y EMEKA ALEX DURU
Is there any link between President Muhammadu Buhari and animals in the Cat family, otherwise called the carnivores? This is a question that may not be answered easily.
But there seems to be an uncanny relationship between them that is yet to be properly situated. The manner at which he references the carnivores at his hour of need and the rate at which they turn against him, often in human form, defy logic.
Whether it is the president who attracts the cats in human form or they easily detect in him, a potential prey, is also part of the confusion.
But one thing is clear. Animals in the cat family, whether dogs, lions, tigers, hyenas, baboons, jackals, are usually crafty. They are also ruthless. They are patient and usually sell a dummy of cowardice, in going about their prey.
At the first point of contact with a target, the cats normally retreat, selling a dummy of defeat, but actually strategising for a battle. And when they return, they go for a kill.
The President, seems to love the cats. It is a man of this disposition that could rise from the ashes of betrayal that he suffered in the hands of trusted colleagues who pushed him out of power as military head of state and returned to the seat, 30 years later as civilian president.
It is one with the patience of a cat that could stand the drudgery of going for a particular office for 12 years before achieving his target.
Even then, he knows that the patience can fail. In the build-up to the 2015 election for example, he had warned that if the poll turned out the way of the previous exercises where he lost on suspicion of rigging, the monkey and baboon would soak in their blood.
That was instantly seen as a wounded Lion roaring for revenge. And Buhari appeared to have what it would take for the onslaught.
But that is where something seems to be lacking. The cats do not forget what it takes them to get at their prey, hence they leave no room for error when they must have triumphed. This may be, because it is not lost on them that other animals of the same hue, or even scavengers which did not participate in the hunt, may also be prowling for the kill or to dispossess them of their spoil, out rightly.
This is a major lesson the President has failed to learn or may have chosen to ignore in his years of leadership engagement.
The jury is, for instance, still out on how he has managed power on two occasions he has had the opportunity of steering the affairs of the country.
Between January 1984 and August 1985, when Buhari was the head of state, it was clear that the military administration that he led, was not prepared for the task it assumed.
Aside the bravado of arresting and detaining politicians of the second republic on allegation of corruption, as well as subjecting Nigerians to grueling regimen of discipline that spoke more of concentration camp routine, the government did not have much in economic programme.
The regime was however popular among the youths and Nigerians of the lower class, who blamed the woes of the country on the rascality of the displaced politicians.
But for whatever reasons, Buhari who was actually the leader of the administration, maintained an inexplicable reticence that saw his deputy, late Tunde Idiagbon, being the face of the government.
It was therefore not surprising that the wily General Ibrahim Babangida, exploited the awkward aloofness of Buhari, to take over the reins of power, when Idiagbon travelled out of the country in 1985.
On his second coming as civilian president, in 2015, after 12 years of failed attempts, Buhari was expected to have mastered the intrigues and intricacies of power. Of course, riding on well packaged campaign blitz, it was assumed that he would be fully in charge, this time around.
When also in his inauguration speech, he pledged to belong to all and to none, the impression was that he would not give in to any power game that would again, leave him a victim of entrenched interests.
It did not however take time for perceptive minds to note that the president had become a pawn in the chase board of power players. From his belated and largely lopsided appointments, it did not take time for Buhari, who a couple of months past, had ridden to power on national appeal, to shrink to a circumscribed provincial tin god.
When his wife, Aisha, had earlier raised alarm that her husband had been encircled by human cats in the power highway, not many actually understood where she was going. Today, she is singing the same song in different tone.
Even as she hinted that “the hyenas” and “the jackals” around the President, would soon be ejected from his kingdom, the underlining message is that Buhari has been more of a lion in the cage.
Aisha, who was reacting to an allegory of a sleeping Lion that Hyenas and Jackals are praying not to wake, had assured that the “hyenas and the jackals will soon be sent out of the kingdom”.
The president, has incidentally been sick and has spent over two months in a London hospital, the second in the series, this year, for undisclosed ailment.
The wife and his teeming supporters are of the hope that he would get well soon, and return to work.
But if that happens, can Buhari really drive the hyenas and jackals from his environment. And who are those being referred to as hyenas and jackals, around him? Who emboldened and empowered them in the first instance?
These are questions only the president can answer. For now, the most, the remarks by Aisha can do for Buhari, is the momentary arousal of sympathies for him, essentially on account of his sickness and not an alibi for unmitigated failure of his administration.
The president, in this instance, is like a hired labourer, who cannot explain his inability to perform on his faulty tools.
The fact is that Buhari as a president, has disappointed most of his admirers who had staked their life and integrity to actualise his presidency. What they are now getting from him, is in sharp contrast to what they had expected.
In sowing the seeds of discord that are currently threatening the corporate existence of Nigeria, on account of his divisive actions and utterances, Buhari cannot blame any hyenas or jackals for the development.
It is he that will carry the can on the poor economic policies of his administration. He is responsible for his lopsided appointments. He will answer for the menace of the Fulani herdsmen that he has turned blind eyes on. To him also will the blame go for the armless members of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), who were wasted for simply asking to be left off the unjust Nigerian system.
Aisha may, therefore, allude at any hyenas and jackals in Buhari’s kingdom. But they are not known to Nigerians. It is the president that will give account of them and his relationship with them. He has, after all, since his inauguration, accommodated and tolerated them.
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