By Anthony Chuka Konwea, P.E.
“A jack of all blunders, will be a rectifier of none.”
- This writer’s play on a common English proverb.
“Opia n’abo di na b’eze, nke nwe isi adi ho nko, mana nke di nko enwe ho isi.”
- An Igbo proverb which translates as: “In the King’s palace, there lie two machetes. The one that has a handle is not sharp while the one that is sharp has no handle.”
What do you do with a potentially gifted, restless, hyper-active child who is moody, sulky, petulant, querulous and given to throwing tantrums? Do you throw sweets at him to mollify him or do you take him to see a behavioral specialist for extensive clinical observation and investigation in order to establish whether the roots of his behavioral problem lies with the child or with yourself or with both of you?
Well if you are Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, you would do none of the above. You would instead issue horse-whips to a paid help with an instruction to flog the child into submission whenever he raises his voice in peaceful protest all in the name of enforcing summary discipline!
Believe it or not in this 21st century this is the situation currently playing out in Nigeria, where State agents i.e. the Army and the Police, armed with assault rifles – the type needed to fight terrorists – are tacitly encouraged as a matter of state policy to shoot down youthful, unarmed, although misguided, pro-Biafran independence separatists whenever they engage in public, peaceful protests and agitations for the release of their incarcerated leader Daniel Kanu.
As far-fetched as it may seem there is a mischievous school of thought that holds that President Buhari is training the Nigeria military and the police in combat marksmanship by using unarmed Nigerian citizens exercising their democratic rights of peaceful protest in the South-East as target practice, before deploying these “professionally trained” marksmen and armed units to the fight against Boko-Haram terrorists in the North-East.
Yet it is truly amazing that President Buhari fails to realize that each death of an unarmed, peaceful pro-Biafran demonstrator so needlessly incurred, is a fresh wound on the corpus of Nigerian unity and a fresh nail being hammered down into the coffin of the credibility and longevity of his own political Administration.
You see at the rate we are going, at some point down the road, perhaps in the not too distant future, Nigerians would be forced to make a binary choice between Nigerian unity based on the egalitarian principles of fairness and justice to all the component parts of Nigeria on the one hand and the continued sustenance of the choleric Buhari Administration on the other hand.
In making that choice Nigerians may soon realize that with each passing day the Buhari Administration, (a) looks to be increasingly out of its depths vis-a-vis the economic challenges confronting the nation; (b) is selective with scant regard for justice in its avowed fight against corruption; (c) would rather act as a sharp razor than a soothing balm within the ethno-religious fractures existing in the nation, (d) is amateurishly and needlessly opening up a new war front(s) in the South East and possibly the South-South regions of the country at a time when the war against terrorism in the North East region is tactically stalemated to all intents and purposes.
It is so sad and pathetic that before our own very eyes, the hitherto enduring and enigmatic Buhari phenomenon is being gradually yet ruthlessly demystified with no other than President Muhammadu Buhari himself as the chief iconoclast.
Like a strip-tease show where the figurine holds the audience spellbound with their hands clasped over their mouths in awe as she peels off layer upon layer of padded clothing, we are watching in horror as with each utterance, each action and each inaction, President Buhari strips away layer upon layer of his own political credibility and authority.
To be sure, when this writer urged Nigerians and particularly the Igbo to vote for President Buhari rather than the then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 Nigerian Presidential elections, one was very conscious of the risk element involved given President Buhari’s undemocratic, and narrow-minded antecedents as a military head of state in 1984 before he was overthrown by his own colleagues in 1985.
In the “A Nation in Heat” series of essays written by this writer in the run-up to those elections, one had observed that in having to make a forced choice between both candidates, Nigeria was placed between a rock and a hard place. Between King Pharaoh (then President Jonathan) and the Red Sea (then General Buhari) on the other hand.
Note that even at that time (see “A Nation in Heat – Disaster Foretold”) one did not envisage General Buhari as being our own equivalent of the Biblical Moses but rather as the foreboding Red Sea over which we must cross. Our perception of both presidential candidates is perhaps best captured by the Igbo proverb of the two kinds of machetes found in a king’s palace rendered above as the prelude to this piece.
We leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out which of the two presidential candidates (Jonathan or Buhari) approximates to the sharp knife without a handle and which approximates to the blunt knife with a handle.
In spite of our lingering doubts, we had given President Buhari the overall nod based on our assumptions that (a) age would have tempered his renowned inflexibility, (b) his years out in the political cold would have endowed him with a broader perspective and a better appreciation of the subtleties of modern democratic governance and (c) he would readily seize this once in a lifetime opportunity as a God sent gift to etch his name in gold as the greatest Nigerian leader ever.
Such were our wishes for President Buhari.
We did not stop there, in a post-election piece (“A Nation in Heat – Fait Accompli) we spelled out for then President-elect Muhammadu Buhari the kind of reforms he should undertake in the body polity, including a call for inclusive democracy, the outright cancellation of the so-called security and legislative or constituency votes, the complete banning of nomadic cattle grazing, the danger inherent in the mismanagement of ethnic diversity in Nigeria and much more. Indeed the prelude to that piece was this opening rider:
The minority may have their say;
The majority may have their way;
But the entire nation must carry the day.
……Let us call it inclusive democracy.
Even in those early days when he was still president-elect, we sensed that malevolent forces were already circling above trying to capture the yet to be sworn-in president and hold him perpetually captive in order to achieve various parochial agendas inimical to our overall national interest.
This writer published a cautionary piece titled ‘Inoculate the President.’ In that piece we advised the President to be on his guard so as not to fall victim of the fabled “Aso Rock Virus” which causes the “Aso Rock Disease” prevalent among Nigerian presidents residing in the Presidential Palace aptly named Aso Rock. As a rider to that piece were the following exhortative and as well cautionary lines:
Crap leaders look out for themselves.
Minor leaders look out for their sect or section.
Great Leaders look out for their country.
Exceptional Leaders look out for humanity.
Dear Leader, which are you?
With all these pep-advices, it was our thinking that we had done our duty by our country Nigeria and equipped President Buhari with some of the most altruistic guidelines he needed to restore Nigeria’s lost glory in spite of the downturn in the price of crude oil.
Indeed at his post-Inaugural address, President Buhari seemed to have captured the essence of these free pep-advices when he famously and rightly declared that ‘he belongs to everybody and yet to nobody.’ After that declaration of status he moved into Aso Rock, the Presidential Villa in Abuja shortly thereafter.
And since that time all has not been well. From that time till this day it has been one blunder upon another blunder. One blunder has closely followed upon the heels of another blunder.
Perhaps the first blunder was President Buhari’s declaration that he was not in a hurry to constitute his cabinet since he wanted to take the time to be comprehensively briefed about the state of the nation by career civil servants. And so for one month, two months, three months, four months, five months after inauguration there was no Federal Cabinet and no Federal Ministers.
The next blunder came when President Buhari famously declared that Ministers in Nigeria are merely empty noise makers! Although intrinsically correct given the pitiable level of development in the country, in the annals of Nigeria this was an unprecedented statement coming straight from presidential mandibles. This was a vote of no-confidence in the yet to be formed ministerial cabinet who’s lineup was expected with bated breaths by many would-be ministers across the length and breadth of the nation. We will return to this particular point later.
Another blunder was to surround himself with personal aides drawn exclusively from the sections of the country which voted for him in the past election. In principle this action was not a crime since it lies well within Presidential rights to appoint whomsoever he wishes into the ranks of the Presidential staff.
Although expedient however, it was a totally ill-advised decision on at least two grounds. Firstly for someone who had been rightly accused of narrow-mindedness in the past, it makes sense to cast your presidential staff net over a very wide area in order to have as many diverse interests catered for among your advisory staff.
Secondly this is a misguided decision as it would convey a sense of denial of developmental access to non-represented areas in a nation with a totally unprofessional approach to political administration where having a son or a daughter in the corridors of power translates into attracting physical developments to your town or region, a practice which by itself is a form of corruption and from which even President Muhammadu Buhari is not immune.
As if these were not sufficient unforced errors, more grievous blunders were to follow. The heavy handedness based on implicit presidential support with which the military and police forces routinely clamp down on youthful Nigerian citizens of Igbo extraction protesting the incarceration of their leader Daniel Kanu including the extra-judicial murder of several of these peaceful protesters regardless of the justification of their right to peaceful protest is utterly reprehensible and a fascist affront on the liberty of each and every Nigerian citizen whatever their personal opinions on the matter might be.
In yet another blunder, identical crude and savage military might was deployed to exterminate as yet unaccounted numbers (running into several hundreds of persons according to unofficial sources) of Nigerian citizens of Shiite religious inclination on the grounds that they constituted a risk to the safe passage of the Chief of Army Staff in Kaduna State.
In another blunder, the President in a publicly televised press chat justified the executive disobedience of judicial bail granted to several accused persons by competent law courts on the grounds that “the crimes committed by the accused was too serious to warrant bail.”
It was a blunder for the President to publicly prejudge Nigerian citizens with differing political views as guilty and to adjudge his political allies in the presidential cabinet as innocent without prior legal conviction or legal acquittal.
Verily it was a blunder for President Buhari not to have scrapped the security vote attached to the Office of the President and by extension State Governors despite the fact that his administration is currently investigating questionable disbursements and abuses of the same vote made under his predecessor.
Besides it was a blunder for President Buhari not to have decisively intervened in the aggressive even criminal tendencies attributed to certain nomadic citizens associated with cattle grazing by announcing a time table for the phasing out of itinerant cattle rearing nationwide.
In a further blunder, the Year 2016 budget proposals presented with much fanfare by the President to the National Assembly has been publicly adjudged by the same National Assembly to be too shoddily done to merit their consideration with an open appeal to the President to withdraw it for Executive review before representing it afterwards.
Against all expectations, the blunders kept on coming at almost unprecedented rates. In less than 10 months of his Administration therefore the Buhari Administration has bequeathed to the nation an impressive bouquet of blunders the repercussions of some of which may well be felt far into the future by coming generations of Nigerians.
Even the fight against corruption which appears to be the centerpiece if not the sole piece of the present administration’s governance efforts has not been immune from administrative blunders.
By selectively over-dramatizing the accusations made against suspected corrupt persons rather than presenting sound evidence in courts of law to nail persons living above their judicially established means, including selectively parading some accused persons, but not others, in chains, the Buhari Administration has provided a credible leeway for accused persons to justifiably plead political persecution on the basis of partisan political affiliation or ethnicity.
It was a blunder for the president to claim while outside Nigeria for that matter that the greatest obstacle in the fight against corruption is the judiciary. If the judiciary had a voice it could equally counter claim that the greatest obstacle in the fight against corruption is the lack of proper due diligence by agents of the Executive in professionally investigating cases. After all what is so difficult in proving that a certain Mr. A or a certain Mrs. B is living well beyond their means?
Without prejudice it was an economic policy blunder for the President to publicly claim, again while outside Nigeria that he has not seen cogent reason to devalue the Nigerian currency confirming in effect that he is either encroaching into the responsibilities of the Central Bank or that the Central Bank of Nigeria is not independent but is tied to the apron string of the Presidency.
Indeed the dynamics currently emanating from the Federal Executive Council or presidential cabinet seem to indicate that ministerial morale is at an all-time low. On this point it is eminently possible that heeding the pre-nomination advice of the President, ministers are working feverishly and silently under the radar with the effect of all that supposed hard work yet to be seen or felt by all.
Nevertheless it is difficult to pinpoint any single member of the Federal Cabinet who has either the stature or the clout to meaningfully disagree with the President in a serious yet respectful policy debate. And this runs to the very core of the fundamental problem confronting the Buhari Administration. In effect the Federal Cabinet was effectively castrated by presidential pronouncements even before it was composed. Under this hamstrung setting it is easy to imagine that the Federal Cabinet under the Buhari Administration will rank least of all Federal Cabinets in the history of Nigeria in terms of creative tension.
It is in the light of this successful subversive effort against the Federal Executive Council that the prescient observer will begin to appreciate President Buhari’s subsisting attempts at also castrating the Judiciary under the guise of prosecuting the fight against corruption. This was why this writer sounded the alarm in a recent opinion piece in the second of the “The Changers must Change” series of articles subtitled “– Integrate don’t Differentiate!”
Once President Buhari is allowed to successfully shackle the Judiciary, the last major state institution to be targeted would be the Legislature. Note that by consciously shooting down unarmed protesting Nigerian citizens, the Nigerian military and police forces have already declared their readiness to be compromised at any time.
By turning a blind eye to these human rights infringements and abnormalities, the hitherto vocal Labor movement as well as the Nigerian Press have already acquiesced to the new reality with possibly ominous consequences. Recall that in a recent public demonstration by medical practitioners in Owerri against the labor policies of the Imo State Governor, a medical doctor was shot in the head by security agents! This is the new reality in Nigeria in the 21st Century.
When the Judiciary and the Legislature are ultimately shackled, President Buhari like King Louis XIV of France may proudly proclaim if he so wishes, “L’Etat c’est moi” (I am the State) and there would be nothing any one of us can do about it.
The reader may ask at this stage, “Is this President Buhari’s secret agenda?” My answer at this present time would be “probably not.” But should the reader further ask “Is this scenario possible at all?” My answer at this present time would be “eminently yes.”
Few presidents assume power with the declared or undeclared intention of becoming dictators or despots. All presidents however like to probe the limits of their presidential authority to determine what they can get away with. It is a natural instinct for presidents to choose to operate at the very frontiers of their presidential powers while grabbing as much political turf as may be conceded to them by unwary and weaker State Institutions.
It is only when they manage to acquire so much extraneous territorial influence beyond the fringes of their constitutional allotted executive authority space that hubris, accumulated impropriety, self-preservation and sycophants all conspire to sow the seed of dictatorship in them at which point they can hardly put up a credible resistance despite their otherwise noble intentions.
Up till this point we have highlighted President Buhari’s political blunders. For the sake of balance it is pertinent to also acknowledge his major achievements.
In this writer’s opinion, President Buhari’s major achievement so far is his resoluteness in chasing down corruption. Even then however there is a threshold beyond which even he cannot dare cross given that corruption most likely would have played a role or two in the manner of his eventual emergence as President of Nigeria in the first instance.
Another achievement of President Buhari is that he is the first Nigerian President or head of state for a very long while who has successfully circumscribed his first Lady’s potential forays into the political sphere under the guise of one pet project or the other. Realizing how difficult it is for many a Nigerian male to align his wife within the tracks of self-discipline, President Buhari commands my unequivocal respect for this uncommon feat.
President Buhari has abolished the fraud prone petroleum subsidy regime which is also highly commendable. Under President Buhari, private electric utilities have been denied the right of imposing so called electric meter maintenance fees or fixed charges not tied to actual power supplied. President Buhari has also implemented the Treasury Single Account for Federal Government agencies thereby effectively blocking many loopholes for fraudulent activity in the Civil Service.
Given this last feat, it should not be too much of a surprise that there would be severe back lash from the dons of the corruption mafia in the bureaucracy. Indeed the shambolic, scandalous and ridiculous 2016 Budget item heads- and sub-item heads – amounts may actually be deliberate actions of sabotage and subversion unleashed by disgruntled bureaucratic elements into whose malevolent hands President Buhari fell head long by not constituting his cabinet well in advance of actual budget presentation in order to give the supervising ministers enough time to critically supervise the entire budget line by line.
Talk of the pitfalls of one man attempting to do everything by himself and not having enough confidence in others. The abiding lesson therefore is that only God is indispensable on earth.
Everything said and done however, it should be conceded that on each of the two occasions President Muhammadu Buhari has attained the pinnacle of political power in Nigeria, destiny has dealt him a mean hand of cards from the card deck. Paradoxically in doing so however destiny has also been kind to him.
Challenges can either be seen as problems or seen as opportunities akin to aces in the card game poker. An ace can either be an opportunity or a curse. Poker – literate people will tell you that an ace in your hand may either be the highest ranking card available or the lowest ranking card possible depending on circumstantial interpretation.
The current challenges facing Nigeria as difficult as they might at first seem may actually be aces. How different would Nigeria be by now if President Buhari had lived up to his own inaugural pledge of ‘being for everybody while being for nobody.’ In spite of his personal frugality, all his actions clearly indicate that he is solely for his friends, his associates, his geopolitical region, his religious sect, his political supporters and those who voted for him in the last elections.
It is a tragedy that a President that started off with the potential of being a great national leader, has reduced or allowed himself to be reduced to the level of a minor leader. How did the late President Nelson Mandela acquire such a high global recognition? Was it entirely due to the fact that he spent so many years in jail that made President Mandela an exceptional leader with global stature? Certainly not.
What made Mandela exceptional was that when he acquired power, he forgot the past horrific injustices meted out to him, he forgave his jailers, reconciled with the white racists and reset South Africa on the path of racial reconciliation. He could have gone after the white South Africans as President Robert Mugabe did in neighboring Zimbabwe. But he chose a greater and a nobler path, the path of forbearance that invariably leads to universal acclaim.
Tragically this path of letting bygones be bygones has proven to be too elevated for President Buhari going by his utterances, his conduct and his demeanor.
In the run-up to the last elections, many supporters of the then ruling party the PDP had scarcely a kind word to say about then General Buhari. He was the subject of many unprintable insults as was his opponent then President Jonathan from supporters of then General Buhari’s own party.
President Buhari has since proven to be singularly incapable of following President Mandela’s example by walking in his footsteps along the higher path which does not preclude the administration of justice and the recovery of corruptly acquired public wealth within the ambit of the law. The Igbos some of who feature among the chief culprits in the pre-election and post-election abuse of President Buhari have borne the brunt of presidential political reprisals.
Can anyone tell apart the difference between the gunning down of unarmed pro-Biafra separatists in the South Eastern part of Nigeria by the agents of the Nigerian State under President Muhammadu Buhari on the one hand and the gunning down of black South Africans demanding freedom and racial equality in South Africa by agents of the apartheid regime in South Africa decades ago on the other hand?
Who can tell apart the difference between the shooting down of Shiite protesters in Kaduna (armed by their own self-admission with cudgels, machetes and sticks) by the agents of the Nigerian State under President Muhammadu Buhari on the one hand and the shooting down of Palestinian protesters demanding a free Palestine by Israeli forces on the other hand?
How does the then official Nigerian reaction to the killing of protesting blacks in apartheid South Africa and the then official Nigerian reaction to the killing of protesting Palestinians in Israeli occupied territories articulated by the various past military administrations in Nigeria of which General Buhari was a part, square with the present killing of protesters in Nigeria by the Nigerian military and police under the same President Buhari?
The killing of unarmed Nigerian citizens exercising their rights to peaceful protests by agents of the Nigerian State under the President Muhammadu Buhari administration should stop forthwith. There are ways and means of controlling peaceful protests when they threaten to get out of hand. These include using tear gas, plastic bullets, Tasers, water cannons etc. Live ammunition should always be used as a last resort and not as a first resort by security forces and even at that only in the face of imminent threat to life.
In order to diffuse tensions and the associated loss of Nigerian lives President Buhari should discontinue the ongoing prosecution of Daniel Kanu for what has become a purely political issue. This is not such a big deal because President Buhari has expressed his willingness to negotiate with and possibly grant amnesty to the Boko Haram terrorists who have committed far worse atrocities, if only that can secure freedom of the missing Chibok girls.
Nigeria as we all know no longer has the foreign exchange to purchase such items as plastic bullets, water cannons, tear gas or Tasers manufactured abroad. Let President Buhari engage and occupy the attentions of the protesting neo-Biafrans by challenging them to produce Made-in-Nigeria tear gas, Made-in-Nigeria plastic bullets, Made-in-Nigeria Tasers, and Made-in-Nigeria water cannons before the end of the year 2016 with adequate Federal Government support and patronage. I am confident that if this is done, working prototypes of these items would be presented to him before the year runs out.
I assure you that if he does that in addition to releasing Daniel Kanu and his associates, these current misguided, neo-Biafran street and internet agitations would dwindle if not out-rightly cease and we would have effectively killed several birds such as ending the quest for Biafra and shoring up of the dwindling reputation of the Buhari Administration with one stone. We would also be on the verge of finding a Nigerian solution to other Nigerian problems such as lack of unity, lack of domestic productivity, cries of marginalization etc.
Why should the father of a hyperactive child waste his money in paying huge fees to behavioral specialists for clinical therapy sessions or waste money in buying horse whips to instill discipline or waste money in buying hypertension medication for self-use when he can invest a fraction of all that money in buying complicated toys to occupy the attention of his restless son thereby securing lasting peace for himself and breathing space for other members of his family? No sacrifice is too much for the sake of peace. That is Mandela’s abiding legacy.
– THE END —