PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari once again indulged his fascination with philosophy and medicine by inappropriately linking weight loss with hard work. On Tuesday, while presenting the 2020 Appropriation Bill before a joint session of the National Assembly, the president apologised for his strained voice, an indication of the cold he was nursing, but suggested that it also meant he had worked hard to get the budget ready for presentation. Said he: “I will start by asking you to pardon my voice. As you can hear, I have a cold as a result of working hard to meet your (budget presentation) deadline.”
Last May, asked by reporters whether Nigerians should expect a change of strategy in the fight against insecurity, especially kidnapping, he had responded: “You know, I have just seen the IG, he is… I think he is losing weight; so, I think he is working very hard.” That presidential correlation is beguilingly simple, even though his motivation and fascination are difficult to understand. Why he keeps making the correlation, despite fierce criticism, may suggest that he was either oblivious of the criticism that followed his earlier conclusion suggesting a link between weight loss and hard work or he is too enamoured of his quaint logic to be deterred from voicing that fallacy a second time.
But the president is neither a medical practitioner to be able to establish a physiological link between hard work and lean weight nor a philosopher to prove the practical value of weight loss. Nor, in fact, did the president prove by any stretch that the so-called hard work he keeps talking about, whether by the country’s police boss or his distinguished self, also implied efficiency or guaranteed a positive outcome. At any rate, he seems to think the correlation exists. That correlation may be simplistic and erroneous; there is, however, no dissuading him from suggesting it, no, not by a mile.
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