By Kennedy Emetulu
President Muhammadu Buhari failed to visit Ogoniland for the flag-off of the implementation of the UNEP Report on the cleaning up of the Niger Delta.
It was a shocking and depressing development and calls to question again the kind of advice he receives.
Cancelling that visit is the last thing he should have contemplated today. Here are 10 reasons why it’s bad:
(1) Niger Delta Avengers threatened that he shouldn’t come; not going there, despite the whole show of military force, hands the initiative to the Avengers. They have showed they control the agenda of his government and his own movement within the nation.
Of course, the truth is nothing would have happened to Buhari in Ogoniland; but, again, perception is reality.
(2) Environment Minister, Amina Mohammed, talked up Buhari’s visit, saying, he “would return to Ogoniland where he inaugurated a fish pond in 1984 where the once flourishing pond regrettably had been destroyed by oil pollution.
“The federal government is coming back to restore the ecosystem to what it used to be and as such restore the peoples’ source of livelihood.”
Mentioning that the president was going to Ogoniland again after his 1984 visit as a military head of state was a way of making the case that between then and now life has been snuffed out of the environment there and Buhari was now returning life to the people and that environment with his visit.
The symbolism would have been nice.
(3) Buhari’s visit would have been the most significant thing in Ogoniland since the judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and for Buhari, it would have been a personal victory and a personal exorcism of some sort as well.
Buhari was Sani Abacha’s head of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) that was spending the oil money at the time Saro-Wiwa was killed. Buhari supported that killing as part of that government and Nigerians and the world condemned it strongly.
Saro-Wiwa’s main message was not the political aspect of the Ogoni case, but the environmental. He was killed because he drew attention to the environmental destruction oil exploration brought to the Niger Delta.
Buhari would have used this opportunity to show with his presence his genuine commitment to cleaning up Ogoniland particularly and the Niger Delta generally. With that he would have come full circle from his Abacha days.
He would have used his presence to call for the unity of the Ogoni and the Niger Delta with the rest of Nigeria, so we all find solutions to the problems of lack of development and environmental degradation ravaging the area.
(4) One of the worst perceptions created by Buhari’s non-appearance is that it has sent more shockwaves through the Nigeria-related international business community involved in the oil business.
True, everyone has been hearing of the Niger Delta Avengers and all they’ve been up to, but there would have been no better opportunity to pooh-pooh their claim than landing at the epicentre of oil production and carrying on government and international business as if they do not exist.
This is what gives international investors’ confidence in the real sense. Not going there is simply a huge advertisement for the viability of the Avengers’ insurgency. Buhari has just inadvertently made them seem stronger than they are in the eyes of the international business community.
(5) As with the cancelled Lagos visit, the real loss for Rivers and Nigeria will be economic.
Lagos is the business capital of the country and in a situation where the country is going through tough economic times and where the singular most important figure in government should be projecting the country as open for business, Buhari staying away did not help the Lagos and the national business community to make the case to the international community that Lagos is open for business.
The same thing is happening with this cancelled visit to the oil capital of the country. Buhari is simply telling the international press that’s been full of negative stories about the state of our oil business that it’s as bad as or worse than they’re claiming.
A visit would have sent out a more positive message with regard to the state of the oil industry in Nigeria.
(6) Even if Buhari does not know it, his advisers must know that his stock in the South South and the South East is really, really down.
After his ill-advised rejection of the 2014 National Conference report, here was an opportunity to show Nigerians and the Niger Delta that he is still committed to the Nigerian project based on fairness, equity and good governance.
The political symbolism of Buhari’s visit to Ogoniland, the first community to prepare its own Bill of Rights under the military pursuant to a National Conference, would have been immense!
In fact, he was bound to gain politically from it throughout the South South.
(7) Now, there’s also the problem of what passes for news in the circumstances of this type of impromptu cancellation. Every action of the president must have an explanation and where none is provided, people will find something, because news abhors vacuum.
Call it rumour if you like, but it would serve. The president has cancelled a visit which up till that morning everyone thought he was prepared for. No matter what reason anyone gives now, alternative narratives will make more sense to some huge sections of the worried public.
For instance, when he cancelled his Lagos visit, it was interpreted in some quarters as a chastisement of Bola Tinubu for going to the Ayuba Waba faction of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) without clearance from the government, especially when Buhari was seen welcoming Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State to Aso Rock at the time he was supposed to be in Lagos.
This alternative narrative made Buhari appear petty against the background that everybody knows Amosun is the closest person to him politically in the South West from their days in the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), and it didn’t help that Amosun is viewed as some sort of rival to Tinubu for Aso Rock’s ear.
This alternative narrative is even worse in relation to this Ogoni cancelled visit. Everyone has been witnessing how Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has been ensuring that this visit went hitch-free, despite the report of a directive a few days earlier targeting him and Governor Ayodele Fayose over foreign travel.
Wike rose to the occasion and did not allow politics to blind him in preparing for this visit.
He warned politicians from all sides not to politicise the visit, he enhanced security in areas Buhari was visiting by banning motorcycles and was generally making sure he received a proper welcome.
He declared that Buhari’s “visit to the state is both historic and significant. It is historic because it marks his first official visit to the state since assuming office as the president of this great nation.
“It is most significant because Mr president is not on a political mission, but to kickstart the largest environmental clean-up in our nation’s history, for which Rivers people and, indeed, the Niger Delta will remain grateful.”
But by cancelling the visit, it’s Buhari who would be seen now as politicising this, because people would think he is indirectly backing his Transport Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, in his fight against Wike by ensuring that he is not seen standing with Wike in Rivers State as his guest.
That is pure pettiness; but it would be the story.
(8) Buhari is letting the impression stick that he is not interested in visits to states, but only to foreign climes. As funny as that might sound, many people take this view seriously when they claim he has made more than 30 foreign trips since his election a year ago, while he has only visited Cross Rivers State.
The implication is that he is a leader not interested in his own people.
(9) His non-appearance totally diminished the importance of the flag-off the UNEP Report to clean Ogoni and the Niger Delta.
From now on, over the time of implementation, every hitch would be viewed from the prism of the president’s absence. That cannot be good.
(10) Buhari had everything to gain by the optics of this visit. The national mood needed it.
A no-show is simply not going to give him any plus, no matter what excuse he ultimately comes up with, that is if he actually comes up with one.
Gradually, he’s giving the impression that he’s being overwhelmed by the demands of being president.
• Culled from www.chidoonumah.com