Buhari: Why Nigeria Fails

Muhammadu Buhari’s still appears on the roll,
and his picture on the walls of various public
buildings, as President and C-in-C, but the
actual power of the president has very clearly
shifted into the hands of Yemi Osinbajo, former
Professor of Law, who has been acting as
president of the republic since Buhari embarked
on his extended medical leave. And yet again, it
is déjà vu. It feels almost right back to the Umar
Yar’Ardua situation, when the Nigerian electorate
were manipulated and deceived into electing a
very sick man.
The difference is that Nigerians from all sides of
the great river soon fell for Yar’Ardua, who
embarked on his presidency with a virtuous
stride. First, he acknowledged that the elections
that brought him to office were flawed, and
pledged not only to do right by Nigerians, but to
rectify the flaws in the electoral system as part
of what he’d leave as his legacy. Second, he
embraced a peace-building initiative by bring in
the militants of the Niger Delta from the cold.
He made very deft diplomatic moves, reached
out to them, and opened an empathetic ear, and
managed to bring that situation under control.
Yar Ardua solved the problem of the Niger Delta
insurgency by acting as statesman, a diplomat,
and an astute political leader with deep
intellectual capacity. Yar’Ardua moved quickly to
embrace the nation, including those who did not
vote for him, and quickly tried to set Nigeria on
an even keel. He was methodical in his moves
to bring corruption to an end, and there were
hints that he was intent on making his moves,
even against the big names who had big hands
in the Nigerian cookie jar, before he succumbed
to his terminal condition, and his death, many
Nigerians still confess, robbed Nigeria of one
who might have been her first great president of
the 21st century.
But Yar’Ardua came from different stock: his
family was politically grounded. His father had
been Minister of Lagos – the equivalent today of
the Minister for Abuja – in the First Republic.
His elder brother, the late Shehu, had built a
formidable political following himself, and it does
seem that the younger Umar, inherited the
leverage and goodwill his brother who was
allegedly murdered in Abacha’s prison in
Abakiliki had built. But he was his own man
also. He had chosen radical politics over his
family’s more centrist, and possibly
conservative politics, both as a student at the
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he read
Chemistry in the 1970s, and at the onset of the
politics of the Second Republic.
Where Shehu dabbled with Awolowo’s UPN,
Umar chose to ride with Mallam Aminu Kano’s
PRP. Umar had also been finely educated at the
Government College Keffi and Barewa College,
the two great public schools of the North, where
he had also played fine cricket, a game he
continued playing, earning his colours on the
Ahmadu Bello University Cricket XI, playing
alongside the likes of Dan Nzelu, onetime
executive Director of the NNPC, among others,
with whom he was contemporaries at ABU. He
served his stint, taking no advantage of his
family’s formidable political connections, as a
Lecturer at the Kaduna Polytechnic. Yar’Ardua
was young, well-educated, sharp, modern,
secular and broad-minded, and did not carry the
burdens of fierce nightmarish faith. He was not
just a Northerner. He was a Nigerian. He made
that absolutely clear. But as I said, he was a
sick man, and his handlers knew this, yet they
deceived Nigerians into voting a man who
carried the burden of his own possibly imminent
mortality.
The drama leading to Yar Ardua’s death and the
transfer of power to Dr. Goodluck Jonathan set
the grounds for the kinds of political anxieties
and uncertainties that later grounded Jonathan.
But first, Nigeria was governed by a dead man
for months. His handlers were in denial. The
region of the north, and the political “elite” of the
north who felt the presidency was the North’s
were in denial and up in arms. The National
Assembly elected to be the guardians of the
nation was stymied by ethnic and regional
interests. The transfer of power became
acrimonious, alongside a North-South divide
that as I said set the tone for Jonathan. When
he finally became president, Jonathan was
expected to carry all the burdens of the nation
and distil it to its most elegant solutions: here
was a president who became president by
indirection – almost on a platter of gold: a
minority’s minority; an educated man with
tertiary degrees; a man of science, and one who
grew from extreme poverty to become the leader
of a nation.
It was almost as if providence had come to play,
and that the so-called Nigerian “common man”
finally had an ally on the seat of power in
Nigeria. But it soon became very clear that in
spite of the enormous goodwill that rode with
him into office, Goodluck Jonathan was
uncertain about his next moves; he became a
captive to special interests – the “privatizers” of
public corporations; the “security state”
apparatus for whom great national insecurity is
big business; the international consortium of
what John Perkins called economic Hitmen.
Jonathan had a very thin rolodex, and he had to
rely on an apparatus foisted on him by
ambitious and desperate men.
The tragedy of Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency
was that he was busy looking over his
shoulders, and he was hobbled by anxieties, and
it led to the failed policies of appeasement. He
failed to make decisive and bold moves: he
allowed “Boko Haram” to fester and it became
real business for shadowy interests in his
government; he tried to appease a so-called
disgruntled north, and he was very frontally
subverted, and he continued on the path of
appeasing powerful special interests rather than
serve real Nigerians. It ended his presidency
and tied him today to an uncertain legacy.
I’m afraid that Osinbajo is about to embark on
the same route that hobbled Jonathan. But he
must look to history. Let us call it as it is: to all
evidence before us, President Muhammadu
Buhari is not functioning as the elected
president of Nigeria, and his continued residency
in convalescent captivity in London or wherever
secret place he may be kept out of the public
eye, has now become a national security threat
to Nigeria. Buhari has basically, by no direct
fault of his own we must acknowledge,
abandoned his official duties for far too long.
Having been gone for this long, it is clear that
Buhari is still not yet able to come back an work
to govern Nigeria.
Does it now behoove the elected Nigerian
National Assembly to do its duties by Nigerians,
write to the president, and make public the real
condition of his health, so that he can go home
to Daura, and take care of his health in order to
allow Osinbajo assume full control of the
business of governance in these moments of
serious and troubling crises that threatens to
unravel Nigeria. The National Assembly has that
obligation and that power. Nigeria fails because
those the people elect fail to do their duties to
Nigeria but choose to cling to primordial and
dangerous interests. It is like Osinbajo meeting
with the so-called “traditional rulers” over the
issue of a Nigeria threatened with separatist
agitation.
Same old and tired moves for a man who
should know that these “traditional rulers” are
relics that have very little influence anymore in
these matters in a highly urbanized,
demographically young and complex nation. A
more effective president elected in a democracy
and confronted by an open revolt of the people
would seek to meet directly with various
community groups: town union reps, Nnamdi
Kanu who commands an Army of followers
larger than any “traditional ruler” in Igbo land;
Professional organizations – the NBA, the NMA,
the Union of Teachers, Community Action
Groups, Civil Society organizations, Students
and Youth organizations, Neighbourhood
associations and their Block Captains, Trade
groups, and even ask his Public
Communications team to organize a wide-range
of direct town-hall meetings in the East and in
the North, which he should tour extensively to
address, and appeal to the people directly.
But Osinbajo may yet fail to read the writing on
the wall. He must not make Jonathan’s mistake
of appeasement of special interests while
ignoring real Nigerians. And he should, right
now know that with the rapid and unfolding
situations, there will be no second chance.