Walking Back from the Brink

ENGAGEMENT With Chidi Amuta

Against the background of his controversial job approval rating, President Buhari now has the rare distinction of birthing an interesting App on the internet. The ingenious App is simply a count down timer on the imminent completion of Mr. Buhari’s presidential tenure. Like the National Debt digital clock that used to be at the street corner of 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York, this App, once downloaded into your cell phone, is continuously counting down to the last second to 10 am, 27th May, 2023 when Mr. Buhari will step back on the podium at Eagle Square to hand over power to the next president. Patronage of the App is reportedly as wide as the Instagram pages of major pop stars.

Even if all other positive legacies elude the president, it is hoped that a successful transition of power from his administration to the next would somehow earn him a slot among successful African democrats. I was initially reluctant to download this devilish App because of its cynical and subversive undertones. But it is what it is; an App and a countdown clock that points to an end to a political nightmare and a long night of national leadership embarrassment.

The President’s 6th anniversary and Democracy Day pronouncements and subsequent actions however contain some redeeming indications. Perhaps, Mr. Buhari is waking up to the imminence of his tenure’s end. He has expressed a new determination to fight insecurity and address criminality. He has made a symbolic trip to the Borno state headquarters of the counter insurgency war against Boko Haram. In tandem, some of the innocent school girls abducted from the Federal Government Girls school in Birnin Yauri, Kebbi state, have been rescued through the direct intervention of security forces. That operation hopefully indicates a shift to a more proactive approach in dealing with these scandaloous serial school abductions.

Similarly, the new service chiefs seem a bit more coordinated and better determined to address our worrisome insecurity. At least they are making more patriotic and professional noises than their immediate predecessors. With a little over a year to the end of his tenure, Mr. Buhari seems awakened to the reality that he needs to leave some positive legacies. How he drives this obviously renewed impetus is entirely left to him and the guardians of his beleaguered presidency. But one thing is certain, his presidency now has a dual mandate: to leave some concrete legacies and to walk back the nation from the brink of an implosive unraveling.

For the president, the desirable destination would of course be a peaceful transition from his elected government to the next. But it has also become critically important for Mr. Buhari what Nigeria will look like by the time he hands over to his successor. Therefore, he has repeatedly recommitted himself to national unity and the restoration of peace and security. He has insisted that Nigeria will not unravel under his watch. A general that fought in a war of national unity cannot afford to bequeath a nation in nasty disintegration.

On their part, his political traducers and multiple opponents have vowed to achieve either a restructured Nigerian federation or a balkanized space with some new sovereign successor states in place of the Nigeria we know. Yet, between the Buhari federal government and its multiple opponents and tormentors, there is still a point of convergence. Everybody craves a resolution of the present political and security quagmire and the restoration of the Nigerian nation as it once was. On the streets, ordinary people are insisting that even if Mr. Buhari cannot make their lives any better after eight years at the helm, he should at least return us to where he found us in May 2015. The nature of the order and peace we all seek may be different but hardly any group craves anarchy or perpetual disorder. Precisely how to achieve this national resolution and restoration is where the present discord resides.

The more moderate agitators for change want the national edifice taken apart and put back together in a restructured format. The supporting argument is that nothing is wrong with Nigeria as a nation but for its structural and constitutional deformities and fiscal dysfunctions. The way out is to fix the deformities and imbalances so that the citizenry can derive the full benefits of their social contract. On the other hand, the extremists, especially the outright secessionists, want Nigeria balkanized into multiple mostly ethnic based successor sovereign states if possible by referendum.

There is an even more predictable but consequential level of divergence. At the partisan level, the two dominant political parties are not necessarily interested in the possible dismemberment of the country. They might mention restructuring in their manifestos to catch the votes of the popular masses but are not really committed to its actualization. The truth is that neither the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) nor the rival Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) desires to rule over a smaller Nigeria or less familiar national landscape. In the typical political mind, the larger and more familiar the pie and the terrain, the better for the winner. Their primary concern is how to out manoeuver each other to win the 2023 elections. At the level of fights over group self interest, the ammunition of choice between the parties is the familiar free exchange of street level abuses and motor park insults. No physical harm as yet. No substantial policy disagreements in the horizon. No possible serious ideological divergence ever. Just watered down scraps from the usual Nigerian political playbook of crass opportunism, unprincipled grandstanding and incensed gang wars.

Among the more belligerent and militant opponents of the Buhari government, there is yet a further important divergence. The politicians who feel left out of the gravy train and partisan bazaar are insisting that the present configuration of the federation can hardly address the increasing inequities in the land. They are nostly the ‘re- structuralists’. But they are in disarray when it comes to the precise template of the restructuring. Are we to revert to pre-civil war regionalism or the more recent six geo political zones? There has not been too much light on how to fund a restructured federation; whether it should be a contributory federalism or a derivative one with the states taxed for mineral resources by the central government.

By far the more troubling wing of Buhari’s opponents are the outright secessionists. The most prominent are the pro-Biafra movements especially IPOB and the Yoruba Nation advocates of Oduduwa Republic. In particular, IPOB gives Mr. Buhari chilling nightmares and he has said so in many words. With the binoculars of a war general, Buhari looks in the horizon facing east of the River Niger and he is scared stiff at what he sees. The Biafra flag is frightening enough but its resurgence in the hands of many young enthusiasts re-awakens the post traumatic stress disorders that Buhari must have experienced as a combatant in the heat of battle. He has never hidden his discomfort with the Igbos ethnic base of IPOB. He uses both interchangeably. For some subliminal reason buried in his interpretation of the past, he sees either as both.

All things considered, the credible threat potential of IPOB seems a bit over blown and mischievously contrived. Its membership is not organic. It consists mostly of a minority collection of naïve semi literate youth in urban and semi urban market places who are enamored of the adolescent romanticism of an opportunistic demagogue. Its organization is quirky just as its funding consists largely of small donations from ignorant diaspora sympathizers and small local traders. Neither is its leadership authentic. It consists mostly of a self appointed and autocratic Nnamdi Kanu and a coteries of handpicked lieutenants and minions.

The generation of Igbos who witnessed the war are no fans of IPOB or Nnamdi Kanu who is neither a folk hero nor an electable political figure. This group are the bulk of the current decision makers(governors) and socio cultural leaders (Ohaneze) of the South East. Mr. Kanu is a self- anointed opportunistic figure with neither convincing livelihood nor credibility. Bravado not anchored on proven strength does not form part of the profile of the authentic hero or ‘dike’ in Igbo culture and consciousness. Kanu has merely gate-crashed into the popular consciousness of naïve and inexperienced youth who harbor a romantic notion of Biafra as that phantom homeland where the opportunities they cannot find in Buhari’s Nigeria would be abundant. Neither Kanu nor any of his cohorts has bothered to tell their youthful followers that Biafra meant death in droves, hunger, malnutrition, massive erosion of wealth, loss of property and the debasement of the dignity of a people. It meant a reset for a whole people while the rest of the federation galloped forward. Post war recovery was a grind of sweat, blood and tears that has lasted over half a century.

However, it is precisely the hegemonic arrogance and divisive politics of the Buhari presidency that powered the emergence of IPOB and the germination of Nnamdi Kanu from the ruins of neglect and marginalization of the South East. There is therefore a sense in which Nnamdi Kanu is a creation of Mr. Buhari. The monster has come back to engage its progenitor in a fatal encounter!

Now that the elected political elite of the South East and the socio cultural group, Ohaneze, have both taken a political stand against IPOB, naming it an unnecessary disruptive influence, the lines are drawn. IPOB’s heady defiance of both levels of authority is a disastrous political gambit and cultural travesty. In the culture of the region, you do not defy constituted authority nor do you casually dismiss or insult elders and denigrate revered socio cultural institutions. Deprived of both political cover and socio cultural relevance and legitimacy, IPOB stands exposed and naked with a chance of being reduced to an anarchic nuisance and terrorizing presence. That has already exposed it to the military diktat of the Buhari federal government which is already in place, stamping its indiscriminate jackboot all over the backyards of the South East in the name of internal security operations. What IPOB and its militant wing ,ESN, have achieved is an open invitation to a hostile federal armed presence into Igbo country, making the area the only Nigerian ethno national space to serve as a theatre of war twice in half a century.

The other leg of the secessionist opposition to Buhari’s Nigeria is the Yoruba Nation project of Oduduwa Republic. This is easily the most well organized and better articulated political secessionist project in today’s Nigeria. Its well organized and disciplined rallies seem to have official approval. It insists that it is not in contest with the elected governors of the South West. It pays due respect and deserved homage to the ethnic and cultural elders and authorities of Yorubaland namely Afenifere, O’Odua Peoples Congress and Ilana Yoruba. The mob wing of the movement led by Mr. Sunday Igboho seems to enjoy the tacit support of the elders and governors and an unwritten immunity from the security agencies. Mr. Igboho is said to wear both layers of multiple bullet proof vests as well as a string of amulets and charms to deflect bullets! Both the traditional socio cultural authorities and the elected political structures in the South West respect the ‘sovereignty’ and power of Mr. Igboho’s mob ‘republic’. In the South West, every political wagon minds its own lane and they are mutually reinforcing . Periodically, Mr. Ganiyu Adams shows up to support Igboho’s mob gatherings. When Igboho’s Yoruba Nation train is in town in any South West state, the governors keep a studied distance or find distracting relevance elsewhere. Let us respect political sophistication!

For some reason, the Buhari presidency has not managed to see the Yoruba Nation project and its massive rallies as a credible threat to the unity of Nigeria. This has led many observers to the conclusion that the entire movement may be a political project and contrivance designed to ensure that the South West produces Mr. Buhari’s successor. According to this calculation, the Yoruba Nation movement needs to be pushed hard enough to neutralize the clamour for a president of Igbo extraction since the APC still seems to hold the key to Aso Villa.

There is yet a hardly acknowledged latent opposition force to the failing federal state: the youth majority. The ENDSARS protests of October 2020 and the Covid-19 hunger riots earlier in the year gave us a dress rehearsal of the potent force of the youth. What saved Nigeria from an anarchic explosion following the ENDSARS protest was the fact that the organizers limited their focus to police brutality especially the bestiality of the SARS wing of the police. Once SARS was quickly disbanded and replaced, the thrust of the protest was deflated. Luckily also, the riotous mob that the protests ignited were decapitated, deprived of its elite drivers of entertainers and internet influencers . The sparks which the protest ignited lit up the nation as the armies of poverty and inequality found expression in the form of prison breaks, looting and mayhem. The major saving grace was that the youth vanguard was not united by a political consciousness.

Therefore, the scope and nature of the political and social contest that are fueling the national uncertainty are clear enough. It is a contest between a federal government intent on maintaining the existing order through the instruments of the democratic state on the one hand and the array of non- state actors, factions and forces that have made the government their target from different directions. For president Buhari, the challenge of this moment comes down to a simple one: how can the president convert the political challenges into an opportunity to heal the nation and end the uncertainty and insecurity plaguing the present.

In response to questions about restructuring and amendments to the1999 constitution, Mr. Buhari has predictably offered the ultimate conundrum. He insists that he is running a constitutional democracy. Therefore, only the National Assembly can effect either an amendment of the 1999 constitution or the restructuring and reform of the country.

Clearly, Buhari has drawn the red line on the possible outcome and limits of the spate of separatist agitations and other reform movements currently plaguing the country. They can only go as far as the 1999 constitution and the institutions of the existing order allow. On the surface, the president is right. You cannot use a vacuum and disorder to unseat order no matter how imperfect the subsisting order may seem. It would be futile to expect the National Assembly, the governors and the rest of the present establishment to rule themselves out of office and privilege in deference to a motley of voices out there. Those who want change should make their representations through their accredited representative in the National Assembly! That wold be the voice of the conservative Mr. Buhari.

But the vicious forces that threaten the present order belong outside the state system and the prevailing order. The ethnic agitators, secessionist activists, restructuring pundits and their supporting sundry militias and gunmen are operating outside the parameters of the existing constitutional order. They are not even necessarily supportive of the existing partisan architecture.

Yet, the political agitators and non- state militant actors are all Nigerians. They all claim that they are powered by a hunger for a better Nigeria. And the president owes them a hearing. Left out in the political wilderness, they are making life very uncomfortable for the president and the rest of us. Only the president as the leading statesman can walk the tightrope between the state and the agents of disorder. To rely on the use of force and state power alone is to venture into the realm of autocracy and absolutism which will derail the democratic path. It is better to enlarge the elastic limits of the state and the institutions of democracy by allowing a spate of dialogues and engagements across all boundaries without sacrificing the primacy of the state and its institutions.

As a nation, then, we stand at the threshold of interesting times. And the next fifteen months may turn out to be our decisive moment.