APC Begins Town Hall Meetings

APC begins Town Hall meetings

by Taiwo Obe

“To flag off scheduled town hall meetings across some Nigerian states, APC Presidential Candidate General Muhammadu Buhari interacted, a few hours ago, with the business community in the nation's commercial hub, Lagos. Foluso Phillips, of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, asked the candidate which policies of the present federal government would be changed and which would continue. Buhari prefaced his answer with, "this is going to be a positive change." Thereafter he referred to an article he read (or was it a cartoon?) showing someone overlooking a cliff. That's where Nigeria is at now. It's either we fall off or take calculated steps back. The task ahead, he said, would be to look at the policies that need to be continued or those to be changed completely.
As the interaction was being rounded off, I overheard one of the businessmen say "But they said he's senile." 

The above statement was posted on Taiwo Obe’s wall. A couple of responses to it were curious to know which cartoon the general was referring to. Well, look no further, I have found the cartoon….

The General must have a highly retentive memory to have been able to recall the cartoon he saw about 30 years ago! I suspect the cartoon in question was the one I made showing a self-possessed Head of State as he headed for the precipice. Reproduced above.

It was one of the many cartoons I made depicting soldiers and officers behaving badly that got me into trouble with the regime of General Buhari, to the point that an officer from the Department of Military Intelligence visited the Guardian office for a “friendly chat” and “advised” that the regime would prefer not to see cartoons of men in military uniform in the Guardian. I got around it by using metaphor. I simply stripped them of their uniforms and donned them the caps of hostile neighbours, shylocks, extortionists, unscrupulous company or club chairmen, etc.

A few months later, a Military Intelligence Officer who came to the Guardian on some other mission popped in my office on his way out and said, “We got the message and we’re watching”