Put on the scale for assessment, Buhari would be scored below average. There is nothing more to be expected of him. He has done his best. He can hang on till May 29 and leave Nigerians to sort things out for themselves but certainly not to engage in tutorials on good governance.
By Emeka Alex Duru
As Features Editor in Daily Independent Newspapers, my colleagues and I undertook a facility tour in one of the states in the South West. The idea was to have a firsthand experience of the development profile of the state. We visited four local government areas that stood as the poster councils of the state. To our disappointment, at the end of the exercise, we could not find much to write on the performance of the governor and his administration.
We were taken to a bushy expanse of land that bore a bold signpost of the state’s airport. Adjacent to a market in the heart of the state capital, were skeletons of buildings of a proposed general hospital. There was a ‘millennium’ public school that was advertised to be in all the councils but was actually only in the capital city. The experience was disgusting. But trust the Nigerian politician. Few days to the anniversary of the state’s creation, computer simulated pictures of those projects were splashed in major newspapers as infrastructure already put in place by the administration. The real work was passed on to the succeeding administration, while the governor moved on to the federal level as a senior official of the government. I saw him on television the other day preaching good governance and entrenchment of democracy in the land. That is a typical Nigerian politician. They always play the statesmen when they are out of office or on the verge of doing so.
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You can then understand why the President, Muhammadu Buhari, is seizing every opportunity in the remaining days of his tenure, to position himself as the best thing that has happened to Nigeria since 1960. Buhari’s case mimics the allegory of the lizard, which jumping down from an iroko tree and not waiting for commendation from anybody, hit its head on the ground, thrice, in a manner of ‘I have done it’. For the lizard, there is enough evidence of accomplishing a great feat. But for the President, it is a matter of ‘Take it or leave it, I have done much and deserve your commendation’. That is Buhari for you!
If you see that from the angle of narcissism, you are not wrong. Narcissistic personalities have an unreasonably high sense of self-importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. The world begins and ends in them. Any other person is just a figure. On the surface, the president is austere but quite extravagant in appropriating accomplishments. There seems some sense in the saying that one requires to be shameless to succeed as a politician here.
That was what Buhari displayed the other day, when he called on incoming governors to deliver on their campaign promises to the people when they assume office.
Buhari, who gave the advice through his Chief of Staff, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, at the induction programme for governors, organised by the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), alluded to deepening democracy in the land.
“In March 2023, Nigeria consolidated and reinforced its democratic process with a general election which saw the election of a new President and about 18 newly elected/incoming governors. I am happy to note that democracy is alive, vibrant and thriving in Nigeria”, he boasted.
That is not true. And Buhari knows it is not true. It is, simply, taking self-adulation beyond bounds. The President can lay claims to anything but certainly not consolidating democracy in the country. If anything, rather, his administration has assaulted the institution of democracy and made mockery of the practice more than any other government in Nigeria’s history.
Buhari fits into the topic of the 2018 comparative politics book by Harvard University political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, about how elected leaders can gradually subvert the democratic process to increase their power. According to the authors, “Democracy may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders – presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power”. That is the clearest way to understand the president and what he represents.
The President, for the sake of emphasis, came to power through an election that was reasonably transparent, beating an incumbent and pledging justice and fairness to all. Much was therefore expected of him in paying back by deepening the process of one-man-one-vote. In 2019 when he was going for reelection, there were obvious infractions in the conduct of the exercise and the outcome. But Nigerians moved on, hoping that things would take better shape in 2023.
Actually, days before the election, the president, in league with the National Chairman of the Independent national Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof Mahmood Yakubu, had assured Nigerians that their votes would count and be counted. Buhari in particular made it a mantra of sort in all his engagements within and outside the country that the days of poll manipulation in the country were over. With the promises of free and fair elections, Nigerians proceeded to polling stations. Incidentally, the same president and INEC chair, failed them. Some could not vote; those that voted saw a different thing from what they worked for.
Three months after the February 25 presidential election, reports keep pouring in on how INEC under the supervision of Buhari and Yakubu, tailored the results to suit the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Tinubu. The latest of such disclosures was from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) investigation which exposed bizarre rigging in Rivers state in favour of Tinubu. There are other instances of leadership failure under Buhari.
Insecurity is still on the rise. Rural communities in Benue, Kaduna and other states in the country, are becoming centres of attacks by marauding herdsmen and rampaging bandits. The attacks have been on the increase, leaving in their wake, loss of lives and destruction of property. The South East is besieged by separatist agitators. Nigerians had never been as divided as they are under this administration due to the president’s proclivity to his Fulani kinsmen. The economy is still in the doldrums, with inflation and unemployment soaring beyond control. The situation is really bad.
So, when the President prances about, claiming to have delivered, the facts and statistics are there jeering at him. In the days of the late Senate President, Chuba Okadigbo, he would have reminded Buhari that statistics are like bikinis; what they conceal are far more exciting that what they expose. As things are in the country, the President can only humour the blind that there is no oil in a dish but not salt. Nigerians know when a leader is stating the truth or lying.
Put on the scale for assessment, Buhari would be scored below average. There is nothing more to be expected of him. He has done his best. He can hang on till May 29 and leave Nigerians to sort things out for themselves but certainly not to engage in tutorials on good governance.