemic nature has something to do with the body language of our past leaders?

Suffice it to say that Nigerians were literally divided along regional, zonal, state, linguistic and if I may add, tribal and religious lines during the 2015 political campaigns, especially the presidential campaigns. But as soon as the INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, announced the winner of the 2015 presidential election, all hell broke loose. Many Nigerians have come to believe that the biblical hell is within the purview of imagination, steeped in the realm of faith, but the hell they can see is in the physical, in Nigeria. Also, many Nigerians except a few were in hell, that is the physical one; never mind the hell procrastinated by Nigerian Pentecostal pastors to their gullible and naïve Pentecostalists who want to go to heaven – without dying first. You have to die before you can go to heaven or hell, but the rate of suicide is going down as many Nigerians prefer sufferance and millions are already in the physical hell in Nigeria.

Body language came to the rescue as some traffic lights which nobody knew when their contracts were awarded, started proliferating the streets of Abuja. Well, the contracts were really awarded, only that the awardees under the system of impunity chopped the money and cleaned their mouths. Body language started inducing nausea and vomiting and the contractors had to start and finish contracts for which full payments had been made even before tenders were issued. The body language had nothing to do with the privatisation of the power sector but after the privatisation, electricity became scarce until the body language, through visual signals, restored some semblance of light to Nigerians, even if for some hours a day. Body language has sown the seeds of fear in the bowels of the federal government and has spilled down to the states, All Progressives Congress or Peoples Democratic Party-controlled. The woman who was supposed to be the Nation’s First Lady

became the Wife of the President and jetted abroad in an Emirate Airline with other passengers instead of an official and private Air Force presidential Jet.

Body language, even before its inauguration, triggered unbiblical exodus out of Nigeria as some Nigerians fell ill, sick and feverish as the body language started speaking in silence. Many looters had to dash overseas for medical check-ups, as the once moribund Economic and Financial Crimes Commission woke up from six years of slumber and remembered that the twins, economic and financial crimes, are their major statutory functions. Previously, they struggled to decipher whether stealing and corruption were Siamese twins or fraternal twins. The body language was sufficient for the EFCC to finally realise that stealing and corruption were Siamese twins at birth and that corruption is just another name for stealing, like conjoined twins who are congenital with defects present at birth but not necessarily hereditary. Stealing and corruption were acquired during fetal development by Nigerian top politicians, senior civil servants and public office holders.

This thesis probably triggered the previous antithesis that stealing is not corruption and this may have been due to the fact that when a poor jobless father of nine children steals a goat and is caught, the honourable judge will send him to jail for five years with hard labour but the same honourable judge will arrange a plea bargain for a thieving politician, senior civil servant or public office holder to refund a miniscule fraction of looted public funds – case closed.

President Buhari has the most potent body language in the history of statecraft and Nigeria changed on May 29, 2015 when he said: “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody”. Many Nigerians failed to grasp the import of that inaugural statement, some reminding the president that the leaders of his party and the political juggernauts surrounding him, who helped him get to the Aso Rock precinct – since he took a bank loan to buy presidential nomination forms – will not allow him to belong to everybody and not belong to somebody. Sooner than later, body language started sending the visual signals and those party bigwigs suddenly became quiet as body language showed that the spoils of political victory at the polls and ministerial appointments are distant cousins. If Buhari’s body language continues to speak Wazobia then Nigeria is on course; however, if it changes tone to Swahili, then the chickens must have come home to roost.

THE BODY LANGUAGE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PRIVATISATION OF THE POWER SECTOR BUT AFTER THE PRIVATISATION, ELECTRICITY BECAME SCARCE UNTIL THE BODY LANGUAGE, THROUGH VISUAL SIGNALS, RESTORED SOME SEMBLANCE OF LIGHT TO NIGERIANS, EVEN IF FOR SOME HOURS A DAY