The president has always seen silence as a mark of dignity in a time of crisis. When he opens his mouth eventually, he spews out venom that neither gives him nor the office he occupies any form of dignity.

Tall, gaunt, lean of face with a straight stare and loping strides, his smile comes across more like a lickspittle than a royal. Yet, behind that simpering exterior is a granite heart. However, little cunning or high thinking dresses up his hearty resolves. So, in the final analysis, what we have is not the Buhari of nobility but a pretension to the high moral act. Sometimes that façade confronts us in the form of silence.

Occasionally he does speak. When he breaks his silence, he ruptures not only peace but logic. As I have noted in the past, Buhari’s soul is a battle between the martial impulses of his breeding and the entitlement of his ambience as a Fulani hierarch. And then there is a third. He has managed, since his ouster from power as head of state, to cultivate the talakawa. So, he sees himself as a sort of royal with a common touch. He is simultaneously on top and at the bottom, a prince and pauper, a head and herdsman, at once erupting from the floor and swooping down from heaven.

How does such a man operate in a democracy? Well, unless democracy tames him, he will see it as his right to tame democracy. That is the war going on with the man we elected president. His silence on the N9 trillion scandal only portrays his contempt for institutions and persons who want to tame him like colt to the discipline and humility of popular persuasion. If democracy is about the triumph of popular persuasion over collective will, Buhari is bending to the side of the will.

As French philosopher Jean Jacque Rousseau has argued, collective will often cloaks despotic arrogance. Robespierre and Danton, even Napoleon, were culprits.
As a soldier Buhari works with diktat. As a royal, he sees the world from the hill top. As a talakawa patron, he gives them love in his own light. In return, they give him worship.

Democracy therefore will work for him the way he operates with the talakawa. He expects us to bow down to him. He is the king of our democracy. He abides the contradiction. Men like Churchill or General Dwight Eisenhower had high-born sensibilities, but hey were cowed by the institutions of democracy. Buhari acts otherwise. The thing is that Buhari is not high-born, he has acquired the streak by age and his rise in the military and social graces of the land. When you expect to give, it means you define the love in your own image. The targets of your love only do one thing: worship you.

What we have is the making of the Aristotelian tragic flaw. Like Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Buhari’s flaw is hubris. That explains why his speeches and comments in times of crisis tend to be condescending.

We witnessed it early in his tenure when he would not set up a cabinet. Or when his wife rattled him, or when he reacted to the scandal around his army chief, or when recently he fouled the air when he returned from his medical leave and came down in primitive anger against the Southeast. There are some storms he has never found worthy of his tongue. Chief among them is the poisonous lop-sidedness of his appointments. He is still mum on Babachir Lawal and Ayo Oke, and even the rumbles among his principal officers in the presidency. Some jump out of the shadows. Like his request to a World Bank chief that the institution should focus work on the north.

This perhaps explains why he has been frozen from the neck up in spite of the uproar over his NNPC appointments. So, following from that, why would we expect him to say something about the new tempest on Nigeria’s oil. All he did was retreat to is familiar terrain on the N9 trillion ambush of our national treasure.

Now, he may see his silence has golden, as a way of standing above the rolling waters, of asserting his rectitude. But that could be so if he has come out with a line of wisdom through his lieutenants. His lieutenants have actually been quiet, too. It was all left in the hands of the culprit-in-chief to hand over the boil to his appointee, Maikanti Baru.

If his explanations had found traction in reason, we could have pardoned the president. We could say, well, it was all a case of mistaking a mouse for an elephant. But the big elephant in the room has remained one man: Muhammadu Buhari.
He acts as though it is mere matter. It will pass over, his image as a man of purity will shield him, so he does not have to be above board.

After all, some of his followers have been treating him as a god. They swear by him, they risk cholera by drinking water on dirt roads, they worship head on the ground as though on prayer ground. So how can he submit to mere mortals to explain.

He does not need to explain when Baru says he sought permission from him (Buhari) to make such a consequential decision. He does not need to react when he bypasses the man he appointed to the position as board chairman of the NNPC. He does not see it fit that he set up a board that the NNPC Act invests with powers and a mere mortal he puts there as GMD subverts their authority and boasts about it in Buhari’s name. Does he not know that as president, the only person to whom he can hand over authority is a minister or vice president?

The constitution says so. Or does he read the constitution? If he cannot delegate to himself since he is oil minister, he automatically hands over to his minister of state. By bypassing that, he has violated due process. And he does not want to talk about it? By the way, is it damning to note that these contracts were purportedly signed when he was on medical leave? He himself had said his men brought him files to sign in London. If he did not sign Baru’s, did he give him a nod. If he did, he violated the oath of office, and is that not enough for him to resign, or for impeachment proceedings to begin?

Does he not know that matters like this should involve the BPP? Did he not hear the voice of Oby Ezekwesili on that? Did he not hear his GMD draw false equivalences by saying that Kachikwu did the same thing, therefore there was nothing wrong? Is that the way to fight corruption?

If a man like Baru can play fast and loose with our endowment as a people, where do we place those who are faithful like Dakuku Peterside in NIMASA and Professor Ishaq Oloyede at JAMB. The president was quick to order the probe of the predecessors and rightly so. But he is easy on the humongous erring of his “man” Baru. They say it is not cash contract, and so not contract “as such.” Abi dem think say we be mumu?

As far as this column is concerned, unless Buhari reviews and annuls the contracts, his war on corruption is melodious lie, an exercise in hypocritical grandstanding. He is therefore hiding in silence. The silence is roaring, and our ears are full with its every decibel.
http://thenationonlineng.net/silence-means-contempt/

Ok

Booked

The English is too much, I can't even compression on thing that I understand but what I knows is the I does not knows what the likes of lie Mohammed and amaechi will sold to Nigeria to confuse the Yorubas to vote buhari came 2019. I pity APC

What does this have to do with Tinubu?

Tinubu gives his media houses absolute operational freedom
If you watch TVC's Journalist Hangout and yoi listen to Cubanji Direct you know what i mean

Following.

The Nation newspaper is wailing.
What are the hailers going to do about it
Would they fight their own, The Lion of The Lagoon, or simply keep Quiet.!??
Would Buhari seal up The Nation Newspapers' office...!??
The homebound journey of the APC into a certain, surer and Imminent Internal combustion is most Interesting..

This piece in The Nation Newspapers as written by Sam Omatseye, Chairman Editorial Board and a close ally of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu's, encapsulates, the very end of the unholy matrimony between the Tinubu camp and the Buhari hegemony....

If we remember, Sam Omatseye was the chief, arrowhead and pointsman of the media heist that brought the same Buhari to power... For this piece to be written in this very firm, unmistakably derogatory and belittling way, the honeymoon is not only over, but a certain and evident antagonism has commenced.

On point

The Nation newspaper is for IPOB .... But wailing form has finished.

i came late. his opinion is pointless and useless.

Total wash down with the most colorful derogatory words to describe the skinny bigoted Fulani cow occupying the Aso Rock seat of power.

I suspect this is Tinubu taking subliminal shots at his master while using Omatseye as smokescreen (afonjas are yellow-eyed cowards, you can hit your coneheads on the wall for all I care).

Buhari would sue The Nation if he reads this. That's if he knows he was thoroughly insulted.

This is the narrative in every logical camp, but the worshippers aka Hailers would rather have our voices muffled than confront their god.

This is the perfect commentary on their PMB.

buhari is not silent he has body odour/movement

following

Its now clear that tinubu wanted buhari in power for his own selfish interest and not for the yoruba and nigerians. Now that he's been sidelined he resorted to attacking buhari. Call me ipob or whatever but yorubas were warned that bubu only cares about the north but their hatred for anything igbo clouded their senses. Now see.

What more can I say, if such a country like this and a barbarian like buhari can exist in 2017 and people do not see anything wrong, then they deserve all the suffering they are passing through!!

Dis govt is simply made up of a bunch of hypocrites.. Dats d summary

Tinubu is gradually releasing his rabid dogs but let him just remember that Buhari isn't a perfect gentleman like Gej, Buhari is a vindictive old hack, there's no time for niceties in his dictionary, Buhari will so utterly crush him with the same files Gej refused to touch. For Tinubu's sake, he and Buhari have to come to a round table discussion because Buhari can do without him

The writer is a logical narractor,he is very gentle on heated words,meek with vulgal, have a better escape when it comes to contempt explainatn.You can't hold him for any wrong doing except you wanted to break your past silence...

Interesting

Whatsoever you sow and nuture, you shall reap a harvest of them.

tinubu have resorted to opposition politics for his own selfish again, unfortunately, he might still convince many Yoruba's to follow him blindly. Yoruba's need to know that their political class doesn't care about the masses, there's no difference between tinubu and okorocha or ambode and umahi or obiano,they're all after their personal gain only.

Kudos OP.

How come no zombie dey this thread....

Hmmm

E no go better for Buhari and family

Rather than dissect the article to see if there are salient points we are her dragging at who the writer is, whose pet he is and or in whose interest is he writing.

Honestly just as Femi Adesina used to write in those days he was apt, blank and blunt. But today he has forgotten all that piece he put on papers and if he had bring them to his principal's notice and he adopts them, Buhari would make the best President.

Omatseye may only be sane now that the presidential bug has not been injected.

Well Said Well Said..Nice article

God bless buhari. God punish nnamdi kanu and his followers

it's just dawning on the nation.



where is ejalonibu sef see what you haf cause for tthe masses here in North you need to see how the sai baba are lamenting as a result of hungar I mean first class hungar but lo and behold dem never see somtyn.

The gloves are off!