Buhari’s selective sympathy is an unusual wicked construct. After all, sympathy, compassion, and commiseration at times of sorrow or tragedy makes us distinctly human. Every loss of life should be treated equally in how it receives our sympathy especially the sympathy of a president of a country.
Ahmed Gulak, former President Goodluck Jonathan’s side was murdered Sunday in Owerri, Imo State by unknown assassins.
General Muhammadu Buhari was swift to condemn the senseless killing of Gulak. In a statement issued by the president’s spokesman Garba Shehu, the president said: “I’m repulsed by such premeditated murder of Gulak by evil people who are determined to undermine the peace, unity and territorial integrity of our country. Let me warn however that nobody or group of people who engages in such despicable acts should expect to go free. We will deploy all resources at our disposal to ensure that such callous and criminal elements are brought to justice.”
The killings of Yorubas and other non-Fulani ethnic groups by Fulani terrorists never provoked any immediate outrage, condemnation, or sympathy from Buhari. Buhari and other Fulanis like Gumi, Garba Shehu and other northern defenders of Fulani terrorists are engaged in a degree of hypocrisy in the way they mourn for some people more than they do for others. Their sympathies vary for different ethnic groups such as Yoruba farmers who were killed and our daughters and mothers raped by Fulani terrorists, and peaceful #EndSars protesters who were dastardly murdered by Buhari soldiers.
It is always a great tragedy if those victims were from the north, and greater still if the victims were Fulanis connected to Buhari by politics, religion, and ethnicity. Buhari by his selective sympathy, he has created hierarchy of grieve for people who are closer to him. Selective sympathy becomes an heinous crime more so for a president of a country.
Buhari has a varied response to killings raging from total numbness to criminal silence. There have been many more cases of killings by Fulani terrorists that did not receive the same amount of outrage and condemnation by Buhari as the killing of Gulak. It took Buhari weeks to issue a terse statement on the killings of Igangan people of Oyo State and Ayetoro people of Ogun State by Fulani herdsmen terrorists. In fact, when Buhari finally came out of his prejudice to condemn killings of #EndSars peaceful protesters, he never acknowledged the victims. So much more tragedies and calamities in the Southwest, Southsouth,and Southeast have been overlooked by Buhari. To him, those killings were not repulsive enough “to undermine the peace, unity and territorial integrity of our country”
Buhari’s selective sympathy is an unusual wicked construct. After all, sympathy, compassion, and commiseration at times of sorrow or tragedy makes us distinctly human. Every loss of life should be treated equally in how it receives our sympathy especially the sympathy of a president of a country. For Buhari, the more the similarity between him and the Fulani or any northern victims, the more intense his sympathy. Sympathy should singularly rest in the value of human life. Selective sympathy is certainly preferable to no sympathy at all. Buhari’s selective sympathy poignantly shows him as a wicked, brutal, and sadistic person rather than his genuine concern for the human loss. Once a dictator, Buhari will always remain a blood thirsty dictator.