President Muhammadu
Buhari’s strategists, if they are at work at all, are chasing ants and ignoring
the elephant in the room. They do him great disservice. Their oversight is
hubristically determined either by incapacity or a vendetta-induced
distraction. It is time they changed the game and the narrative; time they woke
up. It’s been more than 15months since the incumbent assumed office as
President, but his handlers have been projecting him as if he is a Umaru Musa
Yar’Adua or a Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, first time Presidents who could afford
the luxury of a learning period before settling down to the job, and who in
addition must prove themselves to earn necessary plaudits. In making this
mistake, President Buhari’s handlers created a sad situation whereby they have
progressively undermined his image.
The truth is that Muhammadu Buhari is
neither a Yar’Adua nor a Jonathan. He may have sought the office of President
in three previous elections, before succeeding at his fourth attempt in 2015,
but he came into office on a different template. He had been Head of State of
Nigeria(1983-85) and had before then served his country at very high levels as
military administrator, member of the Supreme Military Council, head of key
government institutions and subsequently from 1985 -2015, as a member of the
country’s Council of State, the highest advisory body known to the Nigerian
Constitution.
In real terms, therefore,
General Muhammadu Buhari did not need the job of President. If he had again
lost the election in 2015, his stature would not have been diminished in any
way. His place in Nigerian history was already assured. That is precisely why
it was possible to package him successfully as a man on a messianic mission to
rescue Nigeria from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and whatever is ascribed to that in the
emotion-laden field of Nigerian politics.
He might have
acquired many IOUs when he assumed office in 2015,as all politicians do, but he
was not under any pressure to pay back and he was so well positioned in the
people’s reckoning and historically that he could call anyone’s bluff and get
away with it. That much is of course obvious. Many of the persons and groups
who could claim that they helped him to get to power a second time are today
not in a position to dictate to him. Long before such persons left their
mother’s homes for boarding school, he had made his mark as a Nigerian leader. He could look them straight in the eye and
cleverly put them in their place. Corrupt patronage is a strong element of Nigerian politics and so
far, President Buhari has shown a determination to limit the scope of such
politics. Whether that is right or wrong is a matter of political calculations,
and if current intimations are anything to go by, that may even prove costly in
the long run.
Nonetheless, when a leader assumes office with
his kind of helicopter advantages, it should not be expected that he would hit
the ground like a tyro in the corridors of power. Not too many persons in his
shoes get a second chance to return to power after a gap of 30 years. As it
happened in his case, he would be expected to run the country as a statesman,
not as a party man, as a bridge-builder, not as a sectional leader and as
father of all. The writer of his inaugural speech alluded to this last point in
that borrowed statement about belonging to everyone and to nobody. Charles de Gaulle of France originally made
that statement in 1958 when he returned to power as President and founder of
the Fifth Republic. Charles de Gaulle had been an army General and one of the
key figures in the drama of World War II.
In his second coming, De Gaulle built an unforgettable legacy.
President Buhari’s handlers may have had an
idea of going in such direction but so far, they have taken their eyes off the
legacy project. The best way to remember
a President of the incumbent’s status is with regard to the legacy he leaves
behind. We do not need to travel to 20th century France to borrow an
elaborate example. We have the home-made
example of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Like Buhari, Obasanjo had been
Head of State. Like him also, he
returned to be civilian President. Obasanjo did not try to impress Nigerians
with the daily grind of governance or obsession with the past. He played a
legacy game from the first day. The military had been excused out of power. Nigerians by 1999 were so angry with military
rule, they just wanted change.
Obasanjo
capitalized on that and helped to prepare the foundations for the consolidation
of the democratic process. Nigeria had been a pariah nation within the
international community and a weakling within the continent. With a combination
of charisma, street wisdom and the reactivation of old networks, Obasanjo
regained for the country, the respect it deserves. He met a country in debt. He
paid off the debts by 2005, and made the country financially stable again. He
surrounded himself with bright and talented technocrats, including foreign
consultants and within government circles if not outside, he actively
encouraged the free flow of ideas. In doing this, he cultivated the image of a
strong, charismatic leader. He also refused to be trapped by ethnic or
religious considerations. He had his own faultsand there was a lot to complain
about as I did at the time, but looking at the big picture, Obasanjo was a good
manager of complex relationships, and he had a good sense of humour. Out of
office, it is possible indeed to speak of the Obasanjo legacy in Nigerian
history in rich and detailed terms.
There are parallels between the
circumstances that brought General Obasanjo and General Buhari back to power,
and if you wish, you could tease out the connections. But while the former immediately began to
build a legacy out of the opportunity, the latter is yet to embark on a defined
legacy mission. No political leader ever built a legacy out of complaints and
excuses. An obsession with the past does not produce a legacy; it defeats it.
Nor is the restriction of human freedom a legacy-building gesture. General Sani Abacha violated the dignity of
virtually every institution in the country but he is remembered more for
stabilizing the economy and for creating additional states, particularly
Bayelsa, where he is considered a hero. Obasanjo often deployed power as if it
was a whiplash, making his politics ambiguous, but that is not the substance of
his legacy. A leader’s legacy lies in
those steps he takes to transform society for good and for the people’s
benefit.
President Buhari’s
handlers should begin to think of what legacy he intends to leave behind. A legacy is something big and memorable, not
routine exertions or bland ceremonies, the type civil servants are perpetually
bringing before a sitting President to keep him in motion, in the absence of
movement. I do not intend to construct a possible legacy project for the Buhari
administration: a legacy is meant to be the product of careful deliberation,
vision and resolve, not something to be thrown up casually in a limited
newspaper copy. But there are grand moves to be made, and that should be done,
because a legacy cannot possibly arise from the mere fact of being President of
a country twice between the 20th and 21st centuries.
If I must make a
few suggestions, however, it seems to me that there is a legacy-building
opportunity in the same National Political Conference Report that the
government of the day seems determined to ignore. Even if that 2014 Report is ignored: the
issues relating to the restructuring of Nigeria have been on the table since
independence and more coherently since the 2005Political Conference which was
aborted due to a controversial attempt to hand over a Third Term to the
Obasanjo administration through the back door.
President Buhari
has both the pedigree and the courage to take some bold steps about how Nigeria
is presently constituted and ensure not limited reform but far-reaching
transformation: create new states, merge
some states, if possible, review the revenue allocation formula, embark on
legacy infrastructure projects, introduce some alterations in key areas of
national life, merge parastatals to reduce cost and duplication, take up some
neglected ideas about public finance and give effect to them, revisit the oil
and gas sector and further reform it, crush Boko Haram. Nigeria’s politics is
complex and can be frustrating for those who choose to swim in its murky
waters, but ultimately every leader will be judged on his record. How would President Buhari like to be judged?
It is not too early to pose this question.
Legacy is not a destination; it is built
one step at a time. It is not an accident; it is a process and the summation of
concrete steps to make a difference. The Buhari administration should begin to develop
a legacy mindset; this will include measuring the feedback from the people
carefully in terms of how their expectations are being met or denied. If this will require a change of team or
emphasis, now is the time to take that decision.
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