The Buhari phenomenon and season of endorsement

Aliyu Musa

Since coasting to victory in an indubitably free and fair APC primary General Muhammadu Buhari has become a powerful phenomenon that only those given to uninterrupted self-delusion would deny. Love him or loathe him, he is the man of the moment and an idea whose time is now and a bearer of an unquenchable torch whose light, each minute, is kindled by every attempt to quench it. Ask the ruling PDP and its official and unofficial Vuvuzelas and you’ll be shocked at the level and manner of panic the name causes, even though hard they try to hide it.

When in October 2014 I wrote a piece titled ‘The Buhari Phenomenon: Our slogan, their headache’ available at http://mystandandi.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-buhari-phenomenon-our-slogan-their.html the trend was only beginning to gather momentum. Even then it was obvious the regime and our ‘Oga at the top’, in whose backyard the phenomenon thundered, had caught the bug and were beginning to run a temperature. Maybe a rollback to December 27, when we were unceremoniously rushed into the New Year, will succinctly explain the paranormal effect.

Running a temperature, physicians warn, is a serious problem but when temperature continues to shoot up non-stop it becomes a serious problem unlimited.

The situation we have found ourselves is critical not because some local rascals with access to weapons have Haramised our homeland but because our rulers, under the influence an overshot temperature, still can’t figure out where and how to begin the fight back. And so arming our soldiers is not a priority and when vigilante groups and local hunters offer a helping hand they become the hunted.

Each time they come up with a new trick to quench the phenomenon it boomerangs so fast that they don’t see it coming. At one time they flew the religion kite at the speed of a 21st Century jumbo jet until it crashed in their face. Then they consulted their oracle who pointed at the direction of a ‘Janjaweed scholar’, one Femi Fani-Kayode who authored some Janjaweed nonsense purportedly linking the retired General to the Haramites in the northeast.

But the trouble with these Janjaweed notes is that they are as jumbled and wobbly as their author. While they point at the direction of the General with one finger, four others point at the direction of the author’s paymasters. And perhaps that’s why a review was badly overdue. And to take on that the ‘Janjaweed professor’ agreed a new role saddling him with the unenviable responsibility of ‘Vuvuzela-ing’ a rejected brand and his first attempt at rebranding is clearly a disaster – I heard he now thinks the cord connecting the General with the Haramites is no longer plausible. Talk of unstableness!

This phenomenon is neither ignorable nor defeatable. And the race is now on to embrace it. Endorsement is an understatement because even those that do not want it also do not want to be seen antagonising it. Those that in 2011 called the General names and openly antagonised him on radio and TV and in newspapers are today talking with caution and even offering unsolicited advice.

So the endorsement harvest continues. Yesterday it was a cleric who doubles as Mr President’s neighbour. And today it’s his blood brothers, in whose defence he staunchly rose after the 2010 October 1 Abuja bombing. So, even bombers have joined the race to reject this brand?

Someone asked who the murderers in the northeast would endorse between Mr President and General Buhari. I am quick to say they’d rather put a bet on Mr President than a General Buhari who has a legacy of vanquishing them – remember he sent the Maitatsine rogues scampering and chased the Chadian marauders back into the desert. They’d rather trust a regime that gives no damn when they overrun the country and kill without a second thought. They’d prefer a system that would let a Shekau’s dream of becoming a ‘Khalifa’ see the light by generously ceding to him parts of the country. So, my bet is the Haramites would definitely not endorse the Buhari phenomenon, which even by our ‘Janjaweed professor’s’ new notes would be antithetical to the Haram they hoist.

By the way was Mr Chairman Adamu Mu’azu satirising when he said the PDP was a nest of unfair players? Hear him: “We say that members of the PDP should not be used and dumped again. People leave the party because of lack of equity or injustice.” An interesting revelation! Maybe it also explains the MEND U-turn.