By Eberechi Obinagwam
Founding director of Newswatch Magazine, Yakubu Mohammed, has said that political somersault, disjointed policies and tolerance of corrupt persons were part of the main reasons former President Muhammadu Buhari failed in the estimation of many Nigerians.
The veteran journalist stated this as a discussant at TheNiche annual lecture held on Thursday in Lagos.
He said that Buhari came with a lot of promises and hopes but dashed it when he failed to keep to his words.
He said: “The reason people keep saying that Buhari failed is that Buhari came with a lot of promise and hope given his first coming as a military head of state. Nigerians sat up because they knew that somebody was in power. And they believe that if he came back as civilian president like Obasanjo did, that there was going to be reform. But what we witnessed was policy somersault, lack of coordination, very disjointed policies and programmes.
“He said he was not going to allow corrupt people to buy their way into government. And every day we witnessed people who are very corrupt to high heavens to have his ways and he is doing nothing about it. To the extent that a former chairman of the party will tell you that if you join APC, all your sins are forgiven. That is not how to fight corruption, and that is not how to provide leadership.”
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Mohammed also suggested why leaders who came from the minority ethnic group provided better leadership than those from majority ethnic group.
He said: “There is an indication that minorities, because they believe they are orphans in the society of the three wise men, they want to
prove a point that they are better at uniting the country. Therefore, when they are in power, they go beyond their ethnic enclave to make a point. Like Babangida. People who don’t know, they think that Babangida is Hausa Fulani. Babangida is not Hausa Fulani. If you look at the cabinet he put together, it was nationalistic. You had the best brains in his cabinet, and he tapped the brains. The only problem he had was the annulment of the June 12 election. That is a discussion for another day because those who were close to the participants involved, if you got to know what happened, sometime you may not blame him. But he carried the can.
“The reason Gowon succeeded, Gowon was a minority who was fighting his way to gain legitimacy,” he said.
