THE WHEREABOUTS OF PRESIDENT BUHARI AND THE FUTILITY OF OFFICIAL SECRECY

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"? 

We know he is sick and that he left for  London, but where is he undergoing this therapy and what is the progress so far?

Sincerely, I don't know how the mind of this cabal works. You are fighting tooth and nail to prove to the world that the president is okay when all there is to do is to allow the president to say a word or two to the nation and that silences everybody. Why go through the complex route when there is a simple way out. It was Paul David Tripp who said: 

Foolishness is more than being stupid, that deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance.

While  Alice Walker said: 

"People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools."

What is in this secrecy? What is in this hide and seek game?  It is totally an unnecessary rigmarole . 

A government that is notorious for several twisted logic and sometime flat out falsehood and deception should not be seen to have further  derailed its dwindling reputation by this cat and mouse game. It is time to set the records straight. Report the president's health the way it is and free yourselves from being viewed as clueless.