Sam Omatseye, the chairman of the editorial board of The Nation Newspaper, has lashed out at politicians scheming to inherit late former President Muhammadu Buhari’s popularity as cynics.
In his column published on Monday, Mr Omatseye, President Bola Tinubu’s man Friday, stated that desperate politicians had turned Mr Buhari into a shrine, employing bowing and flattery to woo his numerous supporters.
“As former President Muhammadu Buhari lay, wrapped in his final shroud, in his tranquil bed, some politicians started to exploit the man’s afterglow. That afterglow, in quest for a better word, I would describe as his crowd. Some will call it his structure,” Mr Omatseye said.
He added, “Before he passed on, some cynical politicians did not offer the man a peace in his hearth. They turned him into a shrine of sorts, as though by bowing and flattery they could automatically take over what Boss Mustapha described as his 12.3 million followers.”
Although Mr Tinubu bowed in his last salute before Mr Buhari’s remains at the funeral of the ex-president, Mr Omatseye lashed out at chieftains of the African Democratic Congress coalition, accusing them of “bowing and flattery”.
“Especially in Kaduna, they became dubious pilgrims powered by messianic self-delusions. The man did not give them what they sought, especially some of them from the north who appeared to be his faithful servants, including former Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, Abubakar Malami, etc. They shrouded themselves as his inheritors, the custodians of his legacy, the messengers of the might he left behind.”
Mr Omatseye claimed that the late president’s 12 million-strong followers had become like sheep without a shepherd and were not available for any politician to inherit.
“They should have known that the 12 million exist, but they do not exist under anyone’s umbrella anymore. It is the way of charismatic folks that once they leave, their followers are like sheep without a shepherd. The followers are no longer there for plucking,” Mr Omatseye asserted. “Whether it is Awo, or Sardauna, or Mandela, or De Gaulle, or Josip Bros Tito, once they depart the stage, no one claims their followers. They are open to new ideas, new entreaties and entrances, new wooers, new charismas. They are fresh clay waiting for new moulders.
This comes as Mr Omatseye’s criticisms targeted at late Mr Buhari loyalists, christened “Buharists,” since the demise of the Daura-born politician who died in a London hospital on July 13.
Amid preparation for Mr Buhari’s burial penultimate Monday, Mr Omatseye wrote a scathing tribute to the former president, berating him as ‘dead of ideas, selfish, hypocritical serial loser who lacks integrity.’
