The Book of Buhari (BOB) is a guide for present and future generations of Nigerians. A close study can save soles from a long trek to nothingness and not exist in a hidden reality.
First, we learnt that a country sick needs an individual who can run five miles or more daily. Temerity and confidence aren’t enough. The individual must, like Odysseus, never wear out, (s)he must be made of iron and must despise sleep.
Second, promises are…well, mere words. When the president said his presence would end corruption, end death and end unemployment, he was prodding the electorate with the normal golden verbiage. Should, God willing, historians decide record his words, they would put it under political prose, which adds nothing to serious political discourse.
This is one spicy take away from BOB. Unity is the sour condiment in the Nigerian soup. It is the source of bitterness, anger and bickering. However, the chef thinks it’s the only ingredient that can make the soup complete and, as such, it remains.
When, in the near future, say in 2019, people reading this book would find another lesson (it’s the writer’s hope that this doesn’t make it to the second edition of BOB). To be a senator, legislator, or governor, you must learn to wax the phallus of a few heads. This skill is more important than the actual ambition of creating change. Characters like Fashola, Melaye, and Saraki populate this page. Their success in waxing pumps their success. 2019 would present personalities with no credibility (Ibori may resurface).
Lest one forgets, it’s good never to take the words of intellectuals without digging deep into their intellect. Ensure, first, that they’ve not been overfed with dirty political money. On the other hand, be sure that the intellectual has never praised any politician or, better still, polished caps of heads of godfathers. What does the book say? Eh, it says that those who pushed Baba on us are quickly moonwalking in the typical Jacksonian backward motion, claiming that the new looking president wasn’t old and they didn’t see it coming. So, Nigerians must learn to make informed decisions and not depend on the thinking of an elite class.
There’s no better story than a character that lives to serve in proxy. It would be written that ruling must be done from within and not from outside. In the book, there’s a chapter that talks about how to use the facilities of foreign nations when one needs cotton bud to undo that itchy eardrums. Absence affected the nation’s sense.
There would never be another book as complicated BOB. The character didn’t explore the full forms of his power. Nature took old of him. It, therefore, behooves Nigerians to hold their eyes open when searching for the next book of presidents to write.
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