XENOPHOBIA: Emptiness at the Seat of Power.

The general saying by Nigerians at home and abroad that the man at Aso Rock doesn't feel their pains is now dated. There is a new paradigm for benchmarking his disconnect - he is an alien in his own country. Be you at home and abroad, he is totally disconnected from your pains and travails. His subordinates and closest advisers, whose responsibilities it is to manage the missing links are morbidly detached from Nigerian reality. To them, he is an Emperor - a Feudal Lord who does no wrong, answerable to no one in particular, and amenable to no change or correction. Other than the records of the number of barrels of crude oil lifted daily and the monthly or quarterly remittance of oil revenue into the Federation Account by NNPC, and the embattled mechanisms for the establishment of Cattle Colony for foreign Cattle Herders in Nigeria, nothing else matters in his isolated world.

South Africans did not start killing Nigerians yesterday. It began more than a year ago and was fully covered in pictures and videos by the Nigerians media. In spite of the wanton nature of the brutality visited on Nigerians and the unhinged looting of their shops and merchandise, no reaction came from Aso Villa or from the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

President Buhari has chains of Advisers. He has the Vice President, the Chief of Staff, the Minister of Information, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, the Minister of State for Information, and the Director of the Diaspora Commission. And each of them has chains of subordinates catering to them and their research needs. So, if after two years of the heartless killings of Nigerians in South Africa and no one from the enumerated Offices was audacious enough or courageous enough to apprise him of the development, there is a unique explanation to that: dysfunctional leadership and emptiness at the seat of power.

That emptiness; philosophically, literarily, and practically analyzed, explains the extent of the invasion and vandalism of office of the President by rodents during his medical trip to the UK a few years ago. As always, we poke fun at him and the administration over the rodents' conquest. In reality, it exemplifies a void at the helm of affairs - a corollary of a one-man-show kind of democracy.

In a sane environment, either of the two scenarios painted below would have evolved in the past twenty-four hours. One, the President would have given a marching order to his Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs as well as his Political and Foreign Policy Advisers to tender their letters of resignation without delay for failing to act professionally in line with the demands of their office. Alternatively, the Political Adviser, Foreign Policy Adviser, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs would have voluntarily resigned because the Emperor failed to take their advise and act on them decisively to preempt the carnage of the past twenty-four hours. 

Well, this is Nigeria - the Emperor is not firing any of his men for failing to advise him promptly and professionally in line with the demands of their respective offices. Also, none of the President's men is resigning as a protest against the Emperor's unwillingness to heed their counsel. Both situations painted similar pictures: a clearer message of the deplorable state of his infirmity, dysfunctional leadership, and the emptiness at the seat of power.