Yemi Osinbajo: When an Acting President Acts Well – Reno Omokri Writes

I am loving the vice president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo right now and for good reasons too. In the absence of President Muhammadu Buhari, Pastor Osinbajo-led the Executive Council of the Federation’s meeting and ministers were forced to deliberate for seven hours!It is the longest meeting ever under this administration and my reaction to it was WOW! This is my kind of man!I have previously said that Nigeria actually attains more progress when President Muhammadu Buhari travels out of the country and Vice President Osinbajo has again vindicated my judgment.Only on Monday the 13th of February, 2017, while in Rivers State, Vice President Osinbajo declared that the federal government would work with illegal refineries and help convert them to modular refineries.Such forward thinking! Professor Osinbajo represents the Progressives in the name, All Progressives Congress. I applaud and celebrate him today.His approach to the Niger Delta challenge is an approach of intelligence and diplomacy and will achieve far more than President Buhari’s shock and awe approach!The man approached the region with compassion and understanding, not with threats and bluster as his boss did when he had the chance. He physically visited and toured the region whereas his principal made promises to visit but chickened out when the time came to implement his promises.Professor Osinbajo spoke kindly and respectfully to the governors of the region and praised them for their efforts, even giving one of them the pet name, ‘Mr. Projects’.Is it any surprise then that oil production has continued to rise and militancy has waned in the period that Vice President Osinbajo has been acting?The man speaks to Nigerians as a leader should. He does not talk at us like the President. He talks to us.I may have issues with what he said to the protesting labour leaders but I am still impressed that he met them, listened to them and was courteous to them.And look at his Kennedy-esque response to the #IStandWithNigeria protesters: ‘To those who are protesting, WE HEAR YOU loud and clear.’ He sounded like JFK in Berlin on June 26, 1963 saying to the oppressed people of that iron-curtain enclave, “Ich bin ein Berliner”!

You see, he is a remarkably poised Acting President! Even if you do not like him, you must respect Vice President Osinbajo.

President Buhari can stay back in London or any foreign city that catches his fancy, all he wants – waiting for tests and taking phone calls. With Osinbajo acting for him, Nigerians do not miss him!

In fact, he can turn his vacation into a sabbatical if he so pleases. We have tasted civility and are in no hurry to return to the barbarity meted out to the Shiites, IPOB protesters, Rann Internally Displaced Persons and sundry other protesters in the recent past.

From his actions since President Muhammadu Buhari travelled to London this January, there is no doubt in my mind that Vice President Osinbajo knows the whereabouts of all his academic certificates!

Even when President Muhammadu Buhari returns, I would advise him to make Vice President Osinbajo the face of his government in just the way that the late Major-General (rtd) Tunde Idiagbon was the face of his first incarnation.

Recall that Nigerians so loved Idiagbon and that it was when Idiagbon travelled that that regime collapsed, proving the point that he was the legs that held up that table!

With Vice President Osinbajo, President Buhari does not need his disastrous and fallacious minister of information who has caused credibility issues for his government.Lai Mohammed acts as if his job description is to make enemies for this administration rather than to attract friends for the government in which he serves.The same Lai Mohammed, who once claimed that thousands of jobs could be created by masquerade dressing, was only able to generate a paltry ₦620,000 from the culture and tourism arm of his ministry in 2016! Obviously, Lai Mohammed did not find enough Masquerades to dress!This brings me to the issue of the Trump/Buhari call. Immediately that call was announced, I knew it was genuine and I said so on my social media profiles. I was the first person other than the President’s aides to do that.I did not bargain for the intense vitriol that was thrown at me by the President’s haters who had weaved all manner of conspiracy theories and felt that their web of conjecture had been punctured by my validation of the call.Thankfully, a day after I publicly affirmed that the call was genuine, White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, confirmed the Donald Trump/Muhammadu Buhari call.Will all those who insulted and denigrated me over my assertions that the call was genuine now be honourable enough to apologise to me? I hope this will put an end to all the conspiracy theories.I DO NOT believe in the Buhari administration for even one minute. In my opinion, former President Goodluck Jonathan is a much better leader than Buhari BY FAR. However, I will never lie against or support those who lie against Buhari for political purposes.Do not allow your hatred for President Muhammadu Buhari affect your love for Nigeria. The Donald Trump/Buhari call indeed took place and is good for Nigeria! Give the man his due. When opposition becomes hatred or leads to a death wish, it stops being Godly and starts being satanic. I am an opponent not a hater!And talking about haters, presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, was on television this week and called the President’s critics ‘haters’. Apparently, he has not got the memo. The President’s greatest hater is Nobody can hate President Muhammadu Buhari more than his Secretary to the Government of the Federation because if the SGF really loved his boss, he would have seen how much of a liability he has become to the President’s famed integrity and resigned.