By Michael Egbejumi-David
demdem@hotmail.co.uk / Twitter: demdemdem1
Happy New Year, everyone. Well, the biggest game in town this year is the February 14 presidential election. The choices are stark I’m afraid – President Jonathan or General Buhari.
Nigeria is being short-changed again. Neither of the two gentlemen is particularly appetising, but those are the options before us. So we have to choose. We should make that choice based on what we know of the two gladiators. Fortunately for us, we have enough records on both men to lead us down a coherent decision pathway.
Muhammadu Buhari and Goodluck Jonathan embrace each other
Jonathan became the President of Nigeria through divine intervention. He has conducted his presidency since then as if he expects to rely exclusively on that special favour. But they say heaven helps those who help themselves. Jonathan has not helped himself. That is not the bad news. The President, too many times, has taken steps to inflict embarrassing harm on himself and on the government he leads.
It is not for nothing that Abacha was called a thief and a mad man, and Babangida was tagged a dribbler. People will always eventually situate you where you belong. We’ve had Jonathan for close to six years and in all honesty, the gentleman cuts the figure of someone who ought to be anywhere but in Aso Rock. There is a distinct lack of genuine leadership and charisma. Whether unintentional or not, the President comes across as weak and unwilling. It is easy to see that things happen around Jonathan rather than through him. Nigeria just drifts along; sometimes nicely, other times with plenty of bumps. Jonathan is wheeled out occasionally, when it is safe enough to do so, to perform the ceremonial bits and say one or two largely bland things.
Worse, Jonathan has chosen to canoodle with some of the more corrupt elements in the land. Only a few weeks ago, he caused the case the government itself had brought against Abacha jnr for stealing more than N445 billion from the Nigerian State to be withdrawn. That is just one example. For the sake of winning a few votes, Jonathan is now in active partnership with the scions of Abacha who are flagrantly using blood money to buy political influence and office. There was the Presidential pardon of Alamieyeseigha, the national honour bestowed on late General Abacha. There’s the partnership with Fayose in Ekiti, Buruji Kashamu in Ogun, etc, etc.
Jonathan’s lack of decisiveness (which is what is generally referred to as cluelessness) and an obvious lack of will to tackle corruption – even nominally – hurts the man greatly. Perhaps corruption is so prevalent now because there is a deliberate strategy to level the playing field, to bring other sections of the country to par - economically and politically - with our hegemonic overlords. But is this the best way to redress our political imbalance?
In six whole years, what has become of ‘resource control,’ ‘true federalism,’ and other imperatives that have been canvassed by the South-South (and others) and for which some of their leaders have given their lives?
Nevertheless, in spite of all of that and despite Jonathan’s lack of vigour, his government hasn’t been all bad. The economy is actually not bad at all, and had in fact been growing. There certainly have been appreciable gains in the Agricultural, Aviation, Communication, Transport and Financial sectors. Construction and the real estate industry are similarly doing very nicely. Also, there is relative freedom in the land and citizens’ harassment by the government is probably at its lowest since I’ve known Nigeria. There’s human dignity and a greater sense of inclusion.
Yet, with Jonathan’s seeming lack of direction and coherence, with his lack of dynamism, his handlers have taken to comparing the man to Mandela, Obama and Martin Luther King jnr. It is that kind of illogical perversion and over indulgence that has helped define Jonathan’s government. The man wasn’t even astute enough to announce even a token reduction in fuel pump prices in the new year for goodness sake!
General Buhari on the other hand seems a man of personal integrity and discipline. He appears frugal and non-ostentatious. I remember him from his War against Indiscipline days when Nigerians, perhaps for the first time ever, were forced to queue up and behave reasonably well in public.
Yet as Jonathan is tagged as clueless, Buhari is an accomplished sectional champion. He is not perceived a real national leader. He has repeatedly opposed the idea of a national ID card system because he thought it is “not in the interest of the North.” He has openly called for the full implementation of the Muslim Sharia system on a nationwide scale shortly before he called on fellow Muslims to only vote for a candidate that will protect their interest. It was the same Buhari who led a small delegation to a former governor of Oyo State to tell him that “your people are killing my people” in a Yoruba farmers / Fulani herdsmen face off. That is not the way of a bona fide national figure or statesman.
Buhari more or less made his name by leaving polish imprints from his army boots on the backside of the collective Yoruba leadership. But today, he is their hero-king. This country sef! And over time, Buhari has come to be a cult figure. He has acquired a lot of worshippers within and outside Nigeria. How this came to be, is a mystery of sorts. I think a lot of people – especially young people – have a romanticised idea of what Buhari’s Head-of Stateship was like in the mid 1980s, some 31 years ago.
Not too many of those young people know that Buhari was the first (and perhaps only) Nigerian leader to proscribe the National Association of Nigerian Students. He also banned the Nigerian Medical Association, among others.
Truth is Nigeria wasn’t a pleasant place when Buhari’s junta called the shots. It was a jack-boot State with very little human freedom – physical and mental. Repression was the order of the day and people (especially down South) lived in fear. I tell you, it was an era of dour unpleasantness.
Contrary to the mirth some later day revisionists peddle around these days, Buhari was very active in the coup that ousted the Shagari democratic government. In fact, Ebenezer Babatope, then a practicing journalist, wrote an article back in 1982 in the Sunday Tribune where he alerted politicians and the nation to “beware of the gangly officer” after Buhari gave a speech in Kano excoriating Shagari’s government in particular, and politicians and democracy in general. For his troubles, Babatope was promptly clamped in jail when Buhari became Head of State; there he remained until Buhari was overthrown.
That wasn’t all.
In early December 1983, an army officer in the 3rd Division, Jos reported to the then Governor of Plateau, Chief Solomon Lar that there was coup planning going on. The officer named Gen Buhari, the Divisional Commander, as leading and participating in some spurious military exercises in the wee hours. Lar reported the matter to President Shagari. Shagari summoned Buhari to find out what was going on. Buhari insisted Shagari tell him the source of his information. Shagari did. January 1984, Lar was in prison. Buhari’s tribunal later handed him a 25 year sentence.
It has been said that Buhari it was who began the process of Nigeria’s enrolment as a member of a contraption called the Organisation of Islamic Countries, and that Babangida – a man who never misses a chance to advance his own cause – completed the registration and confirmed our membership.
When the Oputa Commission which was looking into past human rights abuses invited Buhari to come and defend himself, the man refused to go. His reaction was dismissive as it was contemptuous. It was the act of one thinking himself above the law, above all others.
And speaking of seemingly being above the law; for 12 years now, Buhari has been running for President in this Nigeria. In all those years he didn’t think it is for him to take a half day off, go to the Army Board and collect copies of his relevant certificates to meet the requirement of the electoral laws. What other explanation could there be for this? Nobody could be that careless.
Furthermore, Buhari has never come off as a good manager. As Head of State, it was generally believed that his Deputy, General Idiagbon, was the administrative brain box. Buhari was the hammer who enforced the overall bleak tone. Later, during his tenure at the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), the template was the same. Following the formal investigation into the affairs of the PTF, it was discovered that a large chunk of money went unaccounted for. Buhari’s response? He was unaware of the funds and how it got to be missing, and that, in any case, he didn’t profit from it. That was it.
Worse, Buhari has no legacy, no track record – thirty-something years ago, or recently - of grooming a class of intellectuals/doers or of surrounding himself with same. While Buhari did bring in a sense of order and queuing up for buses, there were also queues for ‘essential commodities’ like sugar, bread, etc. Moreover, in recent interviews and media appearances, Gen Buhari’s non-articulation of anything gives the impression that the man just wants to be President for being President’s sake. He is painfully out of touch and clings on for dear life to his one and only song: corruption.
When Buhari lost the presidential election for the third time in 2011, he asked people to troop out in protest in what he called ‘mass action.’ They did in parts of the North. When the dust settled, the mass action had claimed about 800 lives, a sizeable number of those, innocent Youth Corpers just going about their normal business.
These kinds of thing streaks all the way through Buhari’s vocation in the public domain and it leave some people rightly worried.
But Buhari followers and supporters ignore all of that. They are close to slavish in their devotion and are ever ready to curse and abuse anyone who dares to disagree. They maintain that Buhari is the only Nigerian alive that can rescue the nation. Out of about some 160 million odd souls? Really? And this, in spite of the man’s past record.
1984 – 1985 weren’t good years for Nigeria and Nigerians. The way some of Buhari’s supporters are conducting themselves now, may God help us. Some have even taken to calling the General a king; and you know you are not supposed to question a king. All these make one to fear that a Buhari presidency might usher-in another round of restriction on human rights and the right to hold a contrary view.
On top of all of that, Gen Buhari is 72 years old. In all honesty, in this day and age, for a country that is striving to develop, that is too ancient a pool to go searching for a leader. Some folks have reeled out a list of Presidents that were in office during their ‘septuageriatic’ years. However they leave out two important facts: Except for Mandela (for obvious reason) and a very precious few, most of those aged leaders went into office in their younger years; and a majority of such leaders are leading failed and failing States. It is the same way some folks advanced the argument that it was alright for Abacha to transmute into a civilian President because it has been done elsewhere. Some of us love to push perfidious ideas the way a Lithuanian pushes a wheelbarrow. Look around the world; where are those septuagenarians still holding sway today? It is like someone says we don’t want armed robbers on our street, and another counters, why not, there were a few armed robbers elsewhere.
To my mind, Nigeria needs a young and dynamic person calling the shots. Nigeria needs a young person with modern education, modern orientation, new thinking, modern technology and modern tools to compete effectively in a whole new world.
Is Buhari a Boko Haram sympathiser? I truly don’t know. But I do know that Boko Haram has been tried before. It was floated in another guise a few years ago when Sharia was introduced with buntings across Northern Nigeria. Even a sacrificial poor chap had his hand surgically sliced off to prove intent but Obasanjo didn’t swallow the bait. He refused to be lured into a divisive political confrontation and got around that trap the way a mountain goat negotiates a corner. And wouldn’t you know it; as soon as another Southern President got-in in 2011, Boko Haram became a full-on military assault and a campaign/political weapon to clobber that President with the intention of disgracing him out of office.
Be that as it may, Jonathan and his government cannot be fully discharged of blame in the way he has approached the Boko Haram insurgence. The non-return of the abducted Chibok school girls is a glaring failure.
Another problem Jonathan has going into the election is that, to the average Nigerian voter, the PDP has been in power for almost 16 years with not a whole lot to show for it. Even where there have been some recorded successes, the flagrant corruption of the PDP and its connected friends has become unbearable. People just want change. Anybody but the PDP.
But a lot APC’s candidates who contested for national and state positions were recent PDP decampees. So in real terms, there’s not much difference in ideology or credo on offer. It has all boiled down to this: personality - Jonathan or Buhari?
Jonathan has done a little but his PR has been ineffective. His lack of dynamism and cuddling of corruption is a huge albatross. We have waited for him to grow into the job but he hasn’t really. He has shied away from his core responsibilities – though I concede that the security issue, i.e., Boko Haram, is a contrived one. Moreover, Jonathan left his flank horribly exposed by not fully involving the Yorubas in more than four years. That was careless; a situation from which Buhari is now benefiting without doing much to earn it.
Buhari on the other hand is looking backwards too far. We do not want to start worrying about equity, religious harmony and other socio-isms again. All of that should be left in the past. A big problem of today’s Nigeria is that we still conduct our affairs and arrange our institutions as if we are in a military command structure. That is a grave anomaly and we need to totally break that yoke. Buhari, more than anyone else in Nigeria today represents that anomalous past. We can’t keep doing the same things, with the same people; we can’t keep going back to what has been tried and has failed miserably and be hoping for a different result.
So once again, it seems Jonathan is a very lucky boy indeed. If he has a Fashola, a Donald Duke, an El-Rufai, a Rochas Okorocha, or an Akpabio, for an opponent, we would be talking. However, Buhari to me is the past, a representation of the opposite of where a modern nation ought to be headed.
For that reason, I’ll be voting Jonathan.