By Rotimi Fasan

One would like to hope that minders of President Muhammadu Buhari in the Presidency and his supporters in the All Progressives Congress, APC, would, in the little time left before the present government ends its term, begin to make the effort to be less negatively predictable.

One is talking here of spokespersons like Garba Shehu, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami and others in the Directorate of State Services, the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission and allied agencies, who have turned their duties as exponents and defenders of government policies or managers of state security into abject sycophancy.

In their bid to defend their principal they amplify the contradictions that have increasingly defined the government of President Buhari even as it professes its commitment to fighting insecurity, corruption and emplacing a culture of integrity in governance and the management of Nigeria’s resources.

Until last week, Kunle Olawunmi, a retired Navy Commodore, was known only in the country’s security circle, specifically military intelligence, where he seemed to have maintained a high profile. But in his appearance on Channels Television breakfast show, ‘Sunrise Daily’, the former officer offered insight into how the Buhari government has more or less enabled criminality and empowered individuals and groups that have complicated the management of the country’s security, made insurgency and the fight against it a never-ending venture by deliberately mollycoddling confessed insurgents and supporters of Boko Haram and others in government found to have promoted and supported activities of the group.

This mode of crime management not only marked a major shift from what previous governments and presidents before Buhari had done. It was also both alien to people who know a thing or two about security matters and is negatively counter-intuitive. This point ought to be borne in mind when supporters of the President and the government he leads portray him as a mere victim of the demonisation of the Fulani in particular and or of Northerners as a whole.

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Such conclusions is a move that is proof more of mental laziness than anything else. While one cannot rule out or even concedes that some Nigerians have simple-mindedly profiled others by putting an ethnic label on increased cases of criminality across the country, the truth which is often ignored in rebuttals of accusations of biased treatment of Nigerians by President Buhari is that he is neither the first Fulani nor Northerner to rule Nigeria.

Umar Yar’Adua, another Fulani Muslim, died in office only about five years before Buhari became president and, even though, his administration was also plagued by criminal insurgents from the Niger Delta, he was neither called a Fulani enabler nor a Northern hegemonist. Nor did he fall short in the integrity department. He was the first and, perhaps, the only Nigerian ruler that has comprehensively declared his asset on assumption of office.

Yet it was during the short period of his administration that what has turned out to be a sustained solution to insurgency in the Niger Delta was found. His amnesty to and rehabilitation of Niger Delta militants is the supposed model for the bastardised programme of rehabilitation of Boko Haram fighters and so-called bandits in different parts of the North by the present government. There is, therefore, no reason why Nigerians from the South would simply seek to demonise the Fulani but for the President’s mismanagement of Nigeria’s diversity and his barely-concealed bias for ‘his’ people.

A couple of days before the Olawunmi interview on Channels, the same television station had transmitted a live interview with Samuel Ortom, governor of Benue State and strong critic of the Buhari administration. The core of Governor Ortom’s critique of Buhari this time, as always in the last four years, was his handling of the security complications created in Benue State and other parts of the country by criminals masquerading as herders and leaders of Fulani herders’ associations that have either engaged in making inflammatory remarks that are harmful to national cohesion or owned up to perpetrating criminal acts.

There is no doubt that ‘the presidency’ already felt bruised and was bristling under the heat of what Samuel Ortom had to say. But it was the Olawunmi interview that brought out the knives. The NBC that had earlier this year slammed a N5 million fine on Channels for airing an interview with Emma Powerful, spokesperson for the Indigenous People of Biafra, a group that Abuja has outlawed, unlike sundry groups led and managed by ‘herders’ and ‘bandits’- the NBC was fast to summon Channels to answer for its ‘unprofessional’ conduct of running an interview with an opposition figure. Otherwise, there was nothing new in Ortom’s critique of what Femi Adesina has called Buhari’s style.

The Broadcasting Commission started breathing down the neck of Channels and soon it was being bruited about that the two anchors of the Olawunmi interview, Chamberlain Usoh and Kayode Okikiolu, had been arrested. The DSS denied this while the NBC, it was said, only ‘invited’ the men. While both the television stations and the security agencies mentioned have sought to downplay what happened, it is clear that Abuja was unhappy with Channels and its interviewees.

Many Nigerians had expressed fears about the safety of Olawunmi and worried he might be arrested. Neither ‘the presidency’ nor the security agencies have disappointed. While Garba Shehu has openly made deprecatory and typically insulting remarks against Ortom, one of the numerous intel agencies has since claimed it ‘invited’ Commodore Olawumi for tête-à-tête on how to combat insecurity.

Like it did with Obadiah Mailafia, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, who had similarly accused the Buhari government of harbouring Boko Haram sympathisers in its fold, it is certain that the DSS will not be slow to humiliate Olawunmi if the opportunity presents itself. One can only wonder what information an intelligence agency could want from a retired staff that it could not get from records with the intelligence unit where he served. This could just be an effort at intimidation, to rough handle a critic of Abuja.

The facts are there for Nigerians to see: the Buhari government that came into office largely on its record of acerbic criticism of its predecessor has grown very thin-skinned. It won’t allow criticism of its action and is quick to silence and rain insults on critics.

The contradiction of a government that ‘befriends’ bandits and ‘rehabilitates’ insurgents or pay them off in the North while turning its weapons on self-determination agitators in the South, is lost on it. It preaches integrity and moderation; claims to fight corruption while the President oversees a wedding for his son that is unequalled in unseemly extravagance- all of it apparently bankrolled on taxpayers’ money or by patrons of dubious wealth.

Vanguard News Nigeria