By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
The year 2020 was distinct for two reasons – COVID-19 pandemic and #EndSARS protest. Despite the preponderance of news coverage around these subjects, politicians still stole the headlines either for some big wins or wrong actions. Here are some of them.
President Muhammadu Buhari
In the outgoing year, the growing insecurity in Nigeria kept President Muhammadu Buhari in the news for either refusing to rejig his Security Council or visit scenes of horrific incidents to commiserate with the bereaved.
Three times within the 12 months of 2020, the Senate asks Buhari to sack his service chiefs as a means of giving fresh breath to the fight against banditry and terrorism currently plaguing the country. The president consistently ignores the Senate, and held on to the service chiefs under whose watch Nigerians are being slain and abducted by numerous groups operating as warlords in different parts of the country.
The service chiefs whom president Buhari continues to retain at the expense of his perception as a do-nothing-president, include; the Chief of Defence staff, General Gabriel Olonishakin, Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai, Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas, Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshall Sadique Abubakar and the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu.
The peak of the agitation for the sack of the service chiefs was when more than 40 farmers in Borno state were killed by the terrorist group, Boko Haram. President Buhari ignored the calls for a change of persons and ideas in dealing with the problem.
The abduction of 344 Kankara schoolboys and Buhari’s refusal to visit the school where the parents of the boys kept vigil, instead going to his ranch to check his cattle, gave the president negative press coverage. Although the boys were released six days after they were abducted, and the president savored the victory in numerous Villa press statements, the impact of his visit to see his cattle, and not the parents of the boys, gave him a media dent.
Godwin Obaseki
The Edo state governor, Godwin Obaseki, won a tight electoral contest in September against a determined foe, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, his predecessor and former national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Obaseki’s win was grand because his foes were not only local, but national. In the local arena, Oshiomhole needed to show that he was relevant to the APC, hence he needed to win Edo.
For the APC, it needed Edo to keep the party in the map of the South South. The PDP controls all the states in the region, a scenario not food for a ruling party.
Seyi Makinde
Against the backdrop of thugs attacking protesters across the country during the #EndSARS protest, the Oyo state Governor, Seyi Makinde, rather than unleashed police to quell the protest or ban it, simply launched a special security operation named Operation Burst to provide protection for the protesters.
“We are deploying members of Operation Burst to various hotspots in Ibadan to arrest the situation and restore normalcy. The members of the team will continue to protect genuine protesters and their right to protest,” the governor said on October 20, 2020 at a time thugs were disrupting the protest. That decision spared Oyo from the thuggery that followed following the October 20 shooting of the #EndSARS peaceful Lekki protesters.
Governors who hoarded COVID-19 palliatives
From Lagos to Osun, Adamawa to Taraba, Plateau to Kaduna, the looting of the COVID-19 palliatives was a dent on the image of the governors who delayed or refuse releasing the palliatives, leading to their looting.
Although all the governors claimed that they were planning to release the palliatives to the people, the delay in disbursing the COVID-19 palliatives created a food inflation for Nigeria. The reason was because the food were purchased from local market and locked up in warehouses for more than two months, resulting in scarcity which is the trigger for inflation.
(thenicheng)
