Buhari is Not a Demi-God -By Salman Mohammed Jiddah

Salman Mohammed Jiddah

“Our lust for heroes and gods illustrates a fable; it is not of latent strength but disintegration, it reveals the weakness and shallowness of the Nigerian adult’s awfully preadolescent mind” – Olatunji Ololade

I will not stand in the way of any critic’s ink and paper, in fact I encourage the synthesis of opinions as I believe it validates the presence of conscience in each and every one of us.

I for one do not believe President Muhammadu Buhari was the best man for this job, but I strongly believe he was the best man amongst the options we had at hand. I find comfort in all the accusations and allegations rained upon the president before and after the elections. So hold your horses… I am not here to stand in the way of those who expect nothing of the President, those people who are waiting to say: “we told you so”. I write to those who expect the heavens to be handed to them on a platter of gold by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Many see the president as a messiah, many see the president as a wizard with a wand in his hand, many see him as a hand of God, hence expecting our president to usher us into the utopia our imaginations have created for us. Many have forgotten we still need to swallow the bitter pill of patience we have always been swallowing; only this time we swallow with realisable optimism.

Here we are as Nigerians where we and our dear nation have been starved for ages for a quality leader whom has a moral compass intact. In time, we have finally been blessed by God with a leader with a seeming unbroken moral compass; out of our long time of suffering and desperation, we have rushed into identifying such quality as a super human quality.

It is unfair to the President to expect from him what we cannot honestly expect from ourselves, let us all be the person we need him to be.

Many see the president as a messiah, many see the president as a wizard with a wand in his hand, many see him as a hand of God, hence expecting our president to usher us into the utopia our imaginations have created for us. Many have forgotten we still need to swallow the bitter pill of patience we have always been swallowing; only this time we swallow with realisable optimism. It is not enough to swallow the patience pill and become bystanders, it is only fair we have the president think we are his tentacles of change, as others see him as the hand of God.

It is unfair to the President to expect from him what we cannot honestly expect from ourselves, let us all be the person we need him to be. Let the critics speak, and let’s listen to what they say. Let’s take the constructive criticism from them. The President promised accountability, lets help him be accountable by watching him, and asking questions constructively, and I do not mean asking about his wife’s Cartier wrist watch; I mean holding him to his words, his promises to us after, of course, giving our fair share of efforts towards realising the promises.

Let’s not let the president’s promises be his hangman; let’s help him as much as we believe in him. And for the skeptics, remember a failed Buhari means our failed nation again; him failing does not mean you win, it means we as a nation plunge deeper into hopelessness.

Buhari is not a demi-god, Buhari is human, and he needs us as much as we need him to salvage our country. He cannot make it happen alone.

We all have a country to fix, let’s get to it.