Presidential aide, Femi Adesina has said his principal, President Muhammadu Buhari’s fatherly role during and after the #EndSARS protests, prevented the country slumping into anarchy.
“If President Buhari hadn’t exercised the restraint and tolerance of a father, at a time that even hitherto respected people instigated the protesters to carry on (and they promptly went underground when anarchy ensued), we would have been talking of something else in the country,” Adesina said in an article published on his website on Thursday.
“The rivers of Nigeria could have turned crimson, and mourning and lamentations would have suffused the land. But we are thankful for the father in President Buhari, patient and enduring, almost to a fault.” In the article captioned “We Have Not Many Fathers,” Adesina explained that Buhari exercised patience during and after the protests which rocked Nigeria in October. He said the country has “many tutors, many instructors, but not many fathers. President Buhari is one, and that is why the country is experiencing relative calm today.”
According to him, even when the protests were hijacked and misdirected, the Nigerian leader was unmoved on his instructions to security agencies. Buhari, he explained, accepted the five demands made by the protesters. “What better display of accommodation and readiness for dialogue. But the protest was prolonged, and eventually hijacked and misdirected,” Adesina added.
