The Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, has said that the President acted with the restraint typical of a father, during the EndSARS protests by the youths, that called for a stop to Police brutality, and an end to bad governance in the country,
Adesina said that had President Buhari not exercised the tolerance of a father, “we would have been talking of something else in the country”.
He, however, stated that the President would not allow rampaging hoodlums to burn down the country.
Adesina, in a piece on Friday, titled: ‘We Have Not Many Fathers’, said that the government accepted the 5-point demands of the EndSARS protesters, but “the protest was prolonged, and eventually hijacked and misdirected”, because the youths did not see what the elders saw.
In the piece published on his website, www.femiadesina.com, the Presidential Spokesman lamented that people the President respected, “instigated the protesters to carry on”, but “promptly went underground when anarchy ensued”.
His words: “All through the EndSARS protest and the riots, mayhem and looting that followed, President Buhari acted like a father. And though we have millions of instructors in this country, we have not many fathers. President Buhari is one.
“The President is by no means a soft man. We remember the man of iron and steel that ruled with iron fist between January 1984 and August 1985, with his kindred spirit, Babatunde Idiagbon. They attempted to knock sense into our heads as Nigerians, but were eventually toppled by people who had less patience for discipline.
“Is President Buhari as hard as he was in 1984? Yes and no. In personal traits and attributes, he remains the unbending iron. But in terms of administration and response to people and situations, he is tempered by democracy, and by time. What he could do by Military fiat then, he must pass through democratic due process now.
“If President Buhari had not 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. 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.”
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