Reassuring sound bites from Buhari

When his security team placed a ban on Africa Independent Television (AIT), barring it from covering the president-elect’s activities, Muhammadu Buhari did not mince word cautioning his media and security teams from exceeding democratic boundaries. He did not deny that AIT was hostile to him during the campaigns, nor did he even dwell on the television station’s open lack of professionalism and immoderate partisanship during electioneering. All he said tersely was that members of his team designated to forge working relationship with both media establishments and others must be allowed to do their work. By now, Gen Buhari’s men know that their errant ways and tardy, presumptuous decisions will get short shrift from him.

For a man who recognised he groaned under the liability of being described as a dictator by nature and by training, President-elect Buhari knows he has to bend over backwards to prove that his democratic conversion was not a fluke. So far, he is doing that admirably. His supporters expect him to sustain his newfound political culture and personal convictions. Indeed, during the campaigns, they recall how he stoically weathered the atrocious insults hurled at him by members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) campaign organisation and especially the loquacious and uncultured Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose. In those heady and abusive days, Gen Buhari said not a word. He is apparently a truly changed man.

Now, bigger and better sound bites are coming from the converted general and president-elect, sound bites that obviously warm the cockles of the peoples’ hearts. After viewing the distress his new status was causing other road users, especially his convoy’s flagrant flouting of road traffic rules, Gen Buhari publicly ordered his aides to obey traffic laws. It would send wrong signals and encourage dangerous mimicry of bad behaviour should the number one citizen breach laws, whether traffic or otherwise, he announced. For a long time, the bane of Nigeria had been indiscipline, the kind that flowed from the top to the bottom. If the president-elect can find a way round the security nightmare his obedience of traffic rules is certain to cause, he will receive the genuine and fulsome appreciation of his long-suffering countrymen.