The President and His Governance Style

POLSCOPE BY EDDY ODIVWRI

For six years, Nigerians are gradually adjusting to the governance style of President Mohammadu Buhari, albeit with tons of complaints and grumblings.

Those who manage the President are quick to attribute all the perceived weaknesses and gaffes to a matter of style. But what kind of style will keep a politician away from the people on whose backs he rode into office? It is somewhat a governance aberration that a political leader will be ensconced in a Presidential Villa so much that he’s grown wary of the people and vice-versa.

But here is a man who on three consecutive times aspired to be a country’s president. He got the nod of the people at the fourth attempt. So, one would expect that this Mr President would hit the ground running, eager to activate his governance blue print and right the wrongs he has always complained about and campaigned against. And from day one he appeared dazed and overwhelmed with his job description.

The first sign that he lacks the fire of expected enthusiasm was in spending six full months, yes, half of a year, looking for who will be his ministers. It was a foretaste of the gallons of gall he would offer us: that we will perpetually run on the slow service lane of unpaved stones. And the picture we get is that of a person who was begged and cajoled to take the job, and so he does it with a lackadaisical mindset, seeming to say under his breath, “this is what/who I am. You either take it or you hug a transformer”

The temptation to compare him with his predecessors is strong. Yes, we agree, people differ in their approaches to handling issues, but such differences are better appreciated with the end products.

For President Buhari, he appears stuck in the Presidential Villa. He hardly leaves the Villa. If not Daura—his home town in Katsina State, and irregular trips to London for medicals, and a few diplomatic shuttles, President Buhari may as well go down in record as the president with the least travel history. This compares sharply with that of then President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was such a travel freak that he was nicknamed Ajala travels. But nothing moves Buhari. No matter the heaviness or importance of the issue, he remains at his base: As Rock. The COVID-19 protocols just further assisted his phobia for travelling, as he seems to have gone to more locations via Zoom than physical visits. No amount of tragedy, havoc or disaster is ever enough to compel Mr President to undertake an on-the-spot assessment.

I recall in 2021 when we had the Ikeja cantonment bomb blast that killed quite a number of persons and damaged many houses, it didn’t take then President Olusegun Obasanjo 24 hours before he arrived Lagos and addressed the people. Never mind the content of what he said, but it was consoling that government promptly showed up and shored up the hope of the people.

Apart from emergency visits arising from strange occurrences, the president refuses to undertake State Visits. In state visits, the President is expected to travel to various states of the federation, assessing the amount of development going on in such states, have interactive meetings with the people of the state, hear them, feel their pains and get relevant feedbacks on the overall governance of the country. In no mean way, it is a veritable means of gauging the feelings of the people being governed. But it is not the style of President Buhari. From the way things are, President Buhari may serve out his eight years without even a one-day visit to many states of the country, especially in the South east and South south, except the whistle appearance at state capitals during the electioneering campaigns. What kind of style is that?

So, pray, how does he get feedbacks, especially as he is said to hardly read newspapers and that when he does, his attention is essentially on cartoons? Does he rely only on what his aides, many of whom are malefic, tell him during briefings, which often times is repackaged to make him feel alright; as they tell him only what he would like to hear?

What is worse, Mr President does not hold or host any presidential media chat, as the custom is or was. Until his style altered the practice, a sitting president usually would play host to select editors across the country, perhaps once in a quarter, where national issues are interrogated and reviewed with a view to getting clarifications on certain policies as well as nudging government to reflect the wish of the people in its daily operations. But with Buhari, all that has been zipped off. And we all look blank and bland. What we see instead is the television appearance of his media aides, especially the two spokesmen : Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu, my friends, who as it were, appropriates the status of Mr President to speak on national issues. The import is hardly ever the same.

Perhaps one insidious style that has continued to rile Nigerians is both the reticence and i-don’t-care attitude that the President demonstrates at critical times in the country. But for the advent of the pandemic last year, wherein Mr President addressed the nation on three or so occasions, the President is wont to play mute and dumb on most national and international issues. Too often, he had to be nudged and cajoled to address the nation when certain things happen. I recall when the xenophobic attacks were rife in South Africa, against Nigerians. Nigerians waited and waited for a presidential voice to no avail. Some mischievous persons on social media had to explain it away that the president has not been able to address the nation on the xenophobic attacks because they are still training him on how to pronounce “Xenophobia”.

With all the spates of kidnappings and attacks across board, the president has not had cause to address the nation, except making passing comments on certain occasions. It does not carry the same weight. How could all the abduction of school children in Katsina, Zamafara, Niger, Kaduna, Yobe etc not demand a presidential address, powered by a set of actions?

What we see, however is a president who seems annoyingly aloof, who either chooses to hit the iron when it has grown so cold or never hits it at all. The consequence is that many things would have gone terribly wrong, sometimes irredeemably, with too much water passing under the bridge, before Mr President would give a whimperish response. A ready example is the loud cry for a change of the security architecture in the country starting from changing the service chiefs. Nigerians shouted themselves hoarse before, very reluctantly Mr President changed the tired and weakened service chiefs last February. Today, the sitting service chiefs are struggling to breathe life into the comatose babies, called national security, handed over to them by their predecessors.

It would be consoling, however if in being reticent or microphone-shy , the president is action-packed. But his style seems to suggest that he will neither say anything, perhaps hear nothing, nor do anything.

Were it not so, the growing dangerous trend of fissiparous attacks on Police formations and Correctional facilities in the South East should have elicited immediate crack action plan aimed at arresting the worrisome trend. But thus far, we have not seen anything in the like of such decisive intervention, save the routine dry boastful talks of “we shall leave no stone unturned…”, whereas they neither see no stone let alone turning them.

With Buhari’s fragrance-free governance style, waiting for the remaining two years for him to step down, stretches forth like eternity.

Pantami and the Burden of an Odious Past

Did you hear that there is a religious irredentist in the Buhari cabinet?

Yes, I know the cabinet is a mix of Muslims and Christians including even Agnostics.

I am not talking of normal Christians or Muslims. Did you not hear there is killer preacher or a preacher killer in the cabinet?

Killer Preacher? In this government? Where did you hear that?

You did not hear that the American government placed one of Buhari’s ministers, Isah Pantami on its watch list for his past toxic religious declarations which are manifestly supportive of terrorism and its advocates?

Ohhh, you mean the controversy surrounding the pronouncements of the Minister of Communications and Digital Economuy, Dr Isah Pantami?

Yes. So you have been following the arguments?

Not much of an argument really. It is some mischievous people that are digging up old buried corpses of yester years.

You call the government of the United States of America a “mischievous people”? Instead of thanking them for saving us from the snares of the enemy within, you have the guts to call them mischievous? I thought you should be ashamed of your own country’s Department of State Security (DSS) which screened and cleared such a “security risk”, to be appointed into the cabinet of a government supposedly given to fighting terrorism. Pray, what did the DSS ever find out on Pantami? Or were they bribed or bewitched as to have skipped such crucial profile?

I am not referring to the Americans as mischievous people. It is the busy bodies in the Nigerian social media space, led by that 30-year old David Hundeyin, who has fled this country, that are unduly escalating the issue.

I think your toxic tongue should be tied. You describe those drumming up this misfit in governance as “busy bodies”. Until they played up the malaise, did you know there was such a person in this administration? So, rather than commend those helping us to unravel this irredentist, you are calling them names.

But the young man said he has repented of those positions. He explained they were positions he held and propagated out of sheer ignorance and as a youth in the past, and that right now, the scales have fallen off his eyes and he sees and interprets issues better now and he is matured. But these Twitter Tigers would not let him be. They rant and rave as if they never had a past themselves.

You are talking Bunkum! You talk about repentance by Pantami. What is the evidence of such repentance? Do you know how much tacit support he may have been giving terrorists and bandits, using government’s platform? Can you now connect the fact that bandits have over 200 SIM cards with which they harass the families of their abductees? Hey, how did bandits end up with so many SIM Cards and have never been tracked and caught?

But that is exactly one of the reasons his ministry is insisting that all telephone users must have National Identity Number (NIN) registration, so they can be traced.

That is coming after so much harm had been done! Who knows how he could connive to compromise the entire system to favour and support his brethren? How can a person with such load of controversy preside over the data base of a country?

But Pantami has said he is sorry for the past and that he’s turned a new leaf.

Arrant nonsense! If he likes, let him turn a new tree. Look, such a person with such odious past is a danger to the rest of us and is not worthy to hold any public office. And don’t you ever try to preach his repentance. Do you know how many people he would have directly or indirectly caused their death by his actions and utterances and preachments? Do you know he is now being linked with the death of Patrick Yakowa, then governor of Kaduna State? Can those lives be recovered? Is it such a person that will be holding public office? Never! Do you realise he tried to deny and discredit the report by the US government until these people you call Twitter Tigers dug up many details of his heinous past including videos of his incendiary sermons, calling non Muslims infidels? And that was when he surrendered but now added that they were things he said out of ignorance, and that he is now matured and better informed? Go and listen to those videos. He called for the removal of certain images from our currency, adoption of Islamic calendar etc. Such a religious extremist! Let me ask you: how old was Pantami when the Al Queda attacks were carried out? He was 33 by September 2006 when he preached those extreme sermons, so how youthful indeed was he? How could a normal child ever support or hail the killing of fellow human, out of sheer religious alchemy and bigotry?

Do you know that this same Pantami , while as a student and Chief Imam at Tafa Balewa University, Bauchi University was accused of preaching a sermon that led to the killing of Sunday Nache Achi, who was then the leader of the ECWA Students ministry of that campus? Achi’s offence was daring to preach about Christianity on that campus. Pantami was then rusticated from that University.

You talk about repentance, do you know that Pantami ordered the Live streaming of the Ministry’s activities and programmes on an exclusively Islamic TV channel? is Nigeria an Islamic country? Is that the sign of someone who has repented of deep Islamic fanaticism? Do you know how he’s been hounding those who are unearthing his odious past? Is that someone who is sorry and contrite in spirit? If Lai Mohammed is looking for purveyors of hate speech, has he not found one in his fellow minister?

You can go on and on . The fact remains that if Mr President is not convinced Pantami is a danger, he would remain as a minister.

That’s unbridled arrogance. This is a democracy. The ultimate power is with the people. That’s the kind of red herring tactics pursued by Dr Kabir Kabo, who represented Pantami at a Channels TV programme last Wednesday, where he merely rambled and rambled and dodged the core issues in question. Have you forgotten so soon the #EndSARS campaign? No matter the powers behind Pantami, including the Speaker of the House of Reps, Mr Femi Gbajabiamila, who shut down the motion calling for Pantami’s resignation, they will soon realise that those who have no goods at sea, have nothing to fear about the raging storm. Trust me, Pantami will melt and blink. It has just begun!