The Tenor Of A Presidential Visit

M. T. Usman

Forwarded By Mohammed Haruna

Your President comes to town. A cause for celebration. Right? With townspeople trooping into the streets to catch a glimpse and wave at the august visitor. Wrong. Not when the visiting leaders is the Nigerian president. The recent experience of the residents of Kaduna is proof positive.

President Olusegun Obasanjo was in the city on the 30^th September, 2006, on an official engagement at the defence academy and to commission/flag-off some projects of the Kaduna State Government. Hundreds of soldiers and policemen descended on the city, sealing off some areas and closing very many streets. Vehicular traffic was severely disrupted as major arterial roads were blocked. Traffic built up almost two kilometers long along Kachia road; other entrance/exit roads became choke points. Drivers were left going in circles, not knowing which streets were free, which were blocked. Passengers were reduced to trekking to their destinations as they abandoned buses in the traffic jams.

The question that now arises from this now common experience occasioned by a presidential visit is this: why is such hardship so routinely imposed on the citizenry, why is the president so shielded from the people by whose votes he got into that office in the first place? Do security considerations require him to be protected from his own people? The leadership in the First Republic felt no such threat; they often stopped by the road side or the village to acknowledge the people. Even a military ruler like General Yakubu Gowon was that accessible when he went on tour. And the British monarch engages in walkabout both at home and abroad.

The answer must be sought in the psychology of the Nigerian public-office holders. As soon as they get into office an attitudinal change sets in on them and gradually but visibly they are seized by delusion of grandeur. They become omnipotent, all-knowing, able to do all things. They are Your Excellency, Mr. President, Distinguished; their baptismal names mentioned only in stealth. They are attended by protocol fit for a Pharaoh and security akin to that of the United States President.

Take our president for instance. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has become a glutton for fulsome unrestrained praise. Ministers, party apparatchiks and the posse of P.R. men in Aso Rock Villa exalt him at every turn. If not for the fear of the riots that may likely ensue, they would have declared him the greatest Nigerian ever – ahead of the founding fathers, the quartet of Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello, Awolowo and Tafawa Balewa. Still they came close to such heresy when they declared him the Father, the Leader and the Founder of Modern Nigeria, leaving the Old Country with all its imperfections to the aforementioned gentlemen. Perhaps we should await a change of name a la Mustafa Kemal – Kemal Attaturk. Baba Nigeria? Omigod. Given such atmosphere of eye service is it any wonder that they traverse the land like conquerors? Military–style convoys, vehicles four abreast crowding the highways and a helicopter hovering overhead. When they take to the skies the air space is closed to normal traffic with consequences for both safety and the economy.

If the above sombre analysts does not make happy reading for those in power it is precisely because they make no effort to hew close to the teachings of the major religions which preach modesty and humility in those entrusted with the affairs of men.

Presidential visits have thus become a carnival for the elite, a stage for mutual back-slapping. While the citizenry suffers inconveniences as detailed above, the state leadership laps up the presidential comments and flaunts them like a testimonial, evidence of having passed the master’s test.