Buhari and the Verdict of History

Eddy Odivwri

Last week, I promised to revisit an interview the then Gen Mohammadu Buhari granted this newspaper, in December 2014, as he was yet aspiring to win the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The interview which was published as “Presidential Series” was aimed at presenting the ‘repented’ Buhari to the voting public. He had borne the dark patch of being a military dictator, in his ‘first missionary journey” to save Nigeria. So, his publicists were not only so keen to present a re-oriented and more tolerant Buhari to the public, but also to project a man with a kind of Deus ex Machina capacity to fix Nigeria and her many ills.

So many of the questions he was asked focused on his capacity or the prospect of it, in dealing with the problems plaguing the country.

His responses? Most reassuring!

I will highlight some of the salient and cardinal questions, which are still very relevant today, if he were to grant an interview, almost seven years after.

Buhari was asked that in the face of the onslaught of the Boko Haram menace at the time, how would he, as a Commander-in-Chief of the Armed forces, prosecute the war against the terrorists differently.

This is what he said: “What would I do differently? It is to make the military much more effective in their operations. I am sure you know that an attempt was made in the National Assembly to conduct a Public Hearing on the issue because Nigerian soldiers were giving information to the foreign press, that they were being sent to the battle fields without proper arms, ammunition and leadership. So the National Assembly wanted to conduct the hearing, they summoned the Service Chiefs and Chief of Defense Staff, and that hearing never saw the light of the day. It was scuttled.

If we get the opportunity, we will make the Nigerian military capable again because if we could go through ECOMOG forces to stabilize troubled zones and go to Dafur and to other places of the world and perform, why can’t we perform at home when our national sovereignty is being threatened? That is what we will do differently. To make Nigerian military capable again”

Chiding the then President Goodluck Jonathan in what was like a sneering rebuke for inability to rescue the abducted Chibok Girls, Buhari sounded so offended that the problem remained unresolved. Hear him, ”…How could Boko Haram abduct 200 school girls of ages 14 to 18 from their school and we were given the impression that these girls were in Nigeria? For seven months, the Nigerian government could not get the intelligence of where the girls were in particular and where they were moved. They kept saying we know where the girls are. Then what the hell is stopping you from getting the girls out? Imagine you have got a daughter there… how do you go to bed and how do you wake up for seven months? Your 14-year old daughter is in the hands of insurgents and your government is making noise and spending, money on unnecessary things. I think the whole country ought to have been mobilized to get those girls back alive or their bodies so that their parents can go to bed and sleep”

Comment

How history gets repeated with amazing accuracy and irony!

As they say, physician heal thyself! He was furious that the girls had spent seven months unrescued. Under him they recently clocked seven years in captivity. A proportionate anger should have been a hurricane, but what we got was a whimperish memorial. Seven years after, how much intelligence has his government gathered on the wherabout of the girls. Under him more than 200 school children have been kidnapped, in Kankara, near his own Daura community, in Zamfara, in Niger, in Kaduna where some of the students have even been killed. And we are looking dazed.

Not only did then Gen Buhari get the opportunity he so sought after, he went ahead and won the general election and became the President about six months after that interview was published. So for over six years, he’s been on the saddle. Two questions: Did Mr President himself not refuse, last December 9, to appear before the National Assembly, when he was invited by the Members of the House of Reps to explain the action plan against terrorism? Did the Justice Minister not dissuade Mr President from honouring the invitation? If he could make a mocking reference to the aborted Public Hearing under Jonathan in a probe attempt on the poor and insufficient arms available to soldiers fighting the insurgency, what will he say today, seven years after, when today it is reported (by Senator Ali Ndume) that arms are now being “rationed” among the soldiers in the frontline? This is coming after $1 billion was said to have been approved and released for the purchase of more arms.

The last question on this is this: Is the Nigerian military more capable today than they were six years ago? Have we not lost more soldiers in the last six years than we did between 2010 and 2015? How better equipped are the Nigerian military today, than they were six years ago?

Asked what credentials he was bringing to governance vis-a-vis the leadership question, then Mr Buhari, answered saying, “ Yes, I tried to mention one. While I was the GOC in 1982 and Nigeria was giving Chad economic help. And instead of the President of that country coming to thank our President for giving him economic support, he just sent his soldiers to kill our soldiers. I had the Command then and it was within my areas of responsibility. I went and sorted it out. Secondly, you must have known about Maitasine sect. I was the Head of State in 1984. Maitasine, you recall, developed from Kano. And he was killed during the second republic, but his followers resurfaced in Burunkutu, again in Borno and Jimeta, Yola.

My second in command then, Tunde Idiagbon was not in the country. I flew into Yola. Gambo Jimeta, I think was the AIG and Wash Pam were there and that was the last we heard of Maitasine.

Really I don’t think the Nigerian military including the law enforcement agencies have absolutely lost their capacity to deal with internal security problem”.

He stressed further, “ The leadership seems not to be aggressive and could not properly lead. And the fundamental problem of Nigeria now is security. Nobody is feeling secured in the country and I think this is the fundamental responsibility of government. So the leadership must make sure that they secure Nigeria and efficiently manage it”

Comment

Six years after being on the saddle, where are we with President Buhari on these avowals? Where is the action-packed General that quenched the silly intrusion from Chad? Where is the aggressive Head of State that permanently put out the light on Maitasine sect riots? Is it age that has sucked off the idea and the agility from Mr President? If he could do it then, why not now even when the stakes are higher? When last did Mr President get so moved about the nonsense going on everyday to visit a particular scene of violence? Does our President not get ensconced in the comfort of the presidential Villa, picking his teeth after sumptuous meals, while women wail and groan for the murder of their children and husbands’?

He raised the issue of leadership. Now he is the leader. How has Mr President defended and projected his leadership in the interest of Nigerians? If I am not exaggerating, it may be safe to say that beside Garba Shehu and perhaps Lai Mohammed, and a few handful of political lackeys, nobody else is happy with the leadership style of Mr President. Even those whose job description demands that they defend Mr President in the public domain, do admit, in their quiet recesses, that things are awful and that “the country is bleeding.”

Not only is Mr President damn too slow, he seemingly wrings his hands in helplessness. He has come to typify the infamous Emperor Nero that fiddles away while Rome is burning. He eats and sleeps while his nationals are being slaughtered in the forests, farms, highways, duty posts, etc… just any and everywhere. Security Council meetings , aside the shenanigans of “we can’t disclose security strategies” do not produce cheering outcomes. And the people— young and old– are dying in their dozens. If he could say “nobody is feeling secured”, nearly seven years ago, Mr President should be told that the situation is far worse than he described then. If he said it then to shame then President Goodluck Jonathan, and thereby gain political matrix, the dire situation of today betrays either hypocrisy or over-rated competence on the part of Mr President.

Space will face me to review the entire interview. But his views and position on corruption is as interesting as it is curious. Even as he vowed to wrack down the monster called corruption, under his government, we have recorded some of the wildest degrees of corruption with little or nothing being done to such persons. If you doubt me, ask them where Babachir Lawal, Orji Kalu, Wadume, Abdulrasheed Maina, etc., etc., cases are. This is not to talk about the miasma of sleaze that goes on in the oil and gas industry in the name of petrol subsidy. Mr President is the substantive Minister Of Petroleum, Resources.

Let me finally reflect on the position of Mr President on the seemingly less crucial issue of religion and ethnicity. He was asked to comment on the perception that he is a religious fanatic. He didn’t like the question. He responded: “This perception that I am a religious fanatic is what I can call sophisticated disinformation. I cannot disown my religion because of the accusations. People I worked with for more than 20 years and I rose from second lieutenant to general. All the command and staff that I worked with along the line, most of my associates were Christians…”

Comment

That may be true of a pre-presidency Buhari. But ever since he got elected , it appears the power to discern and provide balancing flew from him into the skies. Almost all prime appointments, including even the one of this week, National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light weapons has to be headed by yet another northern Muslim, Maj Gen A. M Dikko as pioneer Co-ordinator. If Mr President is truly blind to religious and ethnic sentiments he would have seen and identified many qualified southern Christians for various appointments across the country. But that is not what we have and see everyday.

What is more, the trouble bandits and terrorists have visited on the rest of Nigerians is strongly linked to Mr President’s ethnic stock of Fulanis. Many people argue that the near kids glove treatment from the federal government is what has lionized the insurgents and the bandits to our collective danger, as a people.

Were it not so, why have we not until now had these crises activated by Fulani herdsmen?

Was the president sounding so nationalistic and noble so he could win the people’s votes? Or did he simply get overwhelmed by the avalanche of national problems and thus lost his bearing?

In all, what we see is a marked difference between a courageous, idea-filled, conscious political aspirant and a demobilized president with dysfunctional faculties, supported by comprehensive inertia.

Whatever history will record for Mr president will draw content from all that represents his good, the bad and the ugly. May the weight of the former be heavier. The ugly past can be redeemed.