21022018 - APC CRISIS LATEST :Governor demolishes senator's house

32--- VANGUARD, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2018
•Buhari with APC governors in Daura last Friday
BUHARI AND TRUMP:
Comparisons,
contrasts of
Consolers-in-Chief
THE actions and inactions of Presidents Donald
Trump and Muhammadu Buhari to similar eruptions
of violence in their two countries have elicited
commentary on the expectations from Nigerian
political leaders.
By Emmanuel Aziken,
Political Editor
TWO unfortunate
happenings in the
United States and
Nigeria penultimate
Wednesday may have helped
to bring out contrasting
inclinations of the leaderships
in the two countries.
That Wednesday which
happened to be Valentine Day
when love is shared, turned
into a day of agony in the
Southeast state of Florida in the
United States and the
Northwest state of Zamfara in
Nigeria.
On that day, a seemingly
neurotic teenager entered a
Florida school and shot to death
three teachers and 14 students
bringing again to the fore, the
recurring debate about gun
control in that country. The
Florida state governor, Rick
Scott in apparent anger over the
failure of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, FBI to act on
intelligence that could have
stopped the shooting
demanded the resignation of
the FBI director, Mr.
Christopher Wray.
On the same day in Nigeria,
in Zamfara State, bandits now
generally termed herdsmen
killed 36 persons in Birane
Village in Zurmi Local
Government Area of the state.
Two days after the Florida
shooting, President Donald
Trump was in Florida where he
visited survivors and the
emergency responders in an act
of encouragement. Over here
in Nigeria, two days after the
horror in Zamfara, President
Muhammadu Buhari
proceeded on a short break to
his native Daura in Katsina
State for a five-day break.
Katsina State by the way shares
boundary with Zamfara where
some of those who probably
voted for the president in 2015
were among those killed by the
bandits.
President Buhari is of course
not the first Nigerian leader to
be flayed for being seemingly
aloof to the plight of the killing
of Nigerians.
His predecessor, Dr.
Goodluck Jonathan was
particularly hounded for his
failure to visit Chibok, Borno
State after the Boko Haram
militants kidnapped the Chibok
Secondary School girls in April
2014.
About a month after the
incident, news filtered out that
the president would go to
Chibok, but that visit was
eventually cancelled even after
the movement of the advance
team to Borno State.
The opposition All
Progressives Congress, APC
was aghast at the cancellation
of the visit. Alhaji Lai
Mohammed, the interim
spokesman of the party, which
was still in its formative stages
at that time, in a statement
lambasted Jonathan in a press
statement for failing to take his
role as consoler in chief.
“With his utterances and
•Trump at the Florida Hospital last Friday
actions or inaction, President
Jonathan has deepened the
pains of the parents and
guardians of the girls, and that
of the whole nation, when he
should have been the consolerin-chief
at such a difficult time,”
Mohammed said in a press
statement issued on May 18,
2014.
Continuing the party said:“A
President and Commander-in-
Chief, who is afraid to visit any
part of his country, has
betrayed the very people who
voted him into office.
“In the case of Chibok, he has
shown that the residents of the
town should not expect to be
seen as compatriots by their
own President hence they are
on their own.”
Before and after the Chibok
incident, President Jonathan
had been known to have visited
some of the sites of Boko
Haram bombings, especially in
Abuja. However, to his credit,
President Buhari has not had
the misfortune of a bomb blast
in Abuja since his advent.
However, violent killings
have sharply risen outside the
federal capital with herdsmen
killings taking the notoriety that
was once associated with the
Boko Haram insurgents.
However, the contrasting
response of Presidents Buhari
and Trump to the Valentine Day
killings in their respective
countries has not come as a
total shock to some of Nigeria’s
leading civil rights activists.
Chairperson of the Transition
Monitoring Group, TMG,
Dr.Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi in
her comments on the
contrasting actions of the two
presidents sought to put
Buhari’s inaction on his
military training.
“Is it today that we knew that
Buhari does not go to places
where things happen? To me,
it looks like that is his style. It
looks like it is insensitive
anyway, even with the killings
in Benue, he didn’t go even
though he went to Nasarawa.
So, I think that is his style
maybe it is the military part of
him. Maybe the death of people
don’t really move him, but from
the beginning of his tenure, that
has been his pattern.
“He has never been to
Maiduguri despite the
I think that is
his style maybe
it is the military
part of him.
Maybe the
death of people
don’t really
move him
genocide that has happened
there. Unlike other climes
where it is a good thing to go
to such places, unfortunately,
it is not so here. The president
must be humane; he must be
sensitive. “In other climes, it is
not so,” Mrs. Akiyode-Afolabi,
also the executive director of
the Women Advocates,
Research and Documentation
Centre, WARD-C said.
Mr. Auwal Musa Ibrahim, the
chairman of the Board of
Trustees, BoT of Amnesty
International, Nigeria in his
response flayed President
Buhari for being insensitive
saying:
“Nigerian leaders are not
sensitive to the sufferings of
their people; they are not really
concerned about the feelings of
their people because they are
not suffering the kind of
hardship that the people are
facing.
“Second, they don’t care about
the electoral consequences
because elections in Nigeria do
not sanction those who do
wrong and the system is not
one that rewards good
behaviour, and that is why
many Nigerian leaders are
taking people for granted. I
cannot understand that right
from beginning Trump who had
been described as a core
politician even before he was
inaugurated went to say thank
you to those who elected him,
but President Buhari who was
elected overwhelmingly even
in Kano where his political
headquarters is; refused to go
to Kano for a long time until
when people began to
complain. Now that election is
coming; he went to visit Kano.”
The Amnesty International
boss also flayed the president
for not visiting Borno and many
other places where he received
support despite what he termed
as the spate of genocide in
those parts of the country.
Ibrahim popularly known as
Rafsanjani in civil society
circles further rebuked the
governor of Zamfara State,
Alhaji Abdulaziz Yari for
leading other APC governors
on a pilgrimage to Daura State
in neighbouring Katsina State
even while his state was in
mourning.
He particularly flayed the
governor for being insensitive
in abandoning his duty post
saying that he had no duty to
be outside the state at that time.
Like his predecessor,
President Jonathan, President
Buhari has, however, not failed
to condemn acts of brutality
against Nigerians repeatedly
instructing security chiefs to
apprehend the perpetrators of
such violence.
But many Nigerians
apparently want the president
to back his words with action
and show compassion and wear
the garment of consoler-inchief
even when his
government has failed to check
the activities of the evil
marauders.