Whither Buhari in the Niger-ECOWAS-Nigeria impasse?

Nigeria’s northern geopolitical neighbour, Niger Republic, was effectively an annex of our country under the rulership of the immediate past President, Muhammadu Buhari. At every given opportunity, Buhari never failed to advertise the consanguineal connectivities between him as an individual, and Niger Republic, and indeed between his traditional sociocultural origins in Daura in Katsina State, and Maradi prefecture in Niger Republic. He confirmed he had cousins across the Nigerian border and even threatened to relocate to Niger if he suffered any discomfiture from Nigerians, as he disembarked from office in 2023. Buhari and his Nigerien counterpart who shares a slightly moderated first name with him, Mahamadou Issoufou, both signed an agreement in July 2018, for Nigeria to extend oil pipelines to Niger, and to build a refinery in that country, at the cost of $2Billion, fully bankrolled by Nigeria.

Under Buhari, a 286-kilometre long rail line to connect Nigeria and Niger, was approved by Buhari’s federal executive council, (FEC), in September 2020. The Kano- Katsina- Jibiya- Maradi rail link is costing Nigeria a staggering sum of $1.959 Billion. Buhari’s successor, Bola Tinubu inherited the project which was 35 per cent completed in 2023, and is proceeding with its completion. It should be ready before the end of 2026. The June 2021 edition of a publication which goes by the name The Africa Report, indeed asked a rhetorical question, occasioned by Buhari’s obsession with Niger, and Nigeria’s glaring economically lopsided investments in the desert nation. The document inquired: “What is it about Buhari’s passion for his northern neighbour, the Republic of Niger? Is it economic or commercial logic, altruism or just family and ethnic ties?” Buhari’s spokesman, Femi Adesina in a February 10, 2021 edition of Arise News proffered that: “Jibiya and Maradi constitute a significant trading core between Nigeria and Niger Republic dating back many centuries. This vital infrastructure will establish an end-to-end logistic in railway transport services before northern and southern sections of the country, reaching Nigeria’s southern ports of Lagos and Warri.”

Added to these prodigal investments in a virtual wasteland was Buhari’s procurement of sports utility vehicles, (SUVs) valued at $2.7million for senior government officials in the employ of Niger Republic, in August 2021. Buhari during his years as helmsman, practically developed Niger with Nigeria’s commonwealth at a time Nigerians were suffering, and are still groaning from the buffeting spinoffs of multisectoral lack, deprivation, hunger, insecurity and despair, precipitated by his leadership. Ochereome Nnana, respected columnist with Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper, provided insights into Buhari’s consangiunity with Niger Republic in the November 25, 2020 edition of his column. His words: “Buhari is a first generation Nigerian whose father, Ardo Adamu Buhari, a dock seller, migrated from Niger and settled in Nigeria. He married Zulaihat, a Nigerian woman who bore Muhammadu Buhari for him.”

Establishing this foundation is imperative for our investigation of the subsisting diplomatic fissions between Niger Republic and the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS), on one hand. There is also the estrangement of Niger, with Nigeria which President, Bola Tinubu, doubles as ECOWAS Chairman, in another breadth. Tinubu’s leadership of the regional grouping was renewed for a second term, at a meeting of leaders of member countries last December. The Niger Republic/ECOWAS/Nigeria stalemate which began in 2023, has stretched into a second year. Specifically on July 26, 2023, the commander of the presidential guard in Niger, Abdourahamane Tchiani, arrested and detained the incumbent democratically elected President, Mahamadou Bazoum. Tchiani proclaimed himself the new leader of a new military adventurers in that country. The coupists suspended the country’s Constitution and refused entreaties to reinstate the ousted President. Nigeria’s President, Tinubu was barely two months in office at the time, and had just assumed the leadership of ECOWAS, shortly before eruption of the Nigerien crisis. He threatened that Nigeria may consider leading an ECOWAS force to dislodge the mutineers if they didn’t restore Niger Republic’s Constitution and President Bazoum.

Tinubu despatched President Patrice Talon of Benin Republic to Niamey to mediate in the governance crisis in the brother West African country. A wholly Nigerian delegation led by Nigeria’s former military Head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar, was also emplaced by Tinubu on the same impasse. This bouquet of diplomatic engagements, however, yielded no tangible results. Rather, Tchiani and his colleagues dug in. They were emboldened by precedents in Burkina Faso, Guinea and Mali, where the military establishment had upset the apple cart of popular governance in the west coast and formed new alliances with Russia, as counterpoint to their erstwhile colonisers, France. Alongside Burkina Faso and Mali, Niger has since exited ECOWAS and formed a three-nation mutual defence partnership which they christened the Alliance of Sahel States, (ASS).

If you ask me, the onset of the Nigerien crisis was a most appropriate opportunity to engage and test former President Muhammadu Buhari’s touted relationship with the northerly nation. If he was not specifically beckoned upon by Tinubu to avail his immediate successor his services, it would not have been out of place for Buhari to offer himself to help out with the Nigerien face-off. He shares the same sociocultural background with the Nigeriens across our borders. As President, Buhari clearly and needlessly over-romanced Niger Republic at the expense of our national till. He did so much for that country with funds borrowed in the name of Nigeria, which will be continously serviced for decades to come by successor generations. He should be confident of a red carpet if he was to mediate in the logjam. While Buhari played Santa Claus in Niger, the educational, healthcare, agricultural, defence, infrastructural sectors in Nigeria were grossly under-funded. We are talking about the blind investment of well over $4 Billion frittered in the sands of Sahara desert.

Say what you like about him, Olusegun Obasanjo the first democratically enthroned President of Nigeria’s fourth republic has continually acquitted himself as a preeminent leader and statesman, in and out of office. His stature looms large, his tentacles embedded in time and space. While on a visit to Nigeria July 16, 2003, former President Fradique de Menezes of Sao Tome and Principe, was deposed by the military back home. A flustered Obasanjo who wouldn’t brook such a putsch especially when the victim was his guest, held Menezes by the hands, took him in his aircraft and flew him back home to Sao Tome. The typically humorous Obasanjo reassured his guest as much as possible in the course of the trip, that he will be restored. Obasanjo jokingly said to his beleaguered Sao Tome counterpart: “If there is shooting within the perimeters of the airport at the point of the descent of my plane, my pilots will abort touchdown and head back to the skies,” as he tried to crack up his brooding guest. By July 23, 2003, one week after Menezes’s initial dislodgement, Obasanjo reinstated him to the delight of the international community.

Mathieu Kerekou and Boni Yaya, both former Presidents of the Republic of Benin, Nigeria’s western neighbours, were regular guests of Nigeria during the Obasanjo years. They often never had to fly and just drove to meet their host in Badagry in Lagos State, or Otta in Ogun State. In response to cross-border robberies, smuggling and child-trafficking considered injurious to Nigeria’s peace and economy, Obasanjo never spared any chance to padlock the Nigeria-Benin borders. The attendant socioeconomic asphyxiation of these border seal-ups to Benin Republic, compelled regular entreaties by successive Beninoise governments to Nigeria. The sing-song was always for Nigeria to conceive of and treat the small French-speaking country as its 37th state. Such was the worth of Nigeria in regional politics. Obasanjo continues to be called upon across the world, to add width to issues of democracy, politics, governance, peace and international affairs. That is an essential patriarch.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has recently been on the road across West Africa as Special Envoy of ECOWAS. He has been leading mediation talks across the subregion, especially in Mali, one of the rebelling member countries of the body. Indeed, Jonathan is Chair of the “West African Elders Forum,” a senior advisory body committed to peace and stability in West Africa. In August 2022, Jonathan led the “Electoral Observation Mission” of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, to monitor the presidential polls which produced William Ruto as president of Kenya. In January 2024, Jonathan headlined a group of multidisciplinary experts from across the Commonwealth to observe the elections in the Asian country of Pakistan. The brief of the body was to offer independent and comprehensive assessment of the electoral process in the country on that occasion.

Buhari’s deputy during his time as President, Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, was in July 2023, less than six weeks after he left office, appointed Global Advisor to Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, (GEAPP). The body is an agglomeration of philanthropists, local entrepreneurs, governments and financing partners. Last August, Osinbajo and Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party, (LP), at the 2023 presidential election, were guests of the 2024 “Democratic National Convention” in Chicago in the United States. The National Democratic Institute, (NDI), organisers of the convention is a nonprofit, non-partisan organisation pushing democratic values around the world. These are just aspects of concerns and engagements to which Osinbajo has been adding vistas since he departed Aso Villa in May 2023.

I’ve always wondered what worth, what value Buhari, one of Nigeria’s most privileged public officers of all time, has ever impacted to the broad gamut of governance and politics in Nigeria. At various times, Buhari was Military Governor; Federal Commissioner, (more contemporaneously Minister); Military Head of State and civilian President. Despite this string of enviable adornments, I’m yet to see Buhari present a paper at any conference; lead a cerebral discussion at any forum; or headline a symposium or conference on the national question. I’m yet to see his memoirs or autobiography where he shares perspectives on the special privileges Nigeria has availed him and how he has in turn been beneficial to the national cause. I’m tempted to conclude that Buhari unimaginatively, unforgivably frittered the collective calendars, the patrimony and emotions of Nigerians, especially during his eight year reign, better branded “Nigeria’s years of the locusts.” Buhari had little to offer and he offered nothing.

Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA), teaches Creative Writing at the University of Abuja.