2019: Is Buhari Deliberately Running To Lose?

By Richard Maduku

There is hardly any good thing that we Africans don’t corrupt. Sometimes, we practise only the negative aspect of almost every good thing. Clocks or watches for instance, are meant to ensure punctuality but in Africa they are used mostly for the opposite. It is called African Time. The Internet is meant for fast communication but in Nigeria many youths have turned it into a farm where they reap what they did not sow. It is called yahoo yahoo. Churches have been so corrupted in Africa especially in Nigeria that our traditional shamans blush with envy at the tricks church leaders of today play in order to exhort money from their gullible members.

*President Muhammadu Buhari 

 Democracy in most African countries has also been badly mangled due to the way most sitting Presidents or Heads of Government in Africa operate. They don’t only harass prominent members of the opposition in their respective countries they also brazenly rig supposedly democratic elections in order to remain in office. This has in turn made winning a re-election by a sitting President to be viewed with utmost suspicion. As a result, whether an election was free and fair, a sitting President conceding defeat was now more acceptable to the world especially to the West. 

That’s exactly the situation President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) will be facing in the 2019 general election just as former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) faced in 2015.

In 2015, GEJ had ample proof to contest in a court the results of the presidential election of that year but as if reading the mood of the world, he did not. For instance, most of the local government areas in Borno State where PMB was declared to have got millions of votes were under the control of the brutal Islamist sect Boko Haram and no voting took place in those places. The minister of Information who is never tired of reminding whosoever cared to listen about the achievements of the All Progressives Congress (APC) government headed by PMB always list the routing of the Boko Haram insurgents from all the local government areas in Borno State as the number one achievement when it comes to security. 

According to him, the insurgents were controlling all but one or two local councils in the state under the previous administration but within a year or so of PMB’s rule, they were no longer in control of any. But the minister never say a word about how PMB and his party were able to garner so many votes from places under the terrorists control even more than in many states not occupied by any terrorist. That was not all. In Kano State, many children who were under age and therefore not eligible to vote under INEC laws still voted because the polling point officials were too intimidated by pro PMB mobs. These under age children were captured in many cameras. There were other glaring anomalies that would have swayed any judge to award the election to GEJ but as if reading the mood of the world, he did not approach any court. He conceded defeat even before all the votes were counted. Today, he is treated as a hero of democracy!

According to some keen watchers of political developments in Nigeria, PMB also knew about this mood of the world and would have even declined going for re-election in order to be hailed just as Mr. Nelson Mandela of South Africa was hailed across the globe for so doing. But PMB changed his mind because of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s widely publicised letter early this year (2018). It will be recalled that in that letter, Obasanjo listed several reasons why PMB should shelve any plan he has to run for a second term as president. To some political wizards whocould read the thoughts of top politicians, PMB felt that Obasanjo who contributed largely to the corruption of democracy in Nigeria was the least qualified person to advise him not to go for a re-election.

Former President Obasanjo did not only run for a re-election during his time, he also tried to run for a third term by bribing the legislators with huge sums of money and promises of guaranteeing the legislators’ own re-election. As only two terms were allowed this was for them to amend the constitution so that he could go for a third and even for a fourth or more terms just as Presidents Paul Biya of the Camerouns and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and most African leaders have been doing. It is believed that PMB felt that if he did not contest, it would be attributed to Obasanjo’s letter. This would in turn make Obasanjo to see himself all the more as a god that determines who becomes president in Nigeria and to intimidate every presidential aspirant. PMB, according to the political mind readers, decided to defy him and run but not to win since losing was hailed even more than declining to go for a second term.

According to these political clairvoyants, it was this resolve that makes PMB to be deliberately performing far below expectations so as to de-market himself as much as possible. It is believed that none of those clamouring for PMB’s seat could hold a candle to him at elections even when his performance was only average. Unlike him, none of them commands a cult-like followership across the nation especially in some states in the North. So he has to perform really below average in order to lose some of their votes. He wants to lose the votes of all the states where the Fulani herdsmen (his kinsmen) have been having a free hand killing farmers and their families in their belated attempt to grab green land for their herds. That’s why he has not been treating the herdsmen’s plunder with the seriousness it deserves. He also wants to lose votes of the southern states and that’s why he so unashamedly jettisons the federal character clause of the constitution in his appointments of aides especially in the security sector. 

According to the political pundits, despite PMB’s deliberate underperformance and glaring nepotism, many across the country still prefer him to any of the pack jostling to unseat him in the coming presidential election. That’s not all. Many will still vote for the candidates of the APC because of him. Instead of asking themselves why many Nigerians are so fanatical about PMB and maybe copying or even outdoing him in that area, some of the presidential candidates have started berating the electorate as being too naïve or sentimental.

Our analysts believe there is an acute dearth of uncorrupt politicians in Nigeria to the extent any that possessed just an iota of altruism becomes the idol of not just the masses but even a good number of the elite.

The late MKO Abiola’s philanthropy that transcends ethnic and religious borders made Nigerians to vote massively for him during the1993 Presidential election that was later annulled. The late Mallam Aminu Kano’s simplicity and identification with the poor made him an idol among the masses in Kano. In Edo and Delta states, Mr. Great Ogboru is popular because he is believed to have sponsored soldiers who wanted to overthrow a military government that was seen as glamourising corruption. And in the case of PMB, it is his legendary aversion to corruption. His jailing of politicians found guilty of corruption to lengthy jail terms in his first coming as military Head of State in 1984 was hailed by the masses and many non-political elite. Can any of the presidential candidates boast of any quality such as selflessness or a heroic deed that would make many especially the masses to mumu for them as they do for PMB ever since his first coming?
*Maduku, a retired Nigerian Army (Infantry) Captain and novelist, wrote from Effurun-Otor, Delta State.