By Okey Ndibe
During his recent visit to Qatar ,
President Muhammadu Buhari sat for an interview with Martine Dennis of Al Jazeera. Last weekend, close to two
weeks after the trip, I finally found time to watch the entirety of the
interview. I found it enlightening, for two broad reasons.
President Buhari during the interview (pix:Punch) |
The first and
minor one was to remark the interviewer’s composure and confidence. She had a
grasp of her subject (Nigeria ’s
economic woes, widespread disappointment with Mr. Buhari’s budget, and growing
apprehension about the outline of his economic and security policies). The
interviewer’s full-throttle style was in sharp contrast with the fawning and
deferential manner adopted by many a Nigerian reporter when given the
opportunity to interview an incumbent or former president—or even lesser
ranking public officials. In question after question, Ms. Dennis zeroed in on
specific details of Buharinomics and
politics Buhariana. And she was
rather quick-footed whenever the occasion called for a follow-up question.
My major interest
in the interview was the opportunity it offered to take a measure of the
president’s mindset. Buhari had a few fine moments in the interview, the
hallmark arriving when—reminded by Ms. Dennis that the IMF was not enamored of
his refusal to devalue the naira—he replied that his country’s interest trumped
the IMF’s prescription.
On the whole,
however, I came away with the impression that President Buhari’s interview was
simply “interesting.” And I have borrowed the word, interesting, with all its freight of ambiguities, from Mr. Buhari.
He seemed
uncomfortable when the interviewer touched on the subject of how the
government’s forex policy was affecting parents who are paying school fees for
their children studying abroad. Yet, when she reminded him that his own
children were also studying abroad—implying that he was now among the
super-privileged—he seemed unfazed.
*Okey Ndibe |
One of most
revealing segments of the interview concerned the scandal-plagued budget the
president forwarded to the National Assembly. As Ms. Dennis asked pointed
questions backed with dispiriting facts, Mr. Buhari seemed perplexed about his
own budgetary proposals. He ducked or deflected her tough specific
questions—say, about the fact that the VP’s office was allocated more funds for
book purchases than all the country’s polytechnics put together, or about the
even more disconcerting fact that the budget for improving the State House
clinic was larger than the total budget for Nigeria ’s teaching hospitals. Even
though the government recently punished some bureaucrats on account of the
budget fiasco, the question remains: How did Mr. Buhari imprint a budget
without first getting a handful of trusted hands to vet it?
The interviewer
brought up the scandal called security votes. “Security votes have been described as (perhaps) the most enduring form
of corruption in Nigeria .
Why don’t you just eliminate them completely?” she asked. And that’s when
Mr. Buhari responded: “You know more about our budget than I do. That’s very
interesting.” He then went ahead to enumerate Nigeria ’s security challenges,
including Boko Haram and resurgent militancy in the Niger Delta. “Nigeria has got all these security
problems. So if money is voted for security, I don’t mind, people can go as far
as they can to find out whether that money is being utilized for security or is
being shared in the pocket like the $2.1 billion the previous administration
did.”
His response was
both in character and disappointing. Where the journalist challenged him to do
something that would amount to a structural blow against corruption, Mr. Buhari
was content to invoke his personal integrity. Yet, no community should settle
for the chancy goodwill and character of its leaders. It is far better to
institute a system that discourages or curbs excesses than to hope for the
wheels of fortune to throw up a good man or woman on occasion. Nigeria ’s
security budget should be entirely routed through its security agencies—the
armed forces and intelligence apparatuses. There is no justification for
security votes, which have evolved into a tested system for siphoning funds
into private pockets. In a haste to be defensive, the president missed the
deeper implication of the journalist’s questions. That implication is that Nigeria needs
systemic, institutional reforms, not just the sprinkle of a few good men and
women.
*Pro-Biafra protesters |
The absence of
that institutional focus is, for me, one of the most troubling aspects of the
Buhari Presidency. The Al Jazeera
reporter noted that the president’s anti-corruption crusade has netted no
convictions, yet. One expects a few to come soon, but it’s still going to be a
trickle.
My fear is that
some of Nigeria ’s
captains of corruption have exhaled. They don’t see the president pushing any
judicial reforms to put corruption cases on a fast track, to fix Nigeria ’s
labyrinthine and slumberous judicial system—where each court session becomes an
exasperating exercise in motions and counter-motions, designed to occasion long
adjournments or appeals.
To fight
corruption more effectively, the president ought to initiate legal and judicial
reforms. As cases plod along in court, the corrupt find time and opportunities
to manipulate the system. Many Nigerians have stashed away illicitly acquired
millions of dollars. Do we doubt their readiness to use that loot not only to
hire the best defense lawyers but also to pay off prosecutors and some judges
who are not averse to auctioning off their revered bench?
The most
troubling glimpse into the president’s mind came in his responses to the
question of Biafra . First, he declined to
watch footage in which Nigerian security agents are seen closing in to teargas
and then shoot some unarmed, peaceful demonstrators. Several protesters were
killed, many more wounded. Harping on the two million who perished in the Biafran
War of 1967-1970, Mr. Buhari could not fathom why some youngsters—who were
perhaps not born at the time of that war—would just “wake up” to say they “want
Biafra again.”
Asked why his
government had not invited the agitators for talks, Mr. Buhari coldly retorted,
“Why should we invite them?” Let me chip in one or two reasons. For one:
because it’s the president’s job to assuage popular disaffection. Two, it makes
better sense to talk than to shoot. Any leader who believes in the humanity of
his citizens would never shoot them as a first recourse. After all, a leader is
called to govern the living, not preside over a mass of corpses.
I am opposed to
the agitation for Biafra , but that does not
excuse the president’s icy, insensitive and hectoring tone—much less the
impression that he would sooner deploy what Ms. Dennis described as “very
heavy-handed” military force to brutalize agitators than make a good faith
effort to reach out, to talk, to listen.
Few people would
wish to secede from a success story. The reason multitudes of youth are defying
bullets to ask for Biafra is that Nigeria has grown into an almost
56-year old experiment in failure. It doesn’t mean that Biafra
is the answer. But we must remember that other sections of Nigeria have
also voiced the same sense of disenchantment. Many Nigerians are revolted by Nigeria : a mess
of a country that we’ve all helped to create.
The Igbo are
resilient entrepreneurs, and their enterprising genius is best unfurled, I have
argued, within a larger rather than smaller territorial canvas. They are better
off in Nigeria , and Nigeria is
better off with the Igbo. Al Jazeera
gave Mr. Buhari an opportunity to strike a large-spirited, conciliatory note
that could have healed wounds. It is “interesting” and disappointing, but not
surprising, that he squandered the opportunity.
Please follow me
on twitter @ okeyndibe
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