Wanted: Emotional and social intelligence in the Presidency

In the wake of the killing of over 100 citizens in Plateau State June 22 -24, President Muhammadu Buhari visited the state to sympathise with the people. He ended up doing the opposite. President Buhari spent time alternately playing the victim on the matter of the frequent herdsmen/farmers’ clashes and praising his regime for alleged success in security management.

In a statement released by his spokesperson while on the trip the president blamed climate change and desperate politicians for the killings.

“We know that a number of geographical and economic factors are contributing to the longstanding herdsmen/farmers clashes,” the statement said. “But we also know that politicians are taking advantage of the situation. This is incredibly unfortunate.”

Addressing the people at the government house in Jos, the president was quoted as saying “Nobody can say that we haven’t done well in terms of security, we have done our best, but the way this situation is now, we can only pray.”

This is insensitive. His remarks amounted to spitting on the bodies of the then unburied victims.

But the worst was yet to come. Two or three days later, the presidency went totally berserk comparing deaths under PDP’s 16 year rule to the deaths in Plateau. The presidency released what it termed “A quick checklist of some savage and brutal killings in Nigeria during PDP rule, between 1999 and 2015, for which no national mourning was declared.”

Worse, on an earlier visit to Taraba in March, still in connection to the killings by the so-called Fulani herdsmen in the state, the president was busy comparing deaths. “As a president, I have sources of getting intelligence on happening across the country and so I should not be expected to always go out to the field to make noise and insult the sensibility of Nigerians before it would be known that I am taking action against the killings. There were more killings in Mambilla (Taraba) than Benue and Zamfara states. I chose to visit Taraba first, but I will be going to Benue and Zamfara after I return from Ghana to also condole with the people,” he had said.

Equally, while discussing with a group of Benue elders whom he had summoned to the presidential villa to discuss the incessant killings in the state – all attributed to marauding Fulani herdsmen, the president admonished them to “in the name of God accommodate your countrymen”. What his statement simply means is that the problem arose because of the failure of Benue and other states to accommodate the herdsmen. Therefore, herdsmen must be accommodated for peace to reign.

We refuse to accept that these are normal ways of communicating or commiserating with people who have gone through such excruciating trauma. A president who was elected to protect the lives of all citizens and has repeatedly failed to do so cannot come to tell a people that lost over 200 lives in coordinated attacks that lasted several hours without the intervention of security personnel just an hour away that he has tried his best and that there is nothing more he can do other than resorting to prayer. A president who has failed repeatedly to act even as his citizens are being mercilessly killed and eviscerated cannot turn round with all authority asking the defenceless victims to “accommodate their killers” for peace to rain. It is not normal that a president who has completely failed in his duties to protect the lives and property of the citizens who elected him to perform exactly that function will turn round to begin a game of comparing numbers of deaths with previous administration to present his administration in good light.   We cannot accept as normal behaviour the penchant of this president to constantly play one segment of his people against the other or one citizen against the other.

It is time to accept that there is a significant problem with the mindset of the president and his horde of advisers. They are severely deficient in emotional and social intelligence and need help else they will plunge this country into an avoidable crisis and leave its people deeply divided and suspicious of one another.