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Buhari’s Next Level: Upward Or Downward? -By Onoshe Nwabuikwu

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Next Level vs Get Nigeria Working

I am writing this from Abuja on the morning after the May 29 inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari for a second term. This second term is the one that we’ve been told would be the ‘Next Level’. What’s yet unclear is whether this next level is going to be an intensification of the past four years. Nigeria, with a population of about 200 million people, has overtaken India with a population of over a billion people, as the country with the highest number of poor people. What’s the next level of this, you may ask? How has your life improved these past four years? Even a simple look at the exchange rate tells its own story. On May 29, 2015, one US dollar exchanged for N199.05. Today, it’s about N360 to $1. However, on this morning after, or what some insist is the ‘mourning’ after, I’m focusing on the biggest news out of the inauguration ceremony – the lack of an inaugural speech by President Buhari.

Forget the excuse that a grand speech is being planned for some other date like June 12. That excuse is obviously an afterthought. The inauguration ceremony marked the culmination of months of campaign and voting, with the resultant ‘mandate’. The last time President Buhari gave an inauguration speech, there were allegations that a version of the quotable “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody” might have first been made by Charles de Gaulle. Notwithstanding, the president needed to thank his supporters, at the very least.

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There were also legitimate expectations that as this is a new beginning, the inauguration speech would attempt to bring the rest of the country together. This is the time newly-elected or re-elected leaders tell those who didn’t vote for them that they are ‘leaders of the whole country’, ‘that campaigns are over and there is work to be done’ etc. It may sound like a cliché but good leaders understand why it’s important to make these gestures. And after the mathematically curious 97 per cent + 5 per cent statement made by President Buhari in the early days of his first term, what better way than an inauguration speech to embrace the 5 per centers? We are not talking about exhibiting any oratorical prowess or some Martin Luther King-esque delivery. Just making the effort alone goes a long way.

More importantly, with everything that’s going on in the country, such as the state of insecurity and another economic recession hovering over us, an inaugural address would have offered President Buhari a captive audience and the perfect opportunity to reassure Nigerians, discuss his plans for the next level and what that entails. Alas, President Buhari made the unprecedented choice not to speak to Nigerians at his inauguration. Doesn’t he care that millions of Nigerians might feel disrespected? Meanwhile, it was a frenzied few months of campaigns as he travelled more than he did in three years before the elections to protect the job he loves so much ­­­­­­– being president and enjoying the perks.

Speaking of which, barely 24 hours after his inauguration, President Buhari was off to Saudi Arabia where he’d returned from shortly before May 29. This time, he went for a summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. This is worrying! Not because his first duty of his second term was at the OIC, but because President Buhari appears to be following the trend of his first term. Recall that the United States was his first port of call after winning the 2015 elections to “thank them for his victory”, or words to that effect. Is that what next level means?

Of manholes and leadership black holes

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I read about the sad death of 26-year-old Adewura Bello last week. The young lady, who was declared missing in Lagos, had turned up dead in a canal after reportedly falling into an uncovered manhole. As usual, there has been noise on social media. However, the threat posed by uncovered manholes remains. It’s as potent in Lagos as it is in Abuja where I live. I’ve written about a few manholes on Mike Akhigbe Way, Jabi, Abuja. On one side of the street alone, there are up to five such manholes. While jogging, I always fear falling into one of them. Heck, it can take in a few persons at the same time; that’s how wide some of them are and they’re all over the city.

Instead of ‘arresting’ this hazard, some security/environmental operatives in Abuja are busy arresting ‘prostitutes’. Only God knows how many missing people have fallen into those manholes. Abuja doesn’t feel like anyone is paying it any attention but President Buhari recently praised his ministers for serving the nation to the “best of their ability” and that their “achievements in the last three and half years have guaranteed your position in the history books of this nation”. Don’t mention Dalung, Ngige, or…

So, the FCT minister Muhammad Bello’s position is guaranteed in our history books; as the best or worst FCT minister?

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COME AGAIN?

“Masari at his inauguration laments increasing insecurity”.

-News headlines, HipTV, Thursday, May 30, 2019, 12.52pm-ish.

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This lamentation came from Governor Aminu Bello Masari, Katsina State’s chief security officer, for the last four years. However, he was only stating the obvious. According to reports, some Katsina residents actually flee to Niger Republic at night and return to do business during the day because of insecurity. In fact, the inauguration and the upcoming Eid-al-fitr celebrations were scaled down due to insecurity. By the way, President Buhari is from Daura, Katsina State. You can see why Governor Masari could only lament?

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