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| President Muhammed Buhari. |
If you thought the
desperation, fierce determination, remorseless propaganda, seductive promises,
and Buhari’s endless personal presidential ambition with which APC pushed in
2015 to defeat Goodluck Jonathan were easily convertible as currency to perform
in office, you might be forgiven for having hope that Nigeria’s massive
development was assured in Buhari’s hand.
But it seems it is
easier to get power than to know what to do with it. Could this be likened to
what Dele Momodu, Ovation publisher, suggested when he quoted a book, “Pedagogy
of the Oppressed” by Brazilian author, Paulo Freire? He said that the oppressor
is waiting for the opportunity to become an oppressor. “The only dream he has
in his life is: I just want to be great, I want to get to power.” Of course,
not knowing what to do with power to improve and empower the people, he becomes
an oppressor!
Nigerians had never
witnessed an election that was as fiercely fought as the election that brought
Buhari to power. In the Second Republic, the political contest was essentially
that of ideologies and values. The opposition provided by Chief Obafemi Awolowo
was strong, agenda-setting, intellectual yet not shy of practical solutions,
sometimes visceral, but never descending to the level of abuse and
condescension against President Shehu Shagari. GNPP’s Ibrahim Waziri was ever
mindful of his mantra: “Politics without bitterness.” Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe of NPP
was ready to find accommodation with Shagari’s NPN. PRP’s Aminu Kano was devoid
of malice in his political criticisms, ever mindful of how to lift his
followers from the pit of poverty and illiteracy. But not so for APC of today.
They brought a level of aggression and abusive recriminations to their
political campaign that was unprecedented.
They went all out to
recruit disgruntled, but influential top politicians from the PDP camp. Old
enemies became new friends under APC banner, bonded together in their mutual
hatred and contempt for Goodluck Jonathan. No matter the merits, they
castigated, ridiculed and tore to shreds any policy or action coming from
Jonathan’s government. Having no qualm in making Jonathan an object of mockery,
they gave him the tag of being “clueless and incompetent.” Playing on Buhari’s
tenuous, unverifiable “integrity”, they held him up as a man of simple tastes
and modest means who was willing and ready
to rescue Nigeria from waste, official corruption and impunity of any
kind. From Rotimi Amaechi threatening that APC would form a parallel government
if they were not allowed to win the election, to Jonathan’s official campaign
being resisted with sponsored violence in some parts of the North like Bauchi,
it was a recipe for conflagration.
Despite the anger, pain
and disappointment of many Jonathan’s supporters, tension was reduced and
relief swept through the land when Jonathan made that famous and heroic phone
call to Buhari, conceding defeat. Perhaps
frightened by the swirl of expectations thrown up by the pedagogy which they
had played to the hilt, it did not take long after he was sworn into office
before Buhari said he was not a “miracle
worker.” Of
course, we were supposed to relate with the fact that a human was not meant to
be a miracle worker!
So
it’s easy to make peace with Buhari’s self-confession that he was not a miracle
worker.
Here again we are
confronted with the sad spectacle of a man who canvassed for power but wants to
make himself excusable from the inescapable responsibility of putting the
people he leads first.
Why
do you want to lead if you have no solutions to the problems confronting your
community or nation? Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. A leadership
that is just pretending to rise above self-aggrandizement is a joke meant to be
trashed.
We did not elect a
president that would tell us that not much could be done to develop
infrastructure because the country is broke. Being broke is not a lexicon
tolerated by a sound mind. We want a president that would inspire us to
discover the gold in the dust, and recover the gain embedded in a pain. Where
there is no water in the desert, we want a president, like Moses in the Bible,
that will fetch water from the rock for the people to drink! A president that
would decry the wastefulness of maintaining 10 private presidential jets during
the election campaign – just to make a show of his famed frugality – then go
ahead to retain same now in office, leaves much to be desired. The new official
excuse that the presidential fleet is maintained by the Air Force/Defence
Ministry is not acceptable. Beyond the galling hypocrisy of it all, it shows
utter contempt for the people before whom he made a show of pretence in order
to gain their trust and vote. Indeed, it falls squarely into the same category
of the much vilified Jonathan’s line: “I-don’t give a damn!”
We did not elect a
president who is pre-occupied with trading blames, and continually traced every
challenge he faced to the failures of an administration he supplanted. It not
only breeds resentment and contempt among those who were not supporters of the
president in the first place, it also exposes the ugly fact of a leader craving
to be excused from facing the responsibility of being a solution-provider. Mr. President, there is no free-pass here,
fix the problem! Barrack Obama in 2008 found in his hand a tattered economy and
a nation that was war-weary. Obama, far from being a pedagogue,
refused
to trade blames, despite every temptation to do so. He was graceful and
grateful enough to know he was elected to fix the problems he inherited. So
instead of haunting George H. Bush, and
boring the nation to tears with sad tales of the ex-president’s failures, Obama
knew the time to govern does not give room for bitter recriminations. Refusing
to mess with the blame-game, he went ahead to fix the problems.
Dele Momodu, in his
incisive interview with Sunday Punch of April 23,2016 said: “ People saw Buhari
as a magician, either rightly or wrongly. So they expected him to perform
miracles. I told him that Nigerians expected him to perform the miracle of
Jesus Christ raising Lazarus from the
dead because Nigeria was virtually comatose.” I couldn’t agree more. Buhari
should be told he has just three more years to prove what he could do with
power. His rent at Aso Rock expires in 2019. The
thinking, sponsored by the ruling party, APC,
that he has an automatic renewal awaiting him is a false, arrogant
concept that must be punctured before it develops.
A piece of advice: with
a stout resolve on the part of Buhari administration to do away with the
blame-game, the president may just find himself turning out to be the
miracle-worker he was elected to be!
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