By Olu Fasan
Last week, on May 29, President Muhammadu Buhari marked his seventh and penultimate year in office. With just one year left in power, he’s in the twilight of his presidency. But, judged by what government is really about, Buhari’s achievements over the past seven years are shrouded in dubiety. Yet, he’s deemed such a transformational leader, such a great achiever, to deserve an ism, ‘Buharism’, which the Buharists say is the exemplar, the epitome of good government in Nigeria.
Recently, during a valedictory session that President Buhari held for his outgoing ministers, Godswill Akpabio, former Niger Delta Minister, spoke for his colleagues: “As we step aside from the Federal Executive Council, I want you to know that you have disciples in us, I want you to know that it is time for us to propagate Buharism.” Buharism? What is Buharism?
Well, Wikipedia describes it as the socio-political and economic
ideology of Buhari, which he practised as a military head of state from 1984 to
1985, and a civilian president since 2015. But, consequentially, Buharism
spelled doom for Nigeria under Buhari’s first incarnation as a military
dictator and has utterly diminished the country’s economy, politics and
institutions under his second life as a civilian president. So, what’s there to
propagate about Buharism?
Truth is, Buharism is a cult of personality, driven by Buhari’s
messianic character and his preference for personal rule and raw exercise of
power and control over people, policies and institutions. Yet, although Buhari
is an extremely powerful and magisterial president, with monarchical
tendencies, he lacks leadership and competence to transform Nigeria!
Leadership matters. Rot often starts from the top, and every
government reflects the personality of the individual running it. A clueless
leader will run a clueless government. Thus, as Matthew Parris, a prominent
British writer, recently put it, there must be in every government “the
presiding intellect with the intelligence to grasp the problem”.
Sadly, over the past seven years, the Buhari government has
lacked the “presiding intellect”. Sadly, too, despite his weaknesses, President
Buhari has failed to surround himself with competent people who, given
executive authority and political support, can envision and implement the right
reforms and deliver the right outcomes for the good of Nigeria.
What’s more, over the past seven years, Buhari has been utterly
impervious to voices of reason and wisdom, be it on political restructuring,
handling agitations for self-determination and economic and institutional
reforms. The results are a comatose economy, a corrupt and dysfunctional
politics, a fractured society beset by widespread poverty, debilitating
insecurity and, inevitably, massive distrust of government.
Yet, the presidency rolled out the drums to celebrate the
seventh anniversary of the Buhari administration. In a 28-page document,
published on May 28, the presidency reeled out several achievements, covering
legislative reform, infrastructure and agriculture. Of course, taken at face
value, the achievements appear significant, but, ultimately, the key question
is: what are their impacts? How truly transformative and consequential are
they?
Take the new Electoral Act. President Buhari was widely hailed
for signing the bill into law. But the Act has not stopped the obscene
monetisation of Nigerian politics that we are seeing with the party primaries,
where a presidential form was sold for N100m, and delegates’ votes are
reportedly bought with thousands of dollars. If an electoral law cannot
sanitise election financing, and safeguard the integrity of the electoral
process, it has failed.
Or take infrastructure. The presidency trumpets “the biggest and
most ambitious federal infrastructure programme since Nigeria’s independence”. But
why has such “unprecedented” infrastructure development not created massive
jobs and lifted the economy, including attracting significant foreign
investments? Major infrastructure projects tend to produce such outcomes. Why
not in Nigeria?
Then take the “Anchor Borrowers Programme” that has “disbursed
more than N800 billion to more than four million smallholder farmers”. Where is
the promised food security? Last week, over 30 people died in a stampede as a
mammoth crowd rushed to collect free food during a charity event run by a
church in Port Harcourt. Why are food scarcity, food inflation, poverty and
hunger so rife as to push Nigerians into such utter desperation?
Provocatively, in a piece titled “Buhari Administration At 7:
Service To The People, Nothing Else”, which accompanied the presidency’s
“factsheet”, Femi Adesina, President Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and
Publicity, wrote: “Revisionists would want to look at security challenges …
alone”, adding: “But we look at the entire gamut.”
Really? But what’s the “entire gamut”? Doesn’t it revolve around
the social contract, the heart of which is protecting lives and property and
safeguarding the wellbeing of citizens? Perhaps Adesina and his boss, President
Buhari, should be reminded, from the mouths of great philosophers and
politicians, what’s the real purpose of politics and government.
Take Aristotle. For him, politics is “primarily concerned with
the development and actualisation of human flourishing”. Thomas Jefferson,
third US President, put it this way: “The care of human life and happiness is
the only legitimate object of good government.” And for Harold Macmillan, a
former British prime minister, “the central aim of domestic policy must be to
tackle unemployment and poverty”.
Clearly, by counting as “achievements” statute laws, physical
infrastructure and agricultural spending, despite their miniscule impacts on
the lives, safety and wellbeing of ordinary Nigerians, the Buhari
administration is wrongly redefining the purpose of government. Sadly, apart
from mis-defining the purpose of government, Buhari is also undermining
Nigeria’s critical institutions.
Take the Central Bank. Its independence has been utterly eroded under Buhari’s administration. What could embolden a sitting CBN governor to want to run for president? President Buhari’s body language probably encouraged Godwin Emefiele’s action. Even now, Buhari is pretending that Emefiele can remain as CBN governor, despite being a registered member of, and presidential hopeful under the president’s party.
A year from now, President Buhari will leave office. Judging by the past seven years, his government risks failing the Jefferson test of “good government”!
*Fasan is a commentator on public issues
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