President Muhammadu Buhari could
have responded ruthlessly to the violence that trailed the EndSARS protests,
but he decided not to do so because of his fatherly disposition and the fact
that he is now heading a democratically elected government, presidential
spokesperson, Femi Adesina has said.
Adesina, who is a special adviser
to the president on media and publicity said this in his weekly column in which
he reflected on the recent EndSARS protests, the violence and destruction that
followed it and the reaction of President Buhari.
In the article, titled, “WE HAVE
NOT MANY FATHERS,” Adesina said the President refused to ask the police to use
lawful means to crush the protest, unlike what he would have done when he was
Nigeria’s military president between January 1984 and August 1985.
He noted that the President refused to change his order to the Police on how to handle the protesters, even when the protest was hijacked.
According to him, if President
Buhari’s reaction to the protests, especially when it took a violent bent was
not tempered by his fatherly disposition and the fact that the country is now
under a democratic government, “the rivers of Nigeria could have turned
crimson, and mourning and lamentations would have suffused the land.”
He said,” All through the EndSARS
protest and the riots, mayhem and looting that followed, President Buhari acted
like a father. And though we have millions of instructors in this country, we
have not many fathers. President Buhari is one.
“The President is by no means a
soft man. We remember the man of iron and steel that ruled with iron fist
between January 1984 and August 1985, with his kindred spirit, Babatunde
Idiagbon. They attempted to knock sense into our heads as Nigerians, but were
eventually toppled by people who had less patience for discipline.
“Is President Buhari as hard as
he was in 1984? Yes and no. In personal traits and attributes, he remains the
unbending iron. But in terms of administration and response to people and
situations, he is tempered by democracy, and by time. What he could do by
military fiat then, he must pass through democratic due process now. He wore
khaki then, now he wears Agbada. No wonder he now talks longingly about the
time “when I was young and ruthless…” Well, he is no longer young, and he must
be more avuncular, even fatherly, for that is what he is. And ruthlessness has
not much place in democracy if any at all.
“That was why when the EndSARS
protest started, and began to fester, and was eventually hijacked and
misdirected, President Buhari did not change the instructions, the rules of
engagement to security agencies, particularly the police. Things began to
degenerate. Policemen were being killed, prisoners being set free, roads and
airports being blocked, the economy was being locked down once again after the
about five months lockdown imposed by COVID-19, yet the President did not
change the order to the police, particularly. It was not till last week that
the Inspector General of Police instruct his men to now use ‘lawful force’ to
confront any insurrection. Sadly, scores of them had been killed in cold blood,
scores of patrol vehicles torched, and over 200 police stations, public and
private property burnt.
“If President Buhari hadn’t
exercised the restraint and tolerance of a father, at a time that even hitherto
respected people instigated the protesters to carry on (and they promptly went
underground when anarchy ensued), we would have been talking of something else
in the country. The rivers of Nigeria could have turned crimson, and mourning
and lamentations would have suffused the land. But we are thankful for the father
in President Buhari, patient and enduring, almost to a fault.
“In his national broadcast, he
said instigators of the riots misunderstood the pacifist nature of government
for weakness. “We are not only in government, we are also in power,” Gen
Ibrahim Babangida had said in 1993, after he annulled the free and fair
presidential election of that year. If President Buhari had wanted to show that
he ‘was in power,’ something quite unsavory could have happened in the land.
But he rather chose to be a father. Ye have many instructors, but not many
fathers.
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