President Buhari’s media blitzkrieg

The second positive is that he did, finally, address Nigerians and allow Nigerian journalists

Last week, President Muhammadu Buhari did something quite out of character for him. He spoke to Nigerians. Not just once but on two separate TV interviews, and well, there is also that Democracy Day broadcast.

There are of course positives to take away from those conversations, especially focusing on the Arise TV interview. The first of course being that the President seemed to be in good health. It is never a good thing for a country facing so many challenges to be boggled at a president who is in no position to fully discharge his duties. For a 78-year-old, who had battled a mysterious ailment during his presidency, one could even say Buhari seemed to be glowing.

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The second positive is that he did, finally, address Nigerians and allow Nigerian journalists to interview him. Considering the president’s penchant of speaking to foreign press about Nigerians rather than speaking to Nigerian press about the people who elected him, one would have to say that it is a positive, in some ways, if one disregards the thought that he might have spoken over Nigerians rather than to them. After all, the first indices of good governance are voice and accountability.

It is good to see the president giving a voice. The question of accountability however remains subject to interpretations. No doubt this administration inherited a myriad of problems that have been building up for decades. To expect him to solve all of these in six years would be an unreasonable expectation. But to have him casting blames on previous regimes and governments, even after being at the helm for half a dozen years is a refusal to be accountable for the actions and decisions this administration has taken over the years.

The first question posed to the president was on insecurity. His response did not address the question but veered instead into the government’s plan to make Nigeria food reliant by shutting down borders and encouraging people to return to farms by providing fertilizers. Sadly, that scheme proved unsustainable because the growing insecurity the president did not address in his response, caught up with the farmers. Thousands of farmers have been murdered in cold blood on their farms, in Zamfara, Kebbi and elsewhere. The poster atrocity of these killings is the recent Zabarmari massacre of rice farmers just 20 kilometres outside of the garrison city of Maiduguri. This government refused to address that particular massacre, preferring instead to play the ostrich with the issue. The armed forces sadly did not avenge this massacre by hitting Boko Haram hard. The government’s lack of response sent all sorts of wrong signals to both farmers and terrorists.

Of course, Boko Haram has been significantly curtailed since 2015 but it has by no means been contained. That hoax of Boko Haram was “technically defeated” in December 2015 is the second biggest scam sold to Nigerians (Perhaps someday we might talk about the first). Worse has been the pointed refusal to admit that the rest of the country is in total chaos over insecurity. The situation in the North West has worsened, Kaduna to Abuja is still a journey to reminds one of the Judgment Day siradi crossing. The South East is on fire, the South West is simmering, the rest of the North is blistering. Kidnappings for ransom, highlighted by mass school abductions, have become a huge industry. At no time has Nigeria been as unsafe as it is now.

While the third question during that Arise TV interview demanded the president address this cancerous spread of insecurity, he instead addressed his fight against corruption. What was revealing about his response was the president’s pinning for the past instead of addressing the now and the future. Talking about how easy it was to fight corruption by decrees when suspects were “guilty until they prove themselves innocent,” by a self-styled reformed “democrat” revealed the president’s frustration with or perhaps contempt for the system that brought him to power in 2015.

While the president has always been fully aware of the limitations the democratic system imposes because of its system of checks and balances which the iron fist tyranny of military rule allowed, it is telling that confronted with these challenges, the president seems not to have devised means of prosecuting this fight against corruption within the framework of the system in place today. After all, the Hausa say that today’s hunting dogs are best suited to deal with today’s rabbit.

But that is not the only instance where the president seems intent on looking backwards rather than forward. When asked about herders/farmers clashes broadly speaking, the president’s response was expressing a desire to revive the cattle routes of the 1960s and 70s. Of course, in some instances the solutions for today’s problems are in the solutions proffered yesterday, but this is certainly not one of those moments. The political climate has changed but worse is that the Nigerian demography has experienced a significant shift. For one, there were about 55 million Nigerians then, today, we have four times that number, rising poverty and political agitations, climate change and a looming population explosion.

The same scenario played out when asked about infrastructure development during his tenure; the president spent a greater part of his response blaming the governments between 1999 and 2014 on their failure to develop infrastructure despite the revenues they generated. “Have you asked them what they have done with that money?” was a constant refrain during this response.

The truth is that Nigerians asked, and not satisfied by the performance of those PDP governments, they voted them out and gave Buhari the mandate.This penchant to constantly blame the previous regimes, after six years, has been tiring and painful to stomach. This administration should be over this blame game and focus on what it can accomplish in the next two years. And these issues will not be addressed by the contradictions the president offered by strongly pursuing border closure so Nigerians will be forced to be “self-reliant” while building roads and rail lines to the Niger Republic so his first cousins, whose president he is not can export their goods through Nigeria.

Perhaps the bit about this interview that has generated the greatest uproar was the president’s response to the separatist agitations in the South East.

The 2015 five per cent gaffe of the president has only been amplified by this “Dot in a Circle” theory. The president seems to gloat at comments by South-South groups claiming they will block access to the sea thereby landlocking the South East. Of course, there is a history of sour beef between the South East and Buhari. Despite running for president twice with Igbo running mates, that region never showed up for Buhari and in 2015, Buhari won elections without significant support from the region. But keeping malice is the preoccupation of children, not fathers of nations. Nothing in Buhari’s tone or words suggests the existence of a comprehensive plan or even a willingness to address the root agitations of that region other than the menacing, low-budget threat of “language that they understand.”

Elections are over and Buhari has been president for six years. He ought to look at national problems holistically rather than with the indignation he addresses not only issues of the South East, his responses to the herders’ menace and Nigerians in general.

Having said that, it is important to encourage the president to talk to Nigerians more. Contrary to what the president thinks when he says several times during his interview that “we don’t want to give publicity [to what we are doing] so we don’t alert the real criminals”, it is in fact wise for a government to constantly address its people’s concerns and explain to them what it has been doing to improve their lives.

It may not be the vintage AKPD-packaged performance he delivered at Chatham House in 2015, and criticisms of his responses are not borne out of sheer malice for his person but a fair demand for him to be the better president Nigerians expected in 2015. Is there anything wrong with wanting more from your country and your president?