By EMMANUEL OGEBE, Special US Correspondent

Security guards today (Saturday) at the US Institute of Peace where visiting Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari spoke in Washington, man-handled a Nigerian American attendee for wearing a T-shirt bearing the picture of captive Christian schoolgirl Leah Sharibu.

The citizen, a lawyer by training who was admitted to the Nigerian bar almost 20 years, (name withheld) could not believe his ears, when after clearing mandatory security screening, he was informed by the guards that “someone upstairs” said his T-shirt was “Anti-Nigeria” so he was asked to leave.

At this point, my learned colleague phoned me and informed me of the unfolding situation. I couldn’t immediately comprehend what he was saying because it never once crossed my mind that in the United States of America a US citizen or anyone would be denied entry into a taxpayer funded institution because of his attire.

Over the phone, I heard my learned junior state that he would record the security men who were stopping him from entering.

The next thing I overheard them telling him that this was “private property” so he should leave. However I informed him over the phone that the USIP is not a private property but public.

I heard him advise them that he was a subscriber of the USIP and had been invited to the event.

Thereafter I heard them threatening to physically expel him and him telling them repeatedly to take their hands off him. I advised him to leave and come out while I got out of my car and rushed to the event venue while still monitoring him on the phone. This is the US and black people are killed pointlessly and constantly.

Fortunately as I arrived at the event, he was already safely outside.

Surprisingly, the event was even poorly attended unlike Buhari’s first visit there in 2015 where he made the infamous “97%” and “5%” gaffe declaring that he had no obligation to the southeast for not voting for him.

Worse still the event which was billed as “A Conversation with Nigerian President Muhammadu” Buhari (https://www.usip.org/events/conversation-nigerian-president-muhammadu-buhari#.Y5IUL9IMCt8.) ended abruptly as Gen. meandered and rambled boorishly.

Attendees who came out after Buhari departed prematurely almost 30 minutes before the scheduled end of the event were seen in clusters discussing his disappointing outing and interacting with the group of protesters outside with placards.

A visibly chagrined American academic who specializes in Nigerian studies said that once Buhari “went off script, everything just went downhill from there” as he began babbling and rambling. The professor however claimed that the State Department had no part in the emergence of Buhari as Nigeria’s president despite much evidence to the contrary.

A congressional lawyer who was in attendance stated that expectedly Buhari’s presentation was empty but expressed shock at the fatuous, gratuitous groveling of USIP officials who were hero-worshiping Buhari. “That’s not a good look for US officials and congress will need to get into how this happened.”

A former staff of the US embassy in Nigeria for over two decades hurriedly departed the venue when he saw the untoward behavior of the security guards at the entrance.

The so-called Buhari lecture was another poorly disguised public relations job by the US Institute of Peace which continues to lag behind other Washington think tanks with its biased and pedestrian scholarship due to its ties to the duplicitous State Department.

While it is not surprising that USIP offered Buhari a soft platform unlike its more intellectually rigorous counterparts, it was shocking that they went to the extreme of persecuting an American for exercising his constitutional free speech rights just to defend the indefensible failed Buhari regime.

What was on the alleged “anti-Nigeria” T-shirt for which the barrister was unceremoniously kicked out of the event by Buhari’s American bootlickers?

It simply said “Prisoner for Christ Leah held by terrorists in Nigeria since 2018.”

How is this anti-Nigerian? Is Buhari against the freedom of Leah? Is it pro-Nigeria to accept enslavement of abducted Christians?

I have won that same T-shirt on numerous occasions around the world and especially in Nigeria but never once has any security personnel harassed me on account of it.

By demanding that the learned gentleman undress himself before he could go in, the USIP is becoming as intolerant and autocratic as Buhari their despicable hero.

What happened should NEVER have happened unless the USIP is a sham. The institute must apologize to its guest for this barbaric, unprofessional and unAmerican conduct immediately. Only empty heads are threatened by ideas and respond to thoughts with brutality. The Buhari government expired before it began because he lacked the intellectual capacity or emotional intelligence for governance. Nothing can change or hide this obvious historical fact.

The rights lawyer and others at the US Institute of Peace where President Buhari spoke in Washington

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