The
absence of the president in the country for the past few weeks on
health grounds is no longer a secret. What remains an official secret is
the nature of his ailment and where he is kept at the moment.
I
want to add my voice to the series of reportage that have emanated from
the news space in Nigeria through out this period and my voice will
resonate from three key directions.
1.
Shrouding his health complications in secrecy is an exercise in
futility. Because the truth cannot be covered. No matter how you bury
the truth under the clay of lies, it has a way of exhuming itself.
Against the mendacity and sometimes ambiguity of blatant untruths sold
to the nation from the presidency prior to the president's first return
from London that the president was "hale and hearty" and that he was as "
fit as a fiddle", it took the President on his return to confess to the
bewilderment of the entire nation that contrary to the lies fed to the
nation, that he had never been "this sick" in his life. That means, he
was terribly ill.
According to 'The Guardian,
On
February 7, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Police, Abu Ibrahim,
reportedly one of the closest friends of the President from Katsina
South, said those saying Buhari was sick missed the point, adding that
the President was only stressed because of the country’s “mounting
problems.” “Mr. President is not sick, but exhausted by the weight of the problems the country is going through,” Ibrahim said. What
a shame that very senior members of the current ruling class were all
lying to us making a very sick person appear hale and hearty just to
delude the public to believe that all was well.
2. It is not a crime to be sick. Sickness is a natural phenomenon and it is not the fault of the president that he is sick.
All
over the world, the health status of the ruling class is not hidden
from the public. Let me not bore you with several instances of
Presidents, Prime Ministers and supreme rulers of nations that had been
sick in the past and how it was handled by the leadership. Most times,
immediately the diagnoses was confirmed, it was in the front pages of
most of the news tabloids, just to keep the nation abreast of the health
status of their chief servant. Although, there are also a few cases on
the international space, that the Nigerian scenario played out. However,
in contemporary leadership, such scenarios are rather the exception
than the norm.
The question I have always asked is: What is in this hide and seek game?
3.
When you hide what you should naturally be transparent about, you give
room for rumour mongers to thrive in business. The social media has been
agog recently with all kinds of theories and most of them lies about
the situation with the president.
I have had numerous opportunities to fall a victim of fake peddlers, but as is my custom, I do due diligence. I probe into
sources to confirm stories. If not I would have been a purveyor or transmitter of such fake news.
But
Why will the citizenry not revel in conjectures in the absence of an
authentic report? Why will fake theories not overwhelm the nation? When
the entire space is full of either outright lies or convoluted
theories? I say this time and time again . When you are straight with
the facts, you will have no reason to pile up bundles of lies to
validate the facts. It has become clear and to use the words of a
former legislator, "even the deaf will hear and the blind will see" that
there are grand designs to take advantage of this present state of
health of the president to hijack power or to perpetrate acts of
impunity on the state. At least we have gone through this road before.
This is Dejavu. The big question in everybody's lip now is: "WHERE IS
THE PRESIDENT"?
