Mama Isanlu told me the story of Pa Alainikanse ton f’ari fun aja. So idle was Pa Alainikanse that he spent much of his life shaving the head of his dog. The neighbours got used to the fact that Pa Alainikanse’s blades and clippers were meant exclusively for the head of his dog.
Then came the day when lice, dandruff and other scalp problems reminded Pa Alainikanse that he needed a haircut badly. Alas, all his blades and clippers had been blunted by years of use on his dog’s head. So, he screamed and appealed desperately to his neighbours, begging them to lend him blades and clippers because he needed a haircut.
The neighbours did yinmu and moju. Nobody believed him. Nobody trusted him. See Pa Alainikanse o, they said. Who does not know that he wants to use our blades and clippers to shave his dog’s head? He thinks we are mumu like him? Shior!
Pa Alainikanse paid the price of iranu.
In Washington DC, President Buhari is paying the price of iranu.
For one year, he has operated an aletilapa Presidency, listening to nobody and playing Gulliver all over the world because he has eleven jets he had promised to reduce during campaign.
On the positive side, many of those trips have been humiliating and embarrassing for Nigeria – beneath the status and dignity of the Nigerian presidency.
On the negative side, many of those trips have been totally useless – like the useless gallivanting of his predecessors.
That trip to a diary farm in Kenya is beneath the dignity of the Vice President’s office. It should have been undertaken by the Permanent Secretary and some Directors in the Ministry of Agriculture. Yet, the Nigerian President put one leg after another leg and went to Nairobi.
That trip to Equatorial Guinea? I am still trying to tell what the heck it was about beyond the preoccupation of Baba Alainikanse with shaving his dog’s head in the folktale.
Now he is in Washington DC – on the only trip that he should perhaps have undertaken out of Nigeria since his election and he is being criticized and hit by 180 million people who have become too used to his useless foreign trips undertaken to shave the head of a dog.
Even the most sophisticated critics are asking: what is he doing in a nuclear summit?
Well, he is doing everything that is relevant. This summit is not about nuclear powers. President Obama convened it to address the perennial danger of loose nuclear material – a consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union – getting into the hands of terrorists.
If you are the leader of any of the countries that is helpless in fighting terrorism, this summit is for you. How do we prevent Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabab, and Boko Haram from gaining access to nuclear material and allied dirty bombs?
Combating nuclear proliferation and the spread of fissile material: this is what this Washington summit is about in the main. It is not about states with nuclear capability. If it was about that, Nigeria would have no business there. It is about weak and underdeveloped states, ravaged by terrorism, that are vulnerable to loose fissile material.
Imagine Boko Haram getting fissile material. Even with their conventional weapons, you have only defeated them technically in two administrations after your soldiers did technical maneuvers.
If you are defeating them only technically when they have conventional weapons, how are you going to defeat them when they get fissile material? Professionally?
That is why Buhari is in DC. This, for me, is the first non-useless trip of his entire Presidency.
Of course, the ineffectual buffoons in his media team have been unable to sell this straightforward narrative. They are too busy reprimanding Nigerians for complaining about fuel scarcity and darkness to know how to provide a logical basis for their Oga’s only worthwhile foreign trip.
But what do I know? Nigeria being Nigeria, President Buhari is perfectly capable of returning from this DC trip and heading out the next day to attend the birthday of the President of Djibouti.
When you have 11 planes, your ways are not like the ways of those queuing for fuel in Lagos and Abuja.
Your reasoning is different from theirs…