Twice in his National Broadcast to mark the country’s 56th Independence on October 1st, President Muhammadu Buhari name-checked the militants of the Niger Delta – who have virtually bombed the country into our worst recession since Independence – as “thugs”. In our view, this serious, needless and avoidable faux pas treated a dire, self-inflicted national challenge with uncommon levity.
If the President muses over it now, albeit in retrospect, he should deem it deserving of stiff sanctions for his speech-writer(s) because it added no value whatsoever to his address. Rather, it fanned the embers of dissonance and accentuated the narrative of discord on the auspicious occasion of our national birth, which called for sombre reflections on the state of the nation under the current Federal Administration.
The agitators of the Niger Delta are certainly not thugs as the “language of Power” labelled them on Independence Day. In time history will tell us who they are, just as history eventually told us that Dr. Nelson Mandela was not a “terrorist” as the powerful, imperialist backers of Apartheid South Africa wanted us to believe.
In a recent news report, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo hit the nail on the head when he surmised that the militants of the Niger Delta caused the on-going recession. We agree with the Vice President. With President Buhari’s demonstrated honesty of purpose, Nigeria should not be in recession today if only we are able to export crude oil at our usual daily output. At the current $40-$50 range of crude prices, Nigeria should be doing okay now, if only we had avoided the rhetoric of war and refused to bite the militants’ bait in the Niger Delta.
Ending the current outbreak of hostilities in the Niger Delta is central to taking Nigeria out of this recession. Calling out the Niger Delta militants as “thugs” in such a landmark speech as the 56th Independence Day Address is unhelpful towards this national imperative.
We urge President Buhari to avoid such intemperate use of language in future speeches as he steers the Ship of State in these charged times.
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