By Kenneth Ikonne
In the immediate aftermath of the passing of President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, 15th President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I had urged that his death be not mocked or gloated over, and that due condolences be extended to his grieving family and millions of his stricken supporters across the nation. It was the appropriate thing to do, out of a sense of shared humanity. Buhari has now been interred in Daura, amid an outpouring of condolences and encomiums – paving the way now for an intellectual dissection of his legacy.
The Buhari era was a less than glorious epoch! While it is true that he built highways and railways, and generally paid attention to infrastructure, yet, throughout his eight years as President, a gloomy pall hovered over the nation – and alleviation was nowhere in sight. He had swept to power in 2015 with a misguided messianic impulse, and immediately proceeded to mismanage the nation’s ethnic diversity. His singular failing was in not recognizing that although Nigeria was created by force, yet, it could not be sustained by force alone; force needed to be translated into obligation. Nations persist and prosper if repression gives way to consensus. Otherwise, the energies of the ruler will be exhausted in trying to maintain his dominance at the expense of his ability to define and shape the future. Where the Nigerian imperative required subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative stability, the Buhari ideal prized the decisive clash of forces emphasizing feats of faux heroism. It was this mindset that spawned both the Kanu and Igboho agitations, which eventually consumed much of his time. It also spawned the bloodbath at the Lekki Tollgate, as well as the murderous “python dances”!
Buhari’s parochialism, his sectionalism and primitive nepotism, combined to feed ethnic fault lines that, before him, were almost latent. The resulting agitations were thus the logical and inevitable resolve of the capriciously excluded to resist exclusion. The result was a country perpetually hobbled by tension and inertia, made worse by Buhari’s inability to free himself from the dominion of ethnicity, and his impulse to judge everything by rules of purely Fulani conventions.
Which was why, despite public outcries, he dissipated tremendous energy and resources in egregious efforts to restore ancient cattle routes, proposing to appropriate all river banks for his kinsmen, along with a proposed confiscation of indigenous lands for the establishment of Fulani RUGA settlements across the country. He resisted calls for ranching, and in Benue State where rampaging herdsmen had sacked thousands of farmers from farms, he subverted Governor Ortom’s efforts to implement the Anti – Open Grazing Law of Benue State. In a heterogeneous and complex society like Nigeria, such arrant insularity was a recipe for disaster!
Outmoded and antiquated policies, command economics, brutal purges, including midnight raids on judges and the illegal sack and humiliation of Chief Justice Onnoghen, selective and half-hearted efforts at curbing corruption, vile propaganda and grandstanding, social dislocation and anomie, hypocrisy, intolerance and incoherent arrogance – these were the hallmarks of a leader that had promised so much, but delivered so little, while Emefiele’s 750 duplexes became the metaphor for his abject failure to notice the corruption right under his own nose. Buhari met the clamour for reform with repression and a clampdown on press freedom, and at a time even banned Twitter!
Try as you may, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the Buhari was less than adroit in steering the ship of state. Much of the inertia was self- inflicted, and stemmed from a tragic psychological flaw in his persona. Unlike Mandela, Obama, Uhuru Kenyatta or even Mugabe, Buhari’s sense of nation did not derive from reasoned introspection, deep learning or philosophical dissection, but was a product of raw, deep and unflagging prejudice, reinforced by a sense of messianic infallibility.
His fabled frugality and honesty became the weapons with which he corrupted the nation on a grander scale, appropriating resources and public offices to the tribe of his birth, and riding roughshod on the sensibilities of other Nigerians.
In times of national strife and perils, Buhari had no homilies of reconciliation to preach, or soothing words or condolences to offer. Rather, he was quick to rationalize the depredations and ravages of herdsmen whose murderous onslaughts left a trail of blood, tears, gore and agony across the nation, especially in the middlebelt region. This was the precursor of the food scarcity and famine that continue to plague the nation to this day. Buhari’s persona abhorred debate, and stirred fresh conflicts and combustible cleavages. Never was the nation, in peace times, more adrift, humbled and torn apart!
Meanwhile, the Economy dangerously flailed, while the President remained sanctimonious, abjuring responsibility, and preferring instead to find a convenient alibi in the exaggerated failings of his predecessors! Presidential anomie and ineptitude yielded two crippling recessions in quick succession, even as Buhari fiddled.
The result was that Nigeria achieved, under him, the dubious distinction of becoming the poverty capital of the world, with multitudes of our compatriots gnashing their teeth in excruciating poverty, and hordes of Nigerian children out of school. As the economy groaned and came to a halt, Buhari found alleviation in Chinese loans, and in the profligacy of “Ways and Means”, a polite sobriquet for the rapacious printing of paper money by the Central Bank – at presidential behest!
Yet, there can be no doubt that Buhari was undoubtedly loved by millions, especially in his natal region of the North – despite the missed opportunities epitomized by his tenure. Those who knew him closely say he was compassionate, umane and deeply religious – which might explain why despite having covertly and successfully arrested Nnamdi Kanu in faraway Nairobi, Kenya, and holding him in Kenya for a whole 7 days without anyone knowing, Buhari opted for renditioning him back to Nigeria when a more brutal leader could have simply authorized the assassination and disposal of the body.
Once again, I extend my heartfelt condolences to the Buhari family, and to the millions of Buhari’s grieving supporters. May God forgive his shortcomings, while granting our nation the fortitude to bear his loss!
