I read the statement by the former Deputy Director of the Buhari Presidential Campaign Council, Mallam Mohammed Lawal with great amusement. Mr. Lawal, who is one of President Buhari’s lopsided recent appointees to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (AKA Northern Nigeria Petroleum Corporation) wants Nigerians to believe that former vice President Atiku Abubakar, has been plotting the downfall of President Muhammadu Buhari since 2014. I find the allegation laughable. Why, you may ask? Well, because it is silly for any ally of President to say Atiku Abubakar plotted President Buhari’s failure. Does anybody need to plot the failure of a man who still calls Germany ‘West Germany’? Was it Atiku’s plot that made Buhari wait and waste six months before setting up a cabinet of square pegs in round holes? Atiku did not force Buhari to make promises he could not keep like making $1 equal to ?1 or creating 3 million jobs per annum. Even before day one didn’t Nasir El-Rufai warn Nigerians in 2010 that ‘if you ask Buhari, he will think that Blackberry is a fruit.’ A serial plagiarizer who plagiarized Barack Obama’s and Charles De Gaulle’s speeches, who surrounds himself with the likes of Amaechi, who is still afraid of rats as an ex general, needs no one to plot his failure! Just as you have an auto-correct function on your phone, so does President Buhari have an auto-fail function in his government. He does not need an Atiku to plot his failure! Let me cite an example. Two weeks ago, Benue state experienced a cataclysmic flooding of almost biblical proportions. Many pundits, including yours truly, appealed to the President to at least visit the victims of the flood to give them moral support. However, the President chose to ignore the 100,000 families that had been rendered homeless and I thank God that this same Atiku Abubakar who they claim is plotting the President’s failure was able to plot his way to donating ?5 million to the suffering victims. But that is not where the story ends. President Buhari who refused to visit Benue shocked right thinking people by visiting Kaduna even while the people of Benue (who coincidentally voted for him) had not had the pleasure of his visit. President Muhammadu Buhari is strong enough to visit Kaduna state to commission a poultry but not strong enough to visit Benue to commiserate with humans. You visit with poultry but not people. Why does it seem as if this administration values animals over human beings? Recall that when Nigerians were facing possibly the worst food crisis in our history, Buhari’s minister of agriculture was more focused on importing grass for cows from Brazil. And even after herdsmen killed vast amounts of people in Southern Kaduna the APC Governor of Kaduna admitted to paying them compensation for their cattle killed. Perhaps the President would have postponed his visit to poultry chickens in favour of visiting paltry citizens in Benue. Can his handlers continue to blame Atiku Abubakar for these unforced errors? President Trump who we unfairly like to criticize in this part of the world has visited Texas twice to help out with Hurricane Harvey relief efforts and to project hope to his people. His office has equally announced plans to visit Florida after Hurricane Irma eases. And here our President is visiting poultry!
