SAN FRANCISCO, April 21, (THEWILL) – Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State has reasoned that the question posed by the suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, on the day his suspension was announced is indicative of the existence of more than one president in the Buhari presidency.
THEWILL recalls that President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday suspended Lawal as the SGF. When accosted by State House correspondents for his reaction to the development, Lawal sought to know from the reporters: “Who is the Presidency?”
But while asking if Buhari is now governing the country by proxy, Fayose observed that Nigerians are daily regaled with directives from the President without seeing him at any function.
The Governor, in a statement by his media aide, Lere Olayinka, questioned the President’s continued absence from state functions, especially the weekly Federal Executive Council, FEC, meetings.
Asserting that it was becoming obvious that a cabal is exercising Buhari’s powers, Fayose said, “I saw the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Babachir Lawal on television responding to his suspension and what came to my mind was that there could actually be many presidents operating in the Buhari presidency”.
The statement read in part, “Everyday, what we hear is president said this, president said that without seeing the president in any official function and one is prompted to ask: where is the president?
“Perhaps, it is for this reason of the possible existence of governments within the government of the Buhari administration that confusion pervades the polity, with the president himself writing a letter to the Senate to clear someone of wrongdoing and the same person being suspended three months after on the basis of the same allegation.
“It is also for this reason that the president nominated Ibrahim Magu to the Senate for confirmation as EFCC chairman and the Department of State Services (DSS), an agency under the presidency wrote the Senate not to confirm him.
“Most importantly, the president did not attend the FEC meeting last week and the meeting did not hold this week under the flimsy excuse that Easter break stalled it.
“How could the Easter break which ended on Monday be responsible for the inability to hold the FEC meeting on Wednesday? Definitely, there is more to this than meets the eye.
“It has therefore become necessary that Nigerians hear the voice of their president and see him physically, not through surrogates or the cabal operating behind the scene.”
While describing the President as the face and image of a nation, the Governor urged Buhari to hold regular media chats through which Nigerians can ask questions and offer suggestions on the country.
“Since his first and only media chat was held in December 2015, Nigerians have not had the opportunity to see their president address them directly and this is not the best approach to governance in a democracy,” he said.
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