"I watched the President's meeting with community leaders in Kaduna after the unfortunate communal clashes of last week. The speech delivered by Mr. President further confirms my fears that Buhari has lost grip of the happenings in Nigeria.
For the president to have come out publicly and say nobody informed him about the loss of 70 lives in Kaduna during the recent crisis, is an indication that those closest to PMB are not assets to him, but a liability.
Who are those closest to him?
The first is his spouse and children, then his Chief of Staff, his security details, and the security chiefs. We can include the Governors and Ministers in the list since they are chief security officers of their respective states.
How comes, none of these people briefed Buhari on the Kaduna crises which consumed about 80 lives? (according to official reports) Where is the DSS chief who receives daily, weekly and monthly reports from the 36 states and FCT? Where is the president's retinue of media aides - Garba Shehu, Femi Adesina, and whose responsibility it is to give the President a nugget of major news headlines of the day? Did they deliberately bury the news reports from Kaduna or the president did not read what they presented to him?
Whatever may be the case, the President's statement has clearly demonstrated that he's disconnected from the people as he rightly acknowledged when he said, "I am locked up in Aso Rock, so will not know what is happening outside until someone reported it to me."
Rather than urging the community leaders to be closer to their people, which they already are, its the President himself that should connect with Nigerians.
At the inception of his administration in 2015, I posted a piece on Facebook advising President Muhammadu Buhari to learn from his past mistakes as Military head of state by making himself visible to the people, and I elaborated on how he could do that. I even offered to provide free service of organizing and coordinating such outreach to different communities so long as the presidency can offset the bill for outsourced services like the venue, catering, publicity, etc. I was prepared to offer my professional services as events planner and communication expert for free to create the kind of visibility that would make President Muhammadu Buhari a truly people's servant-leader.
Unfortunately, the way the government operates, distancing itself from good people and bringing closer to itself bad ones, whose only stake is what they will make from it, nobody cares to listen. Now the time for reckoning is drawing near, Buhari is facing the reality created for him by those closest to him.
They are not water carriers that will quench the fire in the organization called Nigeria. They are gasoline carriers who have added flame to the fire engulfing the country. And by extension, they have turned PMB into a liability in the organization called Nigeria.
What is the way out? The President must learn the hard way and prepare Nigeria for a fundamental restructuring that will collapse much of the State power down to the geopolitical units and local communities where it naturally belongs.
Neither he nor any president can manage Nigeria well under the current distorted federal structure without proportionate power to do and undo. I am delighted that PMB has eaten his words - everything is wrong with the structure of Nigeria, and the earlier we remedy it the better for us all.
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