[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Media and Publicity Department of the State House is currently running a documentary on major national television stations it titled “The Human Side of President Buhari”. The documentary which is meant to showcase the ‘human’ side of Buhari has eventually turned out to be nothing but a loud testimony to what a majority of Nigerians already knows about the General who has an infamous reputation for political vendetta, vindictiveness, wickedness, circumvention of the constitution and such other flagrant displays of despotism.
The fact that Buhari and his handlers found it imperative to produce the documentary showing the human side of the president is an admission that Buhari has always been living out his inhuman side which has since become his identity.
The thought of packaging such a documentary alone and airing it at a time Nigerians are suffering, wasting irrecoverable man hour queuing up and searching for fuel till no end and undergoing enormous stress as a result of the well documented failures of the same Buhari as president and minister of petroleum is the height of wickedness and insensitivity to the plight of Nigerians.
Apart from being inconsiderate of the unfortunate situations Nigerians have been made to pass through since he became president, the documentary is a great injustice to the president by those who thought they are doing him favours by embarking on it.
With the thick darkness that has pervaded the land no thanks to unabated power cuts and lack of fuel to power generators, only very few and insignificant percentage of Nigerians had the misfortune of enduring what eventually was a drab, uninspiring and amateurish documentary conceived in vile, produced in vindictiveness, packaged in impudence and delivered in sophistry and deceit.
Ordinarily, and going by its title, one would have thought that such a documentary would relate with Nigerians and how the president has been treating them and issues concerning them with milk of human kindness and democratic principles, but it turned out to be an exercise in further exposing the president’s heartlessness and his weak work ethics.
Pray, how could such a documentary that is supposed to be of national importance be emphasizing on how the president loves jokes and cartoons over other important issues in newspapers! Vice President Yemi Osinbajo stressed on it, John Odigie-Oyegun emphasized on it; Femi Adeshina did the same; Garba Shehu followed suit while Abike Dabiri was not left out as if that has any importance to suffering Nigerians.
It is even more insolent that apart from the current biting fuel scarcity, the documentary is being aired at a point Nigerians were greeted with the news that a whopping 7.9 million of them have lost their jobs in just 21 months, from January 2016 to September 2017, under Buhari. At an average of four persons per family, it simply means that over 31 million people have become seriously disconcerted, discomfited and disconnected from being able to afford the basic needs of life for themselves and their other dependants.
Rather than empathise with Nigerians on these multiple tragedies which the Buhari administration has visited on Nigerians, what pre-occupies the minds of presidency officials is to further rub salt into the fatal injuries the citizens have suffered by airing what at best is a banal documentary.
The documentary that attempts to further portray Buhari as a man of integrity and a president who respects the constitution and constitutional processes falls flat on its face. It is obvious that the motivation for that needless work is to attempt to deceive Nigerians.
How can one ever say Buhari respects our constitution when he is infamous for flagrantly disobeying court orders and impudently defying the judiciary?
Sheikh El Zakzaky, leader of the Shiite Muslims in Nigeria, has been incarcerated for two years now despite several court orders that he should be released. It is the same with Col Sambo Dasuki, rtd.
It is only a wicked leader that would look on while killers from his immediate constituency embark on a relentless killing spree nationwide under the tag of Fulani terrorist herdsmen while he does nothing to apprehend them but rather equally watches on as they were compensated for a “job well done”.
It is also under Buhari’s watch as Commande-in-Chief that the military invaded Zaria, burnt down houses, murdered helpless men and mowed down their harmless women and hapless children in their hundreds in cold blood. Yet, nobody is answering for it up till tomorrow. It was the same reaction from Buhari when the military committed so many atrocities in the southeast recently under the guise of Operation Python Dance 11.
Contrary to what the documentary portrays, Buhari lacks any modicum of integrity. A man who shields his friends from prosecution even after being indicted by a panel but goes about chasing after members of the opposition even if it means fabricating crimes against them as was the case preferred against Elder Godsday Orubebe but had to be withdrawn by the Buhari-led federal government after writing the courts that the missing funds for which Orubebe was being prosecuted was still at the ministry intact, completely untouched. This withdrawal of the case came long after Orubebe had been subjected to relentless media trial and conviction, assassinating his character and brutally maligning his person in the process. No apologies, no remorse, no regrets, nothing! After all, Orubebe is not from Buhari’s immediate constituency. As far as Buhari and his handlers are concerned, he can go to blazes even after such damage of monumental proportions have been done to him.
But Babachir Lawal who has been severally indicted by the Senate and found severely culpable by a presidential panel for his mindless stealing from the poorest of our poor, the IDPs, has been left by Mr Integrity to walk free. Mr Integrity indeed!
All this wickedness by the president and his team must have motivated the Media and Publicity Department of the State House to embark on such a puerile documentary with so much audacity. As it is with the president, so it is with his handlers!
Just like a political commentator, Mr Atsenokhai Aloy, observed: “The Presidential media team produced a documentary and tagged it the human side of Buhari. The question I want to ask the team is this: what side of Buhari have we been seeing?”
What an important observation and question!
The answer to Atsenokhai’s question is simple: we have been seeing the inhuman side of Buhari, and the presidency knows it. If not, there would have been no need to show us his “human” side in a documentary. They know he is a tyrant, so they are working assiduously albeit vainly to launder his image.
Character speaks louder than documentary. Rather than waste public funds on such mundane works like the documentary to applaud Buhari’s glaring incompetence, lionize his mediocrity, magnify his ineptitude, beatify his wickedness and canonize his tyranny, his handlers should work on his words and character that have sharply divided Nigerians and entrenched despondency among them.
Nothing has been done to control the damage caused by his infamous “97% vs 5%” statement; nothing has been done to correct his glaringly divisive appointments, policies and actions that have always favoured a certain section and religion in this country over others.
These are the kind of things that the presidency should be working on correcting and not a documentary that is nothing but a sycophantic production of desperate aides!
Jude Ndukwe is a political analyst who lives and works in Abuja, Nigeria. He is a member of The Trent’s Elite Columnists. His column is published every Friday. He tweets from @stjudendukwe.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
