Buhari still doesn't get it, he's an employee of the people

President Muhammadu Buhari is finally hopping on a jet to Benue, Taraba, Yobe and Rivers. For this, we are immensely grateful. But you could sense the irritation in the presidents tone once he touched down in Taraba.

“I am here to meet with the leadership of the State, to offer my condolences to those who lost loved ones and properties in violence”, Buhari said.

“People sometimes expect me to rush out to the fields, to go and make noise. But I have my ways of gathering intelligence. I get to know what is happening across the country without necessarily going to those areas”, the president added.

Before the president’s latest whistle-stop trips,Nigerians had taken him to task for not visiting those States where herdsmen and terrorists are killing for fun.

Wedding party 3

When Buhari showed up at a grand wedding ceremony in Kano on Saturday, March 3, 2018, all hell broke loose.

Nigerians took to their favourite social media apps to vent their spleen over Buhari’s presence at a wedding party just days after terrorists abducted 110 schoolgirls in Yobe and ended the lives of humanitarian workers in Borno.

“If it were his daughter that was kidnapped, would he be attending a wedding party a week after?”, one enraged social media user asked, perplexed.

Pastor Tunde Bakare who was Buhari’s running mate in 2011, was just as bemused after pictures of a grinning Buhari emerged from Kano.

“Forgive my ill-mannerism, but I could not comprehend why a Governor will celebrate the wedding of his daughter, and another Governor of his son, on the front pages of newspapers, flashing it before our eyes, when other peoples’ daughters are in captivity,” Bakare said.

“If any of them had lost a daughter in that captivity, would they celebrate that way? I know the Bible says rejoice with them that rejoice, but I do not know what the president of Nigeria was doing there.

“And somebody came to say, let me explain to you, it is Islamic tradition, before this time, about January, they had agreed, that he (Buhari) will be the one to give the bride away and (Bola) Tinubu will be the one to pay the dowry, and present the son, and they agreed long before now.

“I looked at him and said the president of Nigeria wanted to come to my daughter’s wedding, and I said to him, sir, don’t come. That is beneath your office. Face the work of the State and keep serving”, the fiery cleric fumed.

As criticism of the president’s wedding party attendance reached a crescendo, an aide of Buhari shot back with that “Buhari is an adult, he can go anywhere he pleases. He chose to go to Kano and to Kano he went” line.

Nothing could have been more churlish.

Employee

When President Buhari announced in Taraba that he wouldn’t go anywhere just to make noise, he misses the point of leadership in a democratic dispensation.

In a democracy, a president is an employee and servant of the people. The president goes where he is asked to go by his employers (the people).

When there’s crisis anywhere in the country, the people demand that the president shows up to empathize as quickly as possible--even if for the cameras. It was why he was elected. Buhari promised to “lead from the front”. Leading from the front entails being the first at a disaster site and putting an arm around grieving folks.

Why is it taking Buhari two months to visit Benue

The president of Nigeria in 2018 isn’t an Army General. The President of Nigeria in 2018 is a man who begged for votes and who was given those votes because he begged for them so badly. You lose the right to act how you please when you are elected president or when you are elected by the people into government. It’s important that everyone gets this, including the president and his aides.

The president’s visits to those troubled States are an afterthought, but we’ll take it for the moment. But has he learnt a thing at all? Will he ever learn? Will anyone at the Villa tell him the truth to his face? Will his aides ever learn?