Leadership at half mast

In a most dramatic manner, the judgment of the Supreme Court on the convoluted and farcical pre-election events in Zamfara State’s All Progressives Congress (APC) brought home a telling verdict on the limitations of President Buhari’s leadership capacities. In one fell swoop, his party was wiped off an important State in his primary constituency, consigning […]

In a most dramatic manner, the judgment of the Supreme Court on the convoluted and farcical pre-election events in Zamfara State’s All Progressives Congress (APC) brought home a telling verdict on the limitations of President Buhari’s leadership capacities. In one fell swoop, his party was wiped off an important State in his primary constituency, consigning many of his avid supporters and admirers to live under a party they thought they had thoroughly rejected in the elections. Today, as he swears to lead the nation for another four years under very demanding commitments imposed by the constitution, Nigerians will be entitled to scrutinize the quality of the choice they made in the 2019 elections. Those who support him will hope that he will do much better, even with age and health challenges and a minimalist strategy towards governance. Those who do not will pray for a miracle to transform the character of Buhari’s leadership. So much depends on the manner the President reads his new mandate, because the nation has paid a huge price for a leader who has led with the appearance of the least exertion and little awareness over his role in the manner citizens’ lives are affected.

In the two weeks preceding today’s historic inauguration, so much has happened to remind the nation that its major limitation is a President who appears to believe that being president alone is enough to solve all the nation’s problems. Those that cannot be solved by the aura and intentions of a remote president are the work of saboteurs, past corrupt leaders and the opposition, and even these can be explained away by spokespersons. President Buhari had every reason, opportunity and power to stop the sickening parody which outgoing Governor Yari made of internal democratic processes in Zamfara. He did not. Buhari lost Zamfara for the APC. He had an opportunity and a duty to paper-over, damaging cracks over his anti-corruption campaign by putting some distance between him and Kano State governor Ganduje. He did not. Voters expressed themselves very loudly, even with the jury still out. Dozens of opportunities came begging for a President to act on the side of justice and even self-interest when basic democratic processes were being abused with scandalous impunity by powerful politicians and party leaders in his party. He ignored them.

Campaigns for leadership of the legislature are at frenzy, and everyone has one eye on the presidency’s position. Even with the circumstances and lessons of the emergence of the outgoing leadership still haunting him and his administration, there is likelihood that legislators will make their decisions largely on the basis of self-interest and some vague idea of what President Buhari wants. Even before his second term starts, damaging fights are breaking out among powerful people very close to him over 2023.These fights will tear his party apart, divert attention and resources from quality governance and even widen the divisions in the nation. He is unlikely to soil his boots separating fights or making choices in trenches he prefers not to see. If history is a guide, President Buhari is being tossed here and there by the tiny circle that runs his administration over who will be appointed into key positions for the second term. There will be other even tinier circles hoping he will overhaul the tiny circle that  gave his first term its distinguishing character.

The president will start his second term with bigger security challenges than those he met at the beginning of his first term. Boko Haram is still a major security threat, and even top military commanders say it could provide links with other potent terrorist groups in West Africa targeting Nigeria and its neighbours. It will be tragic indeed if the president begins to believe himself when he continuously says he has defeated Boko Haram. Banditry, cattle rustling and kidnapping have now developed into their own as threats that even outstrip Boko Haram in impact. The President’s home State is now the epicenter of bandit activity. Rural populations are joining IDP camps in thousands, or becoming restive in the face of seeming failure to stem the tide of criminals taking over their lives. The nation is getting used to a president who occasionally calls security chiefs to meetings, after which his spokespersons go to town with his instructions to them to go after criminal elements.

Poverty is eating deeper into the social fabric, fueling criminal activities and desperation, particularly among the young which grows larger in the context of shrinking opportunities. The President’s intrepid wife cried out last week that his administration’s social investment  and poverty-fighting policies have made no impact in the northern part of the country, the region that gave the President the hefty push he needed  for a second term. Highly dubious statistics are drowned by evident low productive capacities, unemployment and weak economic infrastructure. The private sector sulks away to lament poor policies and lack of involvement in management of the economy. Foreign investment is wary of major commitments in an economy that is still highly vulnerable to major turbulence and poor management. The fight against corruption has not affected the manner public institutions work, or the manner the private and public sectors relate, or even the manner the assets of the nation are protected and utilized.

These claims can be challenged, of course, and they are, tragically, being challenged by an administration that is stubbornly insensitive to the imperatives of major shifts in style, approach or strategy. On those few occasions when the President speaks to Nigerians living in relative comfort in foreign lands, and he says he feels the pains of the poor in Nigeria, not a few Nigerians wish he will do more than feel their pains. It is not the case, as those who make his excuses for him say, that the President has poor advisers and ministers and a cabal that will not let him know how badly he is running the country. The fact is everyone around the President Buhari is a perfect reflection of the president. Only last week, he paid tribute to the leadership qualities of his ministers, and told them  that he had refused to yield to popular pressure to sack them because they were good. Most Nigerians would think that President Buhari is either extremely kind, or dangerously removed from the realities of governing the nation today. No one, therefore, should be surprised if he brings back half the cabinet and makes up the rest with exactly the type of people he would drop.

As President Buhari swears today to do justice to all, he will be reminded of Dasuki and the el-Zakzakys. All who wish the nation well will hope that he will find the strength from somewhere to be more involved in governance, and stop making excuses with the past. Nigerians will hope that he does not see his renewed mandate as an endorsement of his first four years’ record, but an opportunity to fight insecurity with a more enlightened approach, fight corruption without political gloves, address poverty and a collapsing economy which can be fixed with competence and vision, accept the imperatives of initiating major changes in the basic structure of the nation, and bring faith and comfort and peace to millions who are today falling victims to all manner of armed criminals. He should lead personally and effectively, a nation that cannot sink any deeper. It will be President Buhari’s lot to decide the future of the nation, and he will do well to learn all the appropriate lessons from the failures of the past four years.