One year into Africa’s toughest job by a mile, Muhammadu Buhari struggles to rebrand from former military dictator to a listening civilian president – but demonstrates an uncommon zeal to solve a myriad of national dislocations amid plenty unease.
Correspondent SAM NWOKORO reports.
Leadership is a call to service, not ego-tripping.”
This is an age-old line from politicians whenever election comes around. Nigerians have been regaled by the antics of those who masquerade as leaders but are barren of patriotic ideal to transform the lot of the people.
A one time diplomat remarked that Nigerians are some of the most patriotic people in the world who tolerate the excesses of their leaders so as not to rock the boat and undermine national cohesion.
It will be a betrayal if President Muhammadu Buhari fails to reverse the bad leadership Nigeria is stuck with.
To many, he has started showing the same streak of reticence and carefree attitude to serious issues of national wellbeing for which most past leaders are notorious.
Some think the economic meltdown, which started shortly before he took over last year, is responsible for his “insensitivity”. Others think his actions give him away as the same old dictator donning the hat of a democratically elected president.
Leadership minuses
People have listed some leadership minuses about Buhari in the past one year.
One. He is poor at consulting the populace. Many cite the suddenness of the latest fuel price increase while they were expecting a reduction in the existing N86 per litre.
Geoffrey Igwe, a building materials trader, said: “The price increase took us by surprise. We were not anticipating it. At least he ought to have addressed the nation, knowing it was a very sensitive issue.
“Even his ministers did not warn us that this was coming, no matter how exigent it is.”
A Lagosian, who gave her name simply as Bolanle, complained: “I too was not expecting it. The one [former President Goodluck] Jonathan did, we were aware it was coming because the rumousr was in the air for quite some weeks.
“But this one just came like that.”
A commentator noted that Buhari went to London and was there when the price increase came, “as if he knew it was a bad thing.”
Two. He allows his loot hunt to crowd out little gestures people expect from their leader in times of distress.
When herdsmen attacked the Agatus in Benue State, Buhari did not visit them. When they massacred in Enugu State, it took him days to say a word. When they struck in Kaduna, the same silence came forth.
A resident of Mushin, Lagos, said: “The president has not asked criticals questions about the herdsmen. He has not even bothered to visit those states to show he is concerned.
“Why do the herdsmen choose night time; 8pm, 1am, 2am to strike? Is that when animals feed? There is something to all these than grazing of cattle.
“Why was he planning to make Lagos the first port of official visit rather than Benue, Plateau, Kaduna, Delta, Enugu and other states where the herdsmen are killing innocent people? To me that shows insensitivity.”
Three. Buhari seems to permit domestic misdemeanour in contradiction of his pedigree as puritanical disciplinarian.
Folks say in street corners that members of his family live an ostentatious lifestyle – his children school abroad, fly first class, and his wife, Aisha, wears a $10,000 gold wrist watch – when other Nigerians lose their jobs, incomes, and homes daily.
However, Buhari was neither a pauper nor a tycoon before he assumed office a year ago; he had been a successful farmer of many decades and had made a commercial success of it, which has encouraged young men to go into agriculture.
He could not be said to be poor, and so could afford the needs of his family without dipping hands in the public till.
Yet, he ought not to lose sight of his role as a moral custodian of his immediate family and also of the nation. Thus, his home is a signpost to the rest of citizens, especially at these austere times.
Tactless
Leadership is getting things done without giving excuses, and tact is the ability to devise appropriate solutions to problems.
Buhari has demonstrated a puzzling tactlessness in the handling of Niger Delta rebellion.
Accumulated grievances are responsible in part for the current spate of pipeline vandalism.
Jonathan awarded surveillance contracts to some Niger Delta militants, masters of the terrain, Buhari cancelled them immediately he came in.
He also demolished modular refineries built in the Niger Delta, claiming they were “illegal”, whereas he has no immediate substitute.
Now, there is a suffocating fuel palava, and the inability of the Nigerian state to effectively secure its crude oil facilities, its life wire, let alone those of multinational oil companies.
When Buhari mounted the saddle, he did not make any pretense that he would go after Jonathan’s men.
To demonstrate his seriousness about fighting corruption, he started arresting members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), forgetting to draw the line between party funds and statutory funds of the state.
Whether Nigerian money has strayed into PDP campaign is what Buhari and his men ought to have taken time to sort out. Is there any wonder then why trials have so far produced little convictions?
Shackled but determined
However, to say that Buhari is just warming the seat of power or just enjoying its perquisites is to deny the facts.
He inherited a most troubled economy in his second mission. His first was between December 1983 and August 1985 when he was military head of state.
His tenure was brief then, but he made some impact, even if it was not a fantastic economic turn around.
He tackled indiscipline head long, a malaise that afflicted both the leadership and the followership which contributed to the fall of the Second Republic.
He upturned food importers who were crippling thriving local industries. Warehouses brimmed with all sorts of imports even though oil prices were cascading and foreign reserves were depleting just as is the case now.
Unhealthy social attitudes gave Nigeria a bad name: pollution, disorderliness, robbery, extravagant leisure tourism at the expense of scarce foreign exchange (forex), asset stripping of public property, and sundry social nuisances.
Buhari’s war against indiscipline caused appreciable attitudinal change for the better and he really was on the path to crafting an enduring economic policy to shift dependence on oil before he was overthrown by Ibrahim Babangida.
By all indications, Buhari is a man of destiny who had to contest for Aso Rock for four consecutive times before he won.
He remains one Nigerian statesman whose middle name is consistency. He has never shifted from a known position on any issue.
The BBC, writing on his pre-election profile last year, said: “Mr Buhari has always been popular among the poor of the North (known as the ‘talakawa’ in the North’s Hausa language).
“Now some feel his military background and his disciplinarian credentials are just what the whole country needs to get to grips with the Islamist insurgency in the north.
“A Muslim from Daura in Katsina State, who has given his support to Sharia in the North, Mr Buhari has previously had to deny allegations that he has a radical Islamist agenda.
“His tough stance as a military commander in 1983 – when some Nigerian islands were annexed in Lake Chad by Chadian soldiers – is still remembered in the North East, now the militants’ stronghold, after he blockaded the area and drove off the invaders.
“He ruled Nigeria from January 1984 until August 1985, taking charge after a military coup in December 1983.
“It is a period remembered for a strict campaign against indiscipline and corruption, and for its human rights abuses.
“About 500 politicians, officials and businessmen were jailed as part of a campaign against waste and corruption.
“Some saw this as the heavy-handed repression of military rule. But others remember it as a praiseworthy attempt to fight the endemic graft that prevented Nigeria’s development.
“He retains a rare reputation for honesty among Nigeria’s politicians, both military and civilian, largely because of this campaign.
“As part of his ‘War against Indiscipline’, he ordered Nigerians to form neat queues at bus stops, under the sharp eyes of whip-wielding soldiers.
“Civil servants who were late for work were publicly humiliated by being forced to do frog jumps.
“As part of anti-corruption measures, he also ordered that the currency be replaced – the colour of the naira notes were changed – forcing all holders of old notes to exchange them at banks within a limited period.
“Mr Buhari has continued to defend his coup of December 31, 1983.
“It is up to the people. If you choose correct leadership, there won’t be any need for the military regime.
‘“The military came in when it was absolutely necessary and the elected people had failed the country,”’ he said in October 2005.
“When former President Olusegun Obasanjo was a military ruler in the 1970s, Mr. Buhari held the key post of minister of petroleum affairs.
“But the relationship between the former colleagues cooled as Mr Buhari’s coup ousted a civilian government, led by Shehu Shagari, who won elections organised by Mr Obasanjo.
“This led to continuing questions about Mr Buhari’s commitment to democracy.
Relations between the two former generals may now thaw following what seems to be an endorsement for Mr Buhari from Mr Obasanjo in his recently released autobiography.
“Mr Buhari ‘would not be a good economic manager’, wrote the politician who won two presidential elections for the PDP after 1999, but ‘will be a strong, almost inflexible, and a courageous and firm leader.’”
Buhari is undoubtedly a genuine leader with good intentions that transcend self.
Only that it appears destiny has made it that he would have to mount Nigeria’s leadership saddle at very tense and combustible moments that put his stellar qualities in overarching tests.
For try as hard as he could, the forces that he does confront each time he tries his spirit on the Nigerian project tend to overstretch his capacity. Equally, it is observable that he has never left the leadership saddle bruised, no, always with honour and integrity intact.
Notwithstanding the challenges – falling oil prices, dwindled resources to tackle gargantuan programmes, a legislature that refuses to back Buhari’s his change slogan with the same zeal he has demonstrated in the pursuit of looted funds – he has in the past one year shown that Nigeria is serious about turning a new leaf, reconstruct its past, and retrieve what the locusts have eaten.
It is not really an easy task.
Rampant arrests, crawling prosecutions, little convictions
Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, said on April 9 that notwithstanding the many arrests by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Buhari is not winning the war against corruption.
“Apart from the class solidarity usually extended to politically exposed persons by judges in all capitalist societies, the situation is compounded in Nigeria by judicial corruption and professional misconduct on the part of senior lawyers involved in the defence of corruption cases,” Falana explained.
“Owing to a lack of coordination in the trial of politically exposed persons, corruption is fighting back. Painfully, the federal government is on the defensive as it has failed to counter the deliberate manipulation of the criminal justice system by the indicted looters of public treasury.”
Another commentator, Cyril Mbachu, complained that “the arrests involve mainly opposition elements, why are there no APC (All Progressives Congress) corrupt politicians being tried.
“Even at that, why are there no [major] convictions a year after Buhari began the fight against corruption? At the end of the day, most of those being tried will go free.
“The EFCC deliberately mishandles investigation and prosecution of cases, and intelligence agencies, which boast they know all things, take endless time to get any evidence to nail any suspect, instead at trials, the same EFCC deliberately bungles their own cases.
“We observe all this and it is a shame. That is why the foreign countries harbouring Nigerian loots are reluctant to release those loots speedily. But they won’t tell you that is the reason.”
Diplomacy, promises, little success in loot hunt
The president’s men are keeping too much secret about the recovered looted funds.
Buhari has traversed all parts of the globe but his accomplishments fail to par with the human and financial resources expended.
If he is not getting co-operation after one year of junkets in search of looted funds, it may be because his foreigner partners think he has not done well at home.
Sporadic arrests, public parade of suspects, rigmarole prosecutions, very little convictions and mystery recoveries by the EFCC have not dispelled this apprehension.
The Buhari administration has so far announced the recovery of Abacha loot in three tranches of $380 million, $200 million, and the first $780 million which campaign preceded his assumption of office.
As of February 3, 2016, the EFCC claimed it has recovered over $2 trillion looted since 1998.
A rights activist, Abu Shuluwa, alleged that former EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde, diverted not less than $15 billion.
A security expert and debt recovery consultant, George Uboh, the managing director/chief executive officer of Panic Alert Security System (PASS), alleged in a petition to the Senate that Lamorde, now wanted over N3 trillion recovered between 2004 and 2011, defrauded the country of N2.05 trillion from properties and funds seized from individuals.
He alleged that recovered funds in the bank account of the EFCC do not reflect audited accounts.
During the signing of the 2016 budget Buhari said N386 billion of recovered loot will be injected into the budget.
Eze Onyekpere, lead director of Centre for Social Justice, has asked him to publish the total figure so far recovered from those who stole from the treasury during the Jonathan administration.
One step forward in security, two backwards
Regardless of the latest feat about the release of two of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the general consensus is that Buhari has not delivered on security.
There are still over 200 Chibok girls held captive in Sambisa forest by Boko Haram, the fundamentalist jihadist sect still terrorising the North East.
The menace of Fulani herdsmen is a fresh challenge taking the shape of Boko Haram rampage.
There are also restive Shia Muslims in the North, and agitators for Biafra in the South.