Re: Deconstructing Buhari

While many of the responses appeared to have been written without even bothering to read the article, some provided quite very useful information that I feel the retired General’s Campaign Office will need. If I were to summarise the main thrust of the piece, I would put it this way: 1. I do not believe […]

While many of the responses appeared to have been written without even bothering to read the article, some provided quite very useful information that I feel the retired General’s Campaign Office will need. If I were to summarise the main thrust of the piece, I would put it this way:
1. I do not believe that Buhari is a religious bigot as he is often tarred by his critics. The label (or mislabel) of Buhari as a religious fanatic stemmed from a mistake he made or naiveté he displayed, when as a military Head of State, he constituted a Supreme Military Council of 19, with 12 of these coming from the north and 11 being Muslims.  The other reason that label was stuck on him is because of the adulation he enjoys among ordinary people in the Muslim north and this adulation alone makes him distrusted by non-members of the in-group. For this, relying for his defence  on the fact that his running mates  in the three times he ran for President were Christians was not a robust enough defence since by convention a Muslim presidential candidate has to pick a Christian running mate and vice versa.
2. There is a consensus that Buhari is honest and incorruptible. However though these are virtues, they will not be sufficient to meet the challenges of the 21st century Nigeria..
3. My position is that the fundamental problem of the country is the crisis in our nation-building processes, not corruption. My fear for a Buhari president therefore is that he will spend excessive energy and disproportionate amount of time fighting corruption, which I believe is the symptom of a more fundamental problem.
4. The sort of leader we need is one likely to forge a consensus, not a warrior. In the retired General’s first coming he was fighting every social force in the country –academics, religious groups, students, politicians, civil servants. We need assurances from Buhari’s handlers that time and age had tempered such radical inclinations and that if he gets the APC ticket and wins the presidency things will be different.
On No.1, the best reactions – in terms of effectively addressing the charge – in my opinion was that Buhari came to power in 1984 – just 14 years after the end of the civil war and because soldiers of northern extraction dominated middle and upper echelons of the military at that time, they also benefited disproportionately from the appointments. Another reader pointed out that of the 19 military governors appointed by Buhari, 11 were Christians while only eight were Muslims. Another writer drew attention to the fact that the retired General went after Muslims and Christians in equal measure.  One might then be attempted to ask why Buhari’s handlers are not weaving their counter narratives on this allegation around these points instead of telling us that when he ran for President his running mates were Christians, which by convention, they had to be anyway since Buhari is a Muslim.
I disagree with several readers who argued that the toga of a religious fanatic was stuck on Buhari by the PDP. In my opinion it started in 1984 when Arthur Nzeribe published the book, Nigeria: Another Hope Betrayed in which he sought to show that there were ethnic, regional and religious biases in the Buhari regime, including the prison terms given to the overthrown politicians. The Lagos press quickly picked this up and before you know it every action of the regime, which was initially hugely popularly, became interrogated using ethnic, regional and religious lenses. Remarkably all the politicians jailed by the Buhari regime came out of prison as heroes.
On No.2, several readers took exception to my argument that while Buhari’s honesty and incorruptibility are virtues, they are insufficient to meet the challenges of the 21st century Nigeria. I had a lively discussion over the phone with one reader on this. I disagreed with him that being honest and incorruptible would necessarily guarantee a good government. I reminded him that Shehu Shagari, the country’s Second Republic President, was probably the least corrupt leader the country has produced yet there seems to be a consensus that his regime was inept. I also pointed out to him that though Fashola in Lagos and Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State are believed to be doing well  – as was  former Governor Peter Obi of Anambra, I had never  seen  the word ‘incorruptible’ prefixed to their names. I am of course not implying that they are corrupt but that there is no nexus or causal relationship between being incorruptible and governing well in office. I argued that while being honest and incorruptible are virtues, we need to know the retired General’s opinion on several key issues – foreign policy, education, health, state police, and indigene-citizen dichotomy. The caller told me Buhari’s position on several of these issues but when I asked him where I could read such opinions he mentioned that the retired General frequently gives interviews on BBC’s Hausa Service. I believe that both the caller and I also agreed that the medium of choice of the General meant he was addressing his supporters only and that since supporters alone cannot win the presidency for him, he would need to broaden the media through which his opinions on issues are disseminated.  
On No.3, several readers were angry that I took the position that corruption is not the main problem of the country and saw it as an attempt to rubbish the retired General’s unique selling point.  My personal opinion is that Buhari’s ‘War Against Indiscipline’ – just like the EFCC, ICPC and others before them including Obasanjo’s Jaji Declaration during his First Coming, Shagari’s Ethical Revolution and Abacha’s Failed Banks Tribunal tend to treat corruption as a simple question of moral lapse on the part of those accused of corruption when in actual fact the diagnosis of the problem should be far more sophisticated than that. My opinion remains that corruption is the symptom of a more fundamental societal problem, not the problem itself, and that the issue of moral lapse is only a small part of the equation. In his novel No Longer At Ease (1960) Chinua Achebe vividly used the Obi Okonkwo character to illustrate that corruption is not a moral issue but something that is largely systemic and larger than the corrupt individual. In the novel, Obi Okonkwo, an upright man who was not afraid to stand alone and deeply resented the pervasive bribery and corruption of the time, was forced by survival imperatives and system dynamics to take his own bribe – and was caught! The moral here is that the systemic causes of corruption far outweigh the question of moral lapse on the part of the corrupt individual. This means therefore that to isolate corruption and ‘wage a war’ against it will be akin to trying to use the pain killer Paracetamol to treat malaria.
Another indication that bribery is merely one of the symptoms of a more fundamental problem is that despite the fact that virtually every regime in the country has made fighting the cancer  one of the cornerstones of its policy, the cankerworm persists and appears to be getting worse.
On No. 4 I was disappointed that none of the reactions I received addressed the question of whether Buhari could be a consensus builder if given the APC ticket and if he goes on to win the election. In advanced countries, politicians often conduct private polling  to find out what people  want and the fears they have about their candidacies and then to try to develop their campaign messages accordingly. In essence, campaign messages should both give hope and allay fears. In my opinion this point is an important area the retired General’s handlers need to address – if he gets the APC’s ticket and if he wants to win support beyond his traditional support base.
In the over four years I have been writing this column, I have come to respect the fact that many, if not most readers, read to merely validate previously held opinions or beliefs. An often recurring question from disappointed readers is: “How much were you paid to write this trash?” Last week I decided to add a bit of humour to some of the text messages I got posing the question. My reply was:  “My brother, I am not greedy. I asked for only N10, 000 which they gave me in a neat white envelope (not brown envelope as some of you often wrongly assume). But can you imagine that when I got home and opened the envelope, what were stuffed inside were newspaper cuttings, rather than Naira notes. Those bastards! I can’t wait for Buhari to become president so I will report them to him’.