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| Photo by Eric FEFERBERG / AFP |
What is the significant significance of President Muhammadu Buhari to us in contemporary Nigeria? For readers who possess a medical or psychological or religious or even chauvinistic perspective he is Mr. President, who, always in his Northern medieval-like chausses, impresses or tries to impress as an answer to the illness, to the sickness of our contemporary times. For those readers with a forward-looking view he is a mere undertaker, who proffers no constructive plan to living Nigerians who are being denied living wages and fabulous education and bodily and economic health they direly need. The man has simply fluffed his three years plus pre-presidential election promises and wishes. And his new next level theory – which I won’t bother to read – will not make him the saccharine president of our dreams. His next-level wishes must enter our Nigerian psyche as those of a political and presidential homunculus. Politically, his next-level theory is not one which we should believe and accept uncritically. We can’t step into the same river twice (Heraclitus must be turning well in his super-ancient Greek grave!). If previously we believed and accepted our president uncritically, this time we should question sincerely his pious wish-fulfillment as that of a con president of homuncular morality and sapless or energy-less religiosity.
But some persons there are who view not the president as a con man of impeccable democratic credentials or of morality or of integrity or of religiosity. They want us to direct our resentment at members of his exclusive cabinets – that is, members of his respective kitchen, parlour and mosque cabinets. These are the cabinets of the presidencynologists of illusions, half truths, faked, fussy emotions, lamentable morality, bogus patriotism, and grotesque religiosity, and great destroyers of our democratic and cultural values. Our president sees and acts as his negatively pussy-footing cabinets of incompatible presidencynologists force him to see and act. The only exception is our president’s bed-room cabinet consisting only of his dearest and dearestpretty, pretty, who has always itched sincerely to liberate the masses of her countrymen and countrywomen from the unwholesome pressure of our Nigerian world of rotten habits. She is the only rebel and revolutionary in a gathering of “hyenas,” as she wants us always to view her husband’s presidential predicament.
The thrust of my preoccupation is yet to reach where it must reach. Buhari’s is a regime that thrives on gossip. And the gossip derives from rumours. Thus consciously and unconsciously, we may read and interpret this presidency as one in which the players have put Buhari under the compulsion that enables thorough investigators of Nigerian politics and our contemporary psychology to focus on the rumour fabric of his presidency. Indeed, rumour, or gossip is an overwhelming characteristic of Buharistic Buharism. This thrust goes home. It is perhaps the principal significance of a presidency in which a pre-presidential election celebrity who became president consciously forced his presidency’s readers, historians and interpreters squarely to view his celebrity-status as a slip-up of his military ego and years of soldiery service and “impartiality” which culminated in his briefly brief soldierly head-of-state-tenure. This is not news. What perhaps is news is that Buhari has forced us to abandon the science of his presidential politics and governance for the gossip of his presidential politics and governance. And a sumptuous gossip of Buhari’s presidency relates to his knack for prisoners. Yes, the man loves to take prisoners, especially from the camp of those who offended his neurotic psychology since his military years of service up to the former President Jonathan dispensation.
Presidential rumour-mongers, who are poor managers of rumours (and gossips) allege that Colonel Dasuki who has been in detention or prison since President Buhari ascended the presidential throne is being given more than the dose of medicine the colonel dispensed to Buhari when “Maradona” Badamosi Babangida torpedoed PMB as military head of state in the nineteen eighties. Colonel Dasuki’s current travail thus must have its origin in the doctor’s consulting-room – if ever he was taken there – that Buhari, the over-thrown general, visited in his years of psychological deprivation when he fell flat from military power and glory. Dasuki, the rumour-mongers and gossip-barons stressed, was Buhari’s psychological tormentor-in-chief. Buhari hear am well well. The man see oba for Dasuki hand!
This rumoured or alleged fact brings out with dazzling distinctness Dasuki’s detention neurosis or negative prison dreams based on, or better, fathered by an un-enlightened presidential prejudice. This alleged pleasure principle of despotic or presidential vindictiveness should have no place in our polity- and jurisprudence. Why take prisoners when they will not be allowed to enjoy the jurisprudential enlightenment of modern societies?
Until he is proven guilty we must accept that Dasuki is indispensably entitled to be treated decently as an innocent and free man who must not be a victim of any of his victimizers hell-bent on manipulating the science and practice of our jurisprudence and courts. Is it not more than axiomatic that our jurisprudence and courts strive for an “impartial, unbiased and inclusive truth” and fact? Dasuki rightly and richly deserves all his human rights. It is a rare curiosity that Dasuki’s bosses – of the remote past and recent past – are escaping the power drive of his gaolers when they should have been taken as prisoners as well. Or was – or is -he the only “looters” in the land, in this land of lands? Why the dazzling distinctness of the one-sidedness of the Buharistc theory of punishment or of justice or of vindictiveness? If Buhari must take prisoners, he must do so comprehensively and in such a manner that should not allow us to view him as a clear picture of the resentment against the spirit of our contemporary society of might is ever right. He was voted to right the wrongs, malformations and sicknesses of our country without being prejudicial, vindictive and untrue to his psychological, political and historical task. Perhaps he is waiting to win the next presidential election for another term of four years before taking the really big and mighty guns in and outside his party as prisoners who have in varying degrees desecrated our democratic, political, historical, economic, educational and cultural values. But he and his presidencynologists are gregarious animals of abnormal ethics and values who cannot win the ear of the multitude even if they unfortunately win the next presidential election, which unfortunately, they likely will win again. But they will have the almighty Boko Haram insurgents to contend with, the almighty Boko Haram dare-devils, it is tragically too late for them – Buhari and his cohorts – to give the worst of it. (The recent Metele massacre of our brave and courage soldiers, who went to battle, it is alleged or rumoured, with seventeen century weapons, speaks volumes). Yet to gain everlasting fame which he may fully deserve Buhari, our relentless commander-in-chief, may instruct – no, order, command – his troops to kill them all, to kill all the Boko Haram bastards, and come back alone with no prisoners if the worst comes to the worst – a task enough for a whole life’s work.
But he will come; he will come, the lion-hearted messiah of justice and ripe and rich values. He will come to cleanse our land. Like this writer, he is not a taker of prisoners.
By Tony Afejuku
But some persons there are who view not the president as a con man of impeccable democratic credentials or of morality or of integrity or of religiosity. They want us to direct our resentment at members of his exclusive cabinets – that is, members of his respective kitchen, parlour and mosque cabinets. These are the cabinets of the presidencynologists of illusions, half truths, faked, fussy emotions, lamentable morality, bogus patriotism, and grotesque religiosity, and great destroyers of our democratic and cultural values. Our president sees and acts as his negatively pussy-footing cabinets of incompatible presidencynologists force him to see and act. The only exception is our president’s bed-room cabinet consisting only of his dearest and dearestpretty, pretty, who has always itched sincerely to liberate the masses of her countrymen and countrywomen from the unwholesome pressure of our Nigerian world of rotten habits. She is the only rebel and revolutionary in a gathering of “hyenas,” as she wants us always to view her husband’s presidential predicament.
The thrust of my preoccupation is yet to reach where it must reach. Buhari’s is a regime that thrives on gossip. And the gossip derives from rumours. Thus consciously and unconsciously, we may read and interpret this presidency as one in which the players have put Buhari under the compulsion that enables thorough investigators of Nigerian politics and our contemporary psychology to focus on the rumour fabric of his presidency. Indeed, rumour, or gossip is an overwhelming characteristic of Buharistic Buharism. This thrust goes home. It is perhaps the principal significance of a presidency in which a pre-presidential election celebrity who became president consciously forced his presidency’s readers, historians and interpreters squarely to view his celebrity-status as a slip-up of his military ego and years of soldiery service and “impartiality” which culminated in his briefly brief soldierly head-of-state-tenure. This is not news. What perhaps is news is that Buhari has forced us to abandon the science of his presidential politics and governance for the gossip of his presidential politics and governance. And a sumptuous gossip of Buhari’s presidency relates to his knack for prisoners. Yes, the man loves to take prisoners, especially from the camp of those who offended his neurotic psychology since his military years of service up to the former President Jonathan dispensation.
Presidential rumour-mongers, who are poor managers of rumours (and gossips) allege that Colonel Dasuki who has been in detention or prison since President Buhari ascended the presidential throne is being given more than the dose of medicine the colonel dispensed to Buhari when “Maradona” Badamosi Babangida torpedoed PMB as military head of state in the nineteen eighties. Colonel Dasuki’s current travail thus must have its origin in the doctor’s consulting-room – if ever he was taken there – that Buhari, the over-thrown general, visited in his years of psychological deprivation when he fell flat from military power and glory. Dasuki, the rumour-mongers and gossip-barons stressed, was Buhari’s psychological tormentor-in-chief. Buhari hear am well well. The man see oba for Dasuki hand!
This rumoured or alleged fact brings out with dazzling distinctness Dasuki’s detention neurosis or negative prison dreams based on, or better, fathered by an un-enlightened presidential prejudice. This alleged pleasure principle of despotic or presidential vindictiveness should have no place in our polity- and jurisprudence. Why take prisoners when they will not be allowed to enjoy the jurisprudential enlightenment of modern societies?
Until he is proven guilty we must accept that Dasuki is indispensably entitled to be treated decently as an innocent and free man who must not be a victim of any of his victimizers hell-bent on manipulating the science and practice of our jurisprudence and courts. Is it not more than axiomatic that our jurisprudence and courts strive for an “impartial, unbiased and inclusive truth” and fact? Dasuki rightly and richly deserves all his human rights. It is a rare curiosity that Dasuki’s bosses – of the remote past and recent past – are escaping the power drive of his gaolers when they should have been taken as prisoners as well. Or was – or is -he the only “looters” in the land, in this land of lands? Why the dazzling distinctness of the one-sidedness of the Buharistc theory of punishment or of justice or of vindictiveness? If Buhari must take prisoners, he must do so comprehensively and in such a manner that should not allow us to view him as a clear picture of the resentment against the spirit of our contemporary society of might is ever right. He was voted to right the wrongs, malformations and sicknesses of our country without being prejudicial, vindictive and untrue to his psychological, political and historical task. Perhaps he is waiting to win the next presidential election for another term of four years before taking the really big and mighty guns in and outside his party as prisoners who have in varying degrees desecrated our democratic, political, historical, economic, educational and cultural values. But he and his presidencynologists are gregarious animals of abnormal ethics and values who cannot win the ear of the multitude even if they unfortunately win the next presidential election, which unfortunately, they likely will win again. But they will have the almighty Boko Haram insurgents to contend with, the almighty Boko Haram dare-devils, it is tragically too late for them – Buhari and his cohorts – to give the worst of it. (The recent Metele massacre of our brave and courage soldiers, who went to battle, it is alleged or rumoured, with seventeen century weapons, speaks volumes). Yet to gain everlasting fame which he may fully deserve Buhari, our relentless commander-in-chief, may instruct – no, order, command – his troops to kill them all, to kill all the Boko Haram bastards, and come back alone with no prisoners if the worst comes to the worst – a task enough for a whole life’s work.
But he will come; he will come, the lion-hearted messiah of justice and ripe and rich values. He will come to cleanse our land. Like this writer, he is not a taker of prisoners.
By Tony Afejuku
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