Lessons from Buhari’s adventure in power

Even the most vehement opponents of the Muhammadu Buhari for President campaign in 2015 couldn’t have predicted that Nigeria would be where it is now! My God! Things were bad in Nigeria, but it’s hard to remember the last time Nigerians had it so hard and hopeless.

Many Nigerians opposed the Buhari candidacy for one, two, or all of political, self-centred, or sectional (bordering on religion and ethnicity) reasons. Still, some had genuine doubts about the man’s capacity to envision leadership for a 21st-century country. More so for a country with the most populous, energetic, mobile, and potentially youthful black population in the entire world. It would be a challenging mission, demanding a deep understanding of the Nigerian situation, an uncommon vision, a large, accommodating heart, boundless capacity for compassion, considerable creativity, and the ability to be teachable and adaptable to the reality of superior arguments! Candidate Buhari would manifestly earn meagre scores on many of these fronts in 2014/2015, but Nigerians were carried away by emotions.

Let us attempt some examples. The candidate then focused his campaign on three significant issues: security, the economy, and corruption. The first point of excitement for me about these focal areas is that there is a nexus, which, if identified early and tackled, would make the overall mission significantly easier to accomplish. Any government that knew what to do to get the economy on track and did it would gain traction on the security and corruption fronts. But it became apparent right from the day Candidate Buhari opened his campaign that he had limited knowledge of all the issues his government promised to tackle.

In a piece entitled “Is Buhari the Change We Need?” published on January 25, 2015. I had written: 

“Unfortunately, aside from the bandwagon frenzy on the need for urgent change, I do not find anything remarkably enticing in the candidacy of the retired general, either from his campaign rallies or documented manifesto. Take the issue of corruption, which is perhaps the most formidable credential upon which his campaign is based. Buhari does not appear to understand the various dimensions of corruption in Nigeria, not to talk of how to tackle the same. Speaking at the opening of his campaign in Uyo, Akwa Ibom state, he promised to send all corrupt people to Kirikiri if he won the elections. He sounded like he would supervise the arrest of these people, put them on trial, and then decide the prison facility where they serve their term. How does an elected president ever achieve that? In any case, this would imply that people can cheat the country so far they do not get caught. I agree that law enforcement is an important part of dealing with corruption, but there are various sociological factors associated with the problem of corruption that no knee-jerk approach would permanently solve. Questions like why people steal in Nigeria; Is corruption really our most serious problem and how countries like China, Malaysia and Indonesia make economic leaps despite the level of corruption in those societies must be asked by anyone serious about tackling corruption in Nigeria….” 

I didn’t expect the president to achieve anything on his corruption fight, and I am sad he hasn’t proved me wrong! So, Candidate Buhari adopted these focus points and sold them to Nigerians without understanding their complexities.

The president would have been more effective if the handicap ended with a lack of deep understanding, but it didn’t. When he took over government, he made a few initial missteps. First off, it took him six months to appoint ministers. Then, his needless fight with the national assembly, where his party had a majority followed. Finally, he also picked on the judiciary. Any government desiring impact must reach a consensus with these other arms of government, of course, without jeopardising its independence. Our president thought he could do this all by himself and painted other arms of government black.

Yet, that is not the primary problem. I consider the administration’s major undoing is the president’s assumption that he knows it all and his refusal to take advice, even from his appointees! I will give just one example.

Apart from Nigeria’s reckless focus on petroleum as its highest source of revenue and foreign exchange, the other critical problem with the economy is the inability to refine for domestic consumption. So, despite being a major supplier of crude, Nigeria depends on other countries for refined products, and is, therefore, affected by the vagaries of the international market! Thus, fuel is expensive, scarce, and even of low quality in some instances, as we speak. However, there were ways to have avoided this, and the president got advice!

On June 21, 2015, Reuters reported that the Transition Committee set up by Buhari had advised him to sell off the four refineries and end the subsidy regime. The report, with the headline: “Nigeria’s Buhari advised to end fuel subsidy,” said, among other things: “the subsidy, which was revealed to have paid out more than $6 billion in fraudulent claims in 2012, is proving to be increasingly costly…”

Even Buhari’s first minister of state for petroleum, Dr Ibe Kachukwu’s sentiment was for the disposal of the refineries. But again, the president, with nothing but the knowledge of having been a minister four decades earlier, overruled!

 Kachukwu was quoted in a September 15, 2016, THISDAY editorial entitled: “Time to sell off the refineries,” as follows: “Personally, I would have chosen to sell the refineries, but President Buhari has instructed that they should be fixed. After they are fixed, if they still operate below 60 per cent, we will know what to do.” The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) now says it needs N3 trillion of unavailable money to pay subsidy for unavailable fuel this year alone! Would yielding advice in 2015 have saved us from these troubles?

What is worse is that government people and members of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) continued to blame the past in the initial instance, and then lay claim to great performances hinged on infrastructural development and other imaginary achievements. When education, health, the economy, and even the security of Nigerians has gone to the dogs, what achievements can anyone brag about?

But the past four years haven’t gone to waste in my opinion. Apart from the modest achievements of the administration, there are lessons Nigerians should learn from this wobbling and fumbling.

The first such thing, to my mind, is that when choosing our next set of leaders, let us watch out and see that they are visionaries. Secondly, let us be sure that their vision has not been handed over to them by some handlers who won’t be there to execute it. So, we should ask these aspirants questions, and they should explain their vision(s) and how they intend to achieve them. 

Next, we should be sure that those who will lead us next are high on their own hype. No man knows everything, so they must be willing to surround themselves with competent people who can speak truth to power.

Most importantly, Nigerians must remain alert and stand ready to question and challenge their elected representatives constantly. Even now, many Nigerians are blind to the failings of this administration, as plain as they are! In a democracy, power lies with the people, and blind loyalty is contrary to the exercise of this obligation. While the other three factors listed above aren’t foolproof, the right to constantly put leaders under the searchlight is one that Nigerians must prepare to exercise to the fullest as we head toward 2023. 

Adedokun can be reached on Twitter @niranadedokun