Whenever President Muhammadu Buhari lifts the façade and allows us
a glimpse into the convictions that propel him, he leaves no room for doubt
that he is out of depth with the demands of his high office. At that moment of
supposed candour, Buhari rather recommends himself to us as a relic of an
antediluvian era that is far removed from the nuances of democracy and the
challenges and possibilities of contemporary life.
Buhari is fixated on
the valourisation of the past as an irreplaceable era that was full of glories
that neither the present nor the future can yield. Thus, Buhari yearns for that
past. He wants us to exhume that past because it held the secrets of an
Eldorado that are elusive to the present.Yet it is a past that the majority of
the citizens would like to consign to eternal oblivion because it only afflicts
them with searing memories. Indeed, the past that in the imagination of Buhari
provided a utopian state is in the reckoning of the citizens a dystopia that he
is recreating in the present.
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| *President Buhari |
The past that Buhari
is enamoured of was an era when the citizens chafed under the jackboots of
military coupists and their minions. Buhari disdains the present and yearns for
the past because he is overwhelmed by the challenges of the present. Unlike the
past, he cannot with military fiat wish away contemporary realities. He cannot
just reel out commands whose iniquitous object is the incarceration of some
politicians because as a self-declared arbiter of justice he has found them
guilty in his own court.
As Buhari himself put
it, it was easy for him to fight corruption in the past because all he needed
to do was to imprison the accused who had the duty of proving his innocence. Of
course, this negated the jurisprudential principle that is upheld in sane
societies that the rule of law imposes the necessity of the accuser proving the
guilt of the accused. It is therefore not surprising that Buhari is enthralled
by Sani Abacha who was a cesspool of the impunities of the era that he
rhapsodises about. In the Abacha era, he was the law and he dispensed justice
capriciously. Anyone who opposed his abuse of state power to silence other
citizens or for the perpetration of heists for himself and cronies was guilty.
And the grim sentence of death must be executed swiftly. Faced with this
prospect, the only route of escape for the accused was in fleeing abroad. This
was why Ken Saro-Wiwa, Alfred Rewane and many others Abacha considered as
enemies were liquidated.
Since Abacha died,
billons have been traced to his illicit accounts in different parts of the
world. Even the Buhari government received $322.51 million Abacha loot from Switzerland
Buhari considers
Abacha as perhaps the only reference point in terms of good governance. And
this is why years after declaring that Abacha was not corrupt, he is still
puzzled that there are some Nigerians who are repelled by the prospect of
canonising him.
Since Buhari was and
is still convinced that the past is a utopia that cannot be reclaimed in the
present, why has he chosen to afflict us with his leadership? The tragedy is
that as a nation, we expect a person who belongs to the past not only to solve
our present problems but to provide a template with which to negotiate the
future. Worse still, we expect a person who does not understand the price that
has been paid for democracy that his so much-cherished past anathematised to
appreciate its demands and the overarching need of sustaining it.
Simply because Buhari
feels confronted with a utopia of the past that is eternally elusive, he does
not fully appreciate the present and its challenges and possibilities. A major
functionary of the Buhari government has given us an insight into the thinking
of this administration. The Comptroller-General of Customs, retired Col. Hameed
Ali, declared when he led the Buhari Support Organisation to the president that
it is only the lazy or rabid mischief-makers who complain of hunger that has
been banished from the country by the Buhari government. We must be thankful to
Ali for opening for us this vista to the thinking of Aso Rock. In other words,
Buhari and his co-travellers just snigger at reports that some citizens have
jumped into a river or committed suicide on an electric pole because of their
impecunious state triggered by the lack of the leadership genius of this
administration. As far as they are concerned, such citizens choose to take
their own lives because of their laziness; in spite of the economic plenitude
engenderd by the Buhari government.
And this is in sync
with Buhari’s position that his spokesmen have attempted to rework to avoid
fraying sensibilities – that the youths are lazy and are only waiting for the
government to feed them with revenue from oil resources. Buhari is so much
marooned in the past that he does not appreciate the fact that even Nigerians
who want to overcome the economic failure of the Buhari government are
imperilled by a lack of electricity to operate their little businesses.
Such businesses are
choking under the weight of the complicity of the government that would not
check the impunity of electricity distribution companies. Again, the citizens
who want to eke out a miserable living from their farms cannot do that because
Fulani herdsmen have vowed to feed their cows with their crops. And since the
fear of the Fulani herdsmen is the beginning of wisdom, they may not even go to
their farms to avoid being raped or killed. Because he is befuddled by the
past, Buhari does not know that the nation has been riven by ethnocentrism and
religious bigotry.
Since the past is the
best epoch of the nation, why must Buhari be bothered about thinking of how to
make the nation better? Why must he bother himself about restructuring or any
other proposal that would rescue the nation from the brink of disintegration?
Buhari does not see the inequity in the distribution of the nation’s resources
that has necessitated the calls for restructuring. As far as Buhari is
concerned, all the best efforts for the nation’s development were made in the
past –in his military government and that of Abacha- thus no more effort can be
made as regards progress. For Buhari, that nations that are eager to grow plan
for decades and even centuries ahead is not necessary in the case of Nigeria
Thus, Buhari cannot
successfully fight corruption because the methods he used in the past are no
longer workable in our democratic context. He can only make allegations and
name and shame those he perceives as his political enemies. But if Buhari is
sincere about fighting corruption, he still has about a year left to make it
holistic by not limiting it to the opposition. More importantly, he should
demonstrate his sincerity by setting up strong institutions that would sustain
the anti-corruption fight. The citizens are not swayed by the propagandist
stunt that if Buhari is not re-elected next year, looters would stage a
comeback and recover their stolen funds. So if Buhari is indispensable to the
fight against corruption, would he remain the nation’s president after 2024,
assuming he secures re-election? Would he be made to live forever so that the
anti-corruption fight would not be stymied by the enemies of Nigeria
Nothing recommends
Buhari as a leader of modern Nigerian with its complex challenges. Contemporary
Nigerians owe it as a duty to themselves and the subsequent generations to,
through the 2019 presidential election, consign Buhari to the past that he duly
belongs.
*Dr. Onomuakpokop is on
the Editorial Board of The Guardian
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