Ezekwesili’s damning barbs

 Former Education minister, Oby Ezekwesili, took to Twitter to query the president’s nationalist credentials. She was not often blunt when she addressed public policy issues, but this time, she would not mince words on an issue she felt demonstrably agitated about. Her tweet was a summary lesson to the president on the concept of leadership, a lesson that is not necessarily new but is nonetheless profound. Her tone was, however, despondent, unsure that the man she was directing her tweet to was capable of reforming his leadership style and rubric.


Said Mrs Exekwesili: “It is tragic that you, our President, Muhammadu Buhari, have deliberately or inadvertently alienated a segment of the people you lead. It is tragic…The leader of a country cannot be friends only of those he/she likes. No. That is not leadership. The leader builds up groups. Not divide. You cannot lead only those that worship and swear by you. You are the leader. You must carry the burden even of those that detest you. It is the lowest form of churlishness that is unbecoming of a leader to send signals that you dislike anyone of the groups you lead. A leader is a winner. When a winner acts like a loser, things go wrong in his kingdom. Real leaders build a bond with all their people. Worst is when a leader makes enemies of most because he abhors the action of one or a few. That is not leadership! That is ethnic prejudice. A real leader does not suffer from the destructive disease of ethnic prejudice. It endangers his/her people and real leaders cannot bear such.”

It is hard to fault the premise of the former Education minister’s arguments, especially her observation about the implications of recent events in the Southeast. She does not attempt to deny the problems, nor to assign blames and draw lines. Her main argument was that a leader should exist to manage crises and resolve conflicts without prejudice. She takes umbrage at President Buhari’s disinclination to tackle these crises, especially the ones with ethnic connotations, with the dispassion, diligence and logic expected of deep leaders. Her scepticism was in fact resounding enough to elicit the anger and rejoinder of presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu. In his response, Mallam Shehu was particularly sarcastic and censorious. Said he: ” Mrs. Ezekwesili retreated to the background or lost her voice while IPOB supporters were violently molesting, harassing, attacking and jeopardising the lives of indigenes and non-indigenes.”

Then he adds: “While it is convenient for the civil society activist to condemn the military and the government of President Buhari, Mrs Ezekwesili didn’t find it appropriate, even once, to criticise the dangerous and violent propaganda being propagated by the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu. Oby, as they call her, tweets on everything. Why was she silent on this one?” It was clear Mallam Shehu narrowed his counterarguments to the misdeeds of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who, apart from being sometimes irrational and extremist, has also been unable to control the excesses of his pro-Biafra group’s members. The presidential spokesman expected that everyone should see those misdeeds as expiating the strong-arm approach of the government. But do those misdeeds justify the seeming bias against the Southeast which many observers have noticed?

How Mallam Shehu missed the main issue raised by Mrs Ezekwesili is truly hard to fathom. Even though it was clear what facts undergirded her arguments, she managed to keep the discourse at an elevated and conceptual level, raising one nuanced point after the other. Except Mallam Shehu and perhaps those who surround the president, there is hardly anyone else who has not observed that the president, despite his many denials, and despite publishing the statistics of ministerial appointments, has appeared to exhibit some animus towards the Southeast. According to Mrs Ezekwesili, those feelings are real. But according to Mallam Shehu, the feelings are unreal. Until the president can be persuaded to appreciate that he is part of the problem, particularly because of the signals he unfortunately emits concerning the various ethnic groups and religions in the country, the problem will continue to fester. Mallam Shehu, predictably, cannot coax the president to reform his ideas and style. In fact by his impulsive attack on the president’s detractors, the spokesman gives the impression his job is obviously not to reason why; his job is to carry out the bidding of the president and the presidency, no matter how insensate.