Or at least I think all Nigerians did yesterday? Could it be true? Was that real or doctored? Did the media connive to deceive us all? Are scientists yet to discover that hallucination is a side effect of growing up with epileptic power supply? Do photos lie even if they speak a thousand words? Was my dear President Muhammad Buhari actually spotted in a photo performing a state function yesterday?
Nigerians are still rightly jubilating over the release of 82 more Chibok girls over the weekend but in the midst of our excitement, we managed to miss the sudden appearance of Nigeria’s most popular missing man – the number one citizen. Of course it would have been politically stupid to abstain from being photographically associated with a positive PR like the Chibok girls, but others said the same thing about missing Federal Executive Council meetings consecutively win the face of public scrutiny.
Forgive me for wondering if Buhari thought that maybe, just maybe, while Nigerians were still “Beyoncely” drunk in love over the head spinning romance momentum between Adesua and Banky W. Maybe, he wondered, while we are all still teary-eyed over Nigeria’s most famous love affair, he could quickly slide in and gain a bit of “photobombing” PR and then continue the life of a missing man. Mr President, we might be in #BAAD2017 stupor but we are not asleep.
Oh, wait! I think we have actually been asleep. A man was ruling a whole nation from the comforts of his home and we were not even alarmed. While the whole working class populace out of the 140 million population woke up early in the morning everyday to work and play their part in pulling the economy out of the dungeons, the captain of the ship was busy excusing himself out of executive meetings and controlling the fortunes of the nation from the comfort of his fluffy bed everyday. I’m not unsympathetic to the rhetoric that his ailing health has to be managed. But this is a job that he chose to have and all I want is the man that campaigned for my votes to do his job. I didn’t press my thumb on the ballot box to have four months of being ruled by an uncertain polity.
I had been part of the sleeping populace for a while, and was actually getting used to the idea of being a citizen with a missing president. Until the photos emerged yesterday reminded me that truly, once upon a time, there was a man called President Buhari. But then again, the memory seems so distant now that I might have been dreaming last Sunday afternoon when I saw my president.
Photo Credit: Getty
