Forget about his outward composure, the look of indifference and the appearance of a man chilling on a cruise ship. Remember the viral picture of him relaxing in one corner of his office, his babariga at a safe distance while he calmly picks his teeth like the eldest man in a traditional gathering of kinsmen after a burial or wedding ceremony, watching as the younger ones share the meat and squabble over how the major parts would be allocated. Forget all of those. The president’s cameraman, perhaps the most active staff in his employ intelligently captures those rare moments to paint a picture so removed from reality that they provoke extreme emotions amongst the Nigerian public.
Whether we accept it immediately or not, Muhamadu Buhari would leave the presidency a largely diminished man with a legacy so battered that many would have a hard time choosing between him and Sani Abacha who was a better, less corrupt administrator. Many had argued that it would have been better if Buhari had stayed away from partisan politics, perhaps that would have been a smarter way of preserving and keeping his reputation as “the only incorruptible” army general.
I do however hold a different opinion. It is good that Buhari contested and in fact won the presidency. My only regret is that it came with so much death- both before and during his presidency. The socio-political experiment that is the Buhari presidency could have been safer without the needless carnage, misery and eternal injuries associated with it. Even so, all of the tragedies that this presidency births will present historians with the raw materials they would need in processing their verdict tomorrow.
I have come to view the Buhari presidency in terms of an experiment. It could be social; it could be political but an experiment nonetheless. Let’s look at three critical scenarios in this experiment:
Scenario A
Top ranking military generals, retired and serving at the time wanted to prove that they still had in their rank, an honest, incorruptible man so gifted in administration and organisation that he alone could pull Nigeria back from the brink, eliminate the chaos associated with the Nigerian system and restore greatness to Nigeria. To effectively sell this message, members of the Nigerian elite corps across several fields including religious, academic, finance and economy, traditional and in the media (conventional and new media) were drafted to drive the messaging system.
Scenario B
Many Nigeria were feeling nostalgic about military reign. They missed being flogged by soldiers on the streets, command and control economic system and a political process that isolates the people. As strange as it sounds, there were many who believe that only a “strong military man” can rule Nigeria. In this consideration of this category of thinkers, Nigeria is not built to be ruled by civilians.
Scenario C
The efficacy of a lie. You may find it bizarre but it may not be far from the truth that some elites wanted to test how effective or rather how far and fast lies could travel. Look at it this way: a campaign built on lies, a candidate with questionable academic credentials and a system of motions without movement.
Lies Triumphed
Yours sincerely cannot say with certainty the exact experiment the men who promoted the Buhari candidacy had in mind but what has now become obvious is that while scenarios A and B proved to be catastrophic failures, the third was a huge success.
Weeks into Buhari’s campaign in 2014/15, it became clear that the entire scheme was built around the promotion and sustenance of falsehood. From the laughable promise of making the naira equal to the dollar to ridiculous claim that the Boko Haram terrorist group could be routed in a few weeks, it was not hard to see that Buhari and his men just said whatever came into their heads. No attention was paid to any of those things they said, no planning and ultimately, no intention of ever fulfilling just one of the promises made.
The death of tens of thousands of Nigerians to terrorists of various motivation, the crippling poverty in the land, the unprecedented unemployment levels, the collapse of our national infrastructure and the loss of faith in government by the Nigerian public tells you that the Buhari experiment has had a very long toll on the life of Nigerians, institution of government and the very structure of our country. It was an experiment that should have been avoided at all costs for the latent danger inherent in it. Few warned about it but then, the herd mentality was rife and in a country where independence of thought is severely discouraged, getting the majority to sing from the same hymnbook was not as difficult as it would have been in a country where the elites really cared about the future of their society.
Reflections
The coronavirus scourge and the associated lockdown offers us an opportunity to reflect and think about the events of the not-too-distant past. A lot of questions have been raised about our health system. In the last ten years, we have had two presidents who ought to have been motivated by their personal histories to pay attention to the health sector.
Umaru Musa Yar’adua came into the presidency a sick man. While it is true that he never completed one term of four years, something should have compelled him in the earliest days of his presidency to commit himself to improving the health sector in such a way that no Nigerian would travel abroad after him to attend to a health concern- for any reason.
You do not need the brain of a rocket scientist to get the health sector working: inject the necessary funds, hand the sector over to committed experts at all levels, train the existing personnel and hire new ones. Additionally, make the sector attractive enough for the 30, 000 Nigerian health personnel practising in various parts of the world to want to come home and importantly, put in structures in place to keep corruption in check in the health sector.
Many may not know it but corruption is a major plague in the health sector. Why for example do you find mainly children and relatives of the connected and powerful in some of the nation’s most strategic health institutions like the National Hospital Abuja, Teaching Hospitals and Specialist hospitals? The answer is simple: just like directors of juicy parastatals always create openings for their children and loved one, those in the health sector also do everything within their powers to make sure that all who are connected to them interested in working in the health sector get the most lucrative postings.
Wither Buhari?
Tackling corruption in the health sector should have been Buhari’s strong suit- again going by his alleged antecedents and personal history. Like Yar’adua, Buhari came into the presidency weakened by geriatric conditions. Rather than do what was needed to fix the nation’s health system, Buhari found it most convenient to fly over 6, 000 miles to treat ear infections. By 2017, the president was spending almost six months out of his duty post, attending to an unknown sickness in a foreign hospital.
Right now a whole lot has changed. No foreign hospital would admit any of the Nigerian elites that regularly patronised them. Not President Buhari, not his chief of staff, not the son of Atiku Abubakar and definitely, not any of the governors who have admitted contracting the virus. They are all restricted to a few dysfunctional health institutions within Abuja and Lagos- places they ordinarily could not have known existed. It is unknown when normalcy would return to the world but what is no longer in doubt is the failure of the elites to pay attention to the health sector catching up with them.
Other evidence of cataclysmic failures
Beyond the failure or rather total neglect of the health system by the Buhari regime, there is also the issue of security. National food crises loom in Nigeria as many predicted long ago. In the last two weeks, food prices have more than doubled in several parts of the country and this can be attributed to shortfalls in supplies. One can stretch the equation a little further and realise that the shortfall in supplies is directly attributable to the worsening insecurity in several parts of Nigeria owing to the murderous activities of the Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram terrorist group and an assortment of freelance criminals. What if Buhari had committed himself to effectively routing these criminals and not introduced sentiments into what was clearly a danger to national security? Perhaps our farms would have been feeding the whole of Africa by now.
How about the profligate spending of national resources by the regime, the depletion of the foreign exchange reserves, the excess crude accounts and other critical public sector funds, the reckless borrowing and over-invoicing that this regime had come to be associated with? Many are speculating that if oil prices continue to fall and FIRS remains stuck in haphazard collection of taxes, the government may be struggling to pay salaries from next month. Do you see national crises looming?
Perhaps one should end by again reminding Nigerians that we are all partly responsible for the mess we currently find ourselves in. Those who promoted and sold the Buhari candidacy are clearly culpable in the current national embarrassment playing out as the country looks helpless in checking the spread of coronavirus. However, those who allowed themselves to be bullied into silence when they should have spoken out in the early days when this incompetence began to manifest will also be handed the harsh judgement of history.
If you doubt my conviction, think about the oddity of the Nigerian government begging a US billionaire (Elon Musk) on social media to supply the country ventilators. This is something smaller nations such as Rwanda and Ghana would never contemplate. When this national debasement is discussed at pubs in New York after this whole madness is all over, do you know that the Americans will make no distinction between those who cast their votes for Buhari and those who went to sleep after his unfortunate victory? The joke is on Nigeria. So bad, we are stuck in this together, amidst a global fight against a pandemic.
