Katsina school attack: Why has Buhari refused to visit?

President Muhammadu Buhari, 77, had just checked into his country home in Daura, Katsina State on Friday, December 11, 2020, for a private visit, when news broke that more than 300 schoolboys had been abducted from the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara, Katsina State, by terrorists.

At around 9:40 p.m. on the day, gunmen wielding AK-47 rifles stormed the school on motorbikes, shot into the air and rounded up the students.

The president hasn’t moved a muscle, five days after an abduction reminiscent of the kidnapping of over 250 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State in 2014 and the kidnapping of 110 schoolgirls from Dapchi, Yobe State in 2018.

You would think that the sheer number of school children kidnapped in Kankara would rile the president into action, force him to waltz out of his cocoon in Daura--which lies just 200 kilometers away from Kankara--get him to board a chopper to the now desolate town, just in time to comfort the families of the abducted schoolboys, assure them that government has got their backs and intimate them of what government is doing to bring their missing wards back home.

Instead, the president has been marooned in the comfort of his home in Daura, Katsina, receiving guests, ordering everyone around, ordering a delegation from Abuja to visit the school and receiving briefings from Katsina Governor Aminu Masari and from law enforcement--everything but go to Kankara himself.

This is not the time for an aloof, standoffish presidency.

President Muhammadu Buhari (left) with Katsina State Governor, Aminu Bello Masari (right) after the kidnap of the Kankara schoolboys [Presidency] Pulse Nigeria

It's almost as though the man can't trust himself to venture outdoors for a bit of sunshine.

Yet, nothing will carry as much weight as the nation’s Commander-In-Chief hitting the streets of Kankara himself, putting an arm around grieving parents and feeling the pulse of the people for himself, his security aides in tow.

It’s what leaders do at times like this. This is what it means to lead from the front--a promise Buhari himself made, shortly before he was elected president in 2015.

“I will lead from the front in the fight against Boko Haram,” Buhari said from the marbled, pristine walls of the Chatham House international affairs institute in London. “If elected president, I will lead by personal example.

“Our soldiers have neither received the necessary support nor the required incentive to tackle this problem. Let me assure you that if I’m elected president, I vow to change that,” he added.

President Muhammadu Buhari and former president Goodluck Jonathan at a peace treaty meeting prior to Nigeria's March 28 and April 11, 2015 general election (AFP) ece-auto-gen

“We will give them adequate modern arms and ammunition, we will improve intelligence gathering… we will be tough on terrorists and tough on its root causes… in the affected areas.

“No inch of Nigerian territory will ever be in the hands of the enemy,” Buhari pledged.

Five years since the president uttered those words and a year after he was re-elected for a second term in office however, Buhari has refused to lead by example in the war against terror.

On Buhari's watch, terrorists have become bolder and continue to strike at will, hundreds have been abducted by terrorists, millions have been displaced from their homes and the president has been loathe to visit scenes of terror attacks to show solidarity with the fighting troops or empathize with grieving families.

A president who promised to lead by example has instead led by one banal, insipid press statement after another--issued by his aides after terror attacks and bereft of the conviction, compassion and weight of a president’s verbal words and human touch.

It should worry the president that school kids were kidnapped right in his home state and on the same weekend he touched down in his home state for a visit. If this doesn’t tell the president that he needs to rejig the nation’s security architecture and replace his security chiefs, nothing else will.

The president’s private visit to Katsina elapses on Friday, December 18, 2020. He’s still got a few more hours to right this wrong by visiting Kankara, look the families of the abducted boys in the eyes, while assuring them that he will bring the boys back home, before he boards the presidential jet back to Abuja.

It’s what a president who promised to lead from the front or lead by example, would do.

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*Pulse Editor's Opinion is the viewpoint of an Editor at Pulse. It does not represent the opinion of the Organisation Pulse.