BUHARI’S PLACE IN HISTORY

Many Nigerians have lost faith in the administration, argues Sonnie Ekwowusi

Addressing the Service Chiefs last week at the Presidential Villa, Abuja President Buhari pledged that he would not leave office a failure. There are two deductions, in my humble view, from the aforesaid pledge. One: despite his seemingly unperturbed stance on how the public assesses his performance in power, President Buhari is very much conscious of his place in history. He is afraid that history will judge him harshly. If there is one judgment capable of making one restless or causing one to lose sleep, it is the inescapable judgment of history.

As President Buhari’s tenure is gradually coming to an end, he is battling to pacify the pangs of conscience. This was why Mr. President appeared to be telling us last week: “I am not a failure. I am a good man. I will not leave office a failure”. I agree with Reinhold Niebuhr that the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the needs of the society and the imperatives of a sensitive conscience or the conflict between ethics and politics cannot be harmonized in favour of the individual if the moral imagination of the individual does not seek to comprehend the needs of the society. Or, put differently, the most perfect justice cannot be established if the moral imagination of the individual does not seek to comprehend the needs and interests of his fellow men.

The second deduction from President Buhari’s pledge is that he is not in touch with reality. President Buhari has refused to read the mene, mene, tekel, upharsin emblazoned on the walls of Aso Villa Presidential Building, Abuja. He is yet to understand that his eight-year tenure is coming to a pathetic end. For example, this is August, signaling the end of 2021. Next year is for political alignment and realignment, and, so literally does not exist. 2023 is an election year. The years have been eaten by locust. Even if President Buhari decides to be constantly repeating the morale-boosting silenzio Bruno (of Luca and Alberto) from now till he quits power Nigeria’s collapse under him cannot be reversed. More importantly, not less than 95% of Nigerians had judged President Buhari a failure. After political stewardship comes one’s judgment. No second judgment. Last Friday the Nigeria Info Radio Station did a phone-in program on Buhari’s pledge that he will not leave power a failure. Virtually all the callers unanimously concurred that President Buhari had already failed.

At present, Nigeria exhibits the major symptoms of a failed state: incapacity of the President Buhari administration to defend and maintain Nigeria’s territorial sovereignty as well as secure the borders of Nigeria from internal and external violation in consonant with sections 1 (2) and 2(1) of the 1999 Constitution; inability of the president, pursuant to section 14 (2) (b) of the 1999 Constitution, to protect lives and property of the citizenry and to suppress internal insurrection, banditry, secession threats, murder, anarchy, fear, and chaos everywhere in Nigeria. The impression one gets wittingly or unwittingly on listening to Mr. President is that he has lost control of the state of affairs. It is sad that Nigeria under Buhari has become a full-fledged failed state in the fashion of Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, Central African Republic and Myanmar. Security wise, Nigeria is unsafe. Nigeria has a weak rule of law. Foreign investors are scared stiff coming to Nigeria. Many young Nigerians are freeing to Canada and other countries.

In his inauguration speech in 2015, President Buhari said: “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody. That is a lie because President Buhari belongs only to the Fulanis. If Nigeria is a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and multi-national society, why should Mr. President hold brief for Fulani herdsmen; an attitude which does not reflect the shared visions and aspirations of the variegated interest groups and nationalities that constitute Nigeria? Whereas President Buhari has deployed Nigeria’s military intelligence to hunt down Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho he has refused to use the same intelligence to arrest and prosecute the murderous Fulani herdsmen who, in the last six years, have been freely going about killing, maiming, and raping their victims and dispossessing them of their farm lands. Despite the mounting complaints that 90% of his political appointees are from the North, President Buhari has refused to alter this imbalance in conformity with the pluralistic and multi-ethnic nature of the Nigerian society and the Federal Character principle as enshrined in section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution. This is another glaring evidence of the failure of President Buhari. Now hardly any day passes without some Nigerians being killed or mowed down or abducted. The most tragic is the abduction of school children. In fact we have lost count of the serial abductions of school children under Buhari. This is another evidence of the failure of government.

In case you are still probing why history will be harsh on Buhari, the conscience of the nation Leah Sharibu was abducted on February 19, 2018 by Boko Haram religious terrorists. Since then she has been held by her captors for refusing to convert to Islam. We don’t even know whether she is still alive or dead. Meanwhile the Buhari government is socializing with Boko Haram terrorists and even offering the so-called “repentant” terrorists “amnesty.” In February 2020, the Borno State Commissioner for Information, Babakura Jato, flared up upon discovering that the so-called “repentant Boko Haram” terrorists were not repentant at all because they had gone back to join their killer-colleagues. He also said that a lot of soldiers are not happy about this ugly development. According to one Nigerian soldier, “We were at the Maimalari barracks when some of these Boko Haram people were released. The authorities are releasing them, but Boko Haram are killing soldiers that they capture. This does not make sense to us at all. We continue to sweep across the bushes to flush these people out, and then the government will release them. Does that not amount to wasted efforts?”

Can you now understand the likely verdict of history?