By Douglas Anele
As the time slated for the upcoming elections draws inexorably closer, politicians and their supporters are doing all they can to ensure victory at the polls. Expectedly, the major focus is on the presidential elections, because whoever is elected President automatically becomes the highest political office holder in the country. That is not to say that other political offices, such as those of the governor and membership of the legislature, are unimportant.
The fact is that the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria grants the President extraordinary powers over the affairs of the country, albeit within certain constitutionally defined limits, which implies that his or her successes and failures would have serious consequences nationwide. In addition, emphasis on the 2015 presidential election is accentuated by the sharp contrasts in personality and antecedents of the two leading contenders, the incumbent President, Goodluck Jonathan, and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, who are contesting under the platforms of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressives Congress (APC) respectively.
It would be recalled that this is the fourth attempt by Gen. Buhari to become President in an evolving, crisis-prone democratic setting: his last attempt was in 2011 when he contested as flag bearer of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and lost to President Jonathan. Presently, it appears that Buhari’s chances of victory are better than it had ever been, particularly because, for survivalist reasons, some very wealthy agbata ekee politicians with a lot influence in the media have been working tirelessly to rebrand the former military dictator. Secondly, the narrative of change by the APC resonates with many Nigerians disappointed and disillusioned by what they consider, rightly or wrongly, as President Jonathan’s inability to fight corruption, reinvigorate the economy and crush the Boko Haram insurgency.
However, APC is gradually becoming a victim of its own momentum: its propaganda of change has triggered a harsher searchlight on the antecedents of Gen. Buhari, Bola Tinubu and other stalwarts of the party, which reveal that APC cannot be the change agent Nigeria needs at this time. For example, if APC were truly progressive, instead of relying too much on the purported anti-corruption qualities of one man, Buhari, it ought to have articulated effective and implementable strategy for solving Nigeria’s greatest problem, the burdensome unitarist political structure imposed on the country by the military dictators.
Indeed, before the emergence of APC, some of its chieftains from the South-West pretending to be Awoists became politically popular based on their advocacy for “true federalism.” Now, these quack Awoists have abandoned the main plank of Awoism: they are pusillanimous on the issue of true federalism now probably because they do not want to offend prominent Northern members of the party, including Gen. Buhari, since the Northern establishment is averse to any political arrangement that might jeopardise the movement of resources from the South to the North.
In my opinion, Gen. Buhari’s electability would have improved appreciably if his party has shown serious commitment to political restructuring of the country along federalist lines as the foundation for tackling the hydra-headed problems of national development and genuine transformation.
Objectively considered, Gen. Buhari has some advantages that might help him during the elections. One of them is the fact that a significant proportion of the electorate, especially those between nineteen and forty years, do not have firsthand knowledge and experience of the state of the country when Gen. Buhari ruled as a military dictator from December 31, 1983 to August 27, 1985. Moreover, the memories of many of those old enough to know what happened then have become dulled with the passage of time. But the advantage of time on Buhari’s side could be a disadvantage as well, since human beings tend to forget the good more easily than the bad.
Besides, the situation of things within Nigeria and in the international community generally has changed dramatically from what it was when Buhari was in power as a military ruler such that he would find it extremely difficult to cope with the new challenges facing the office of a civilian President accountable to the legislature and to Nigerians as a whole. In this connection, Buhari’s critics point out that his rigidity, strong military orientation and unalloyed loyalty to feudal Islamic Northern establishment are inimical to the kind of flexibility and consensus building approach to issues of vital public concern required from the President of a fractured pluralistic country like ours.
Gen. Buhari acceptability is predicated on his reputation as a disciplined and incorruptible soldier with the courage to fight corruption to a standstill. But is that reputation really based on solid objective evidence or is it a lingering placebo effect of his jackboot treatment of selected second republic politicians? When Gen. Buhari and his cohorts took over from Alhaji Shehu Shagari, a sizeable percentage of Nigerians felt that corruption and indiscipline by politicians have reached unprecedented levels.
Consequently, they welcomed Buhari and his cohorts and expected the new regime to deal with corrupt politicians, revamp the economy, and alleviate the sufferings of the masses. The centrepiece of Buhari’s draconian government was the War Against Indiscipline (WAI) which had two components. The first one was the setting up of military tribunals, which handed hefty prison terms to corrupt politicians. Secondly, Buhari tried to instil “displine” among Nigerians, especially through enforcement of the queuing culture and regular environmental sanitation.
Naturally, for a people weighed down by the burden of corruption and expectant of positive change from the military rulers, Buhari’s strong-arm tactics was very popular at the beginning. But as time went on, people started feeling suffocated by the draconian decrees, selective injustice and highhandedness of his regime. Decrees 2, 4, and 20 which, collectively, severely limited freedom of expression and led to the execution of three drug offenders retroactively, would always be remembered as instruments of oppression and brutality.
As we observed earlier, projection of Buhari by APC as a no-nonsense disciplined and incorruptible Nigerian has the unintended effect of drawing close attention to his activities while in public office. The Igbo has an adage that says, onweghi onye enyochara ike ya ana agaghi ahu nshi, which in English means “there is no one whose anus, upon examination, does not contain some excrement.”
Thus, it has transpired that Gen. Buhari is not as squeaky clean as APC supporters claim. His critics point to the $2.8 billion and N25.7 billion scandals as evidence that Buhari does not have the capacity to fight corruption: they also argue that his overemphasis on imprisonment of corrupt politicians instead of articulating plans for establishing and strengthening institutions that would make corruption harder to perpetrate successfully means that he has lost touch with the evolving character of graft.
Some commentators have pointed out, and largely correctly, that Gen. Buhari is excessively pro-North and Islamic in his orientation to provide enlightened leadership for Nigeria. This point is extremely important, considering the complex pluralistic nature of the country.