The opponents of Buhari’s bid for the presidency have found considerable propaganda material in some of the general’s stern and, indeed, undemocratic, albeit reformist and patriotic policies as a military ruler.
Exploiting this propaganda with maximum bias, the PDP crowd, led by men who have little regard for balance or context (not to talk of fairness) have dismissed the APC candidate as incapable or unworthy of leading a stable, democratic government. These detractors naturally ignore the fact that thirty years ago, when Buhari was called upon to lead a military junta, there was a national crisis characterized by suffocating corruption. Hence his impatience with democratic procedures, given the military tradition under which he was operating. He was also a young man overwhelmed by passion and patriotic zeal to rid his country of its class of unscrupulous wheeler-dealers whose debauchery and predation have now practically spiritually and socio-economically bankrupted the country. Naturally, the last kind of person wanted as ruler by these lords of the Nigerian captive patrimony and their henchmen hunters of political carrion, is the strait-laced Buhari. Under a system capable of throwing up the very best, one may cavil at his candidature. The reality, however, is that today, our best are often blocked out by cabals of impunity-hardened scoundrels who have hijacked the state in the name of party politics. Buhari has therefore become the popular answer to this unconscionable, ravaging plague of a class. His commitment/patriotism, his aversion to corruption, and his untainted antecedents in the murky, yet enticing Nigerian political waters, make him eminently qualified.
But there is no need avoiding confronting the issues that Buhari’s detractors have seized upon to argue his rejection. Concerning his lack of democratic credentials, it must not be forgotten that the military junta led by Buhari made no pretensions to democratic niceties, or even to the travesties of democratic institutions which are common in these parts. It however saw itself as reformatory. Thus it tried paying off the accumulated debts of the dissolute Shagari regime, and sturdily stood against enslaving the country to IMF and other institutions, as Babangida later did. Similarly, the socio-economic climate was made inhospitable to the forerunners or equivalents of subsidy-thief cronies or billion-naira pension scammers like the fugitive Maina (rumoured to be a friend of Jonathan), not to talk of those who have sold the country’s fixed assets to themselves in the name of privatisation. Unfortunately the regime also committed some serious human rights violations, including the execution of some merchants-of-death peddlers of hard drugs for easy money, while wrecking other people’s lives. But there were no extra-judicial or mysterious murders unlike in the regimes of subsequent rulers, when even distinguished public figures were slaughtered in their own homes during the civilian rule of so-called democratic governments under whose watch these dastardly crimes have been permanently buried!
If Buhari’s human rights abuses as a military ruler could be excused by the nature of non-democratic governments and the passion of a relatively young man to check the excesses of those reducing his country to a state of normlessness, no such extenuations can be found for Jonathan’s attitude to the rule of law, his reactionary views to the prerogatives of his office, and the personal, neo-fascist uses to which he is liable to put state institutions in his reckless pursuit of power or quest for political advantage over the opposition. Indeed, it is a tragedy for a man of Jonathan’s “education” to feel that his power and authority as president entitles him to indulge in the kind of abuses and perversions of democratic institutions perpetrated by his predecessors, especially since this has been largely responsible for the instability and failure of socio-economic development in the country. It is now well known that Jonathan’s innocent disposition masks an instinctive intolerance for the cardinal principles of democratic governance, such as transparent elections, independence of the judicial and legislative arms of government from the executive, and the primacy of the rule of law. Thus he has, under a complicit stooge like David Mark, divorced the Senate from national, as against PDP party interests, while estranging the vibrant and largely independent House of Representatives. As another instance of promoting personal and partisan interests over national or institutional considerations, Jonathan routinely abuses his executive powers to get the police and the army to back state governors that have practically usurped the rights of their state legislatures. The first example of this was in Ogun, although the most abominable instance, which also involved a desecration of the office and person of the state chief justice, is the on-going stasis in Ekiti State. It is instructive that the police is now regarded as having merged with the PDP, the president’s party. And recently, the Sahara Reporters published tapes of the abuse of the military to rig the 2014 elections in Ekiti. Also, in the run-up to the election postponement, a right-wing clique within the military leadership appeared to have been insinuated into decision-making. One only hopes this is not aimed at making the military a bulwark for what seems the PDP ideal of a one-party neo-fascist state.
The problem about Jonathan having another term in office is, therefore, not to so much about what he did or failed to do during his first term. The problem about his continuing as president of Nigeria is far more fundamental, bordering on the kind of person Jonathan is, and the formidable demands that leadership in a postcolonial state call for, even in the best material possible. Unfortunately, circumstances have not dealt too kindly with African countries and their choice of people to direct their affairs following the catastrophe of colonialism. Because our indigenous religions, political and other cultural institutions are practically in ruins, we are bereft of the ideological and spiritual wherewithal to chart a course through our complex problems. The disparate nationalities that constitute the Nigerian state also lack the common purpose for coming to agreement on the choice of the leadership to inspire us to achieve stability and development.
A critical situation such as ours therefore requires a leadership with two basic endowments – character and intellect, both of them imbued with special attributes including passion, ability to inspire, and a commitment to equity and justice, and to the promotion of the general good above personal or partisan considerations at all times. When we look at Jonathan with dispassion shorn of self-serving preferences and considerations, we find that though he has his attributes, they are not the stuff that are conducive to effective leadership. For example, in those things that do not concern his personal interests, he lacks passion and commitment. Thus, unlike Buhari, he feels little concern about, or aversion to, evil, which has become so pervasive in the country today. Naturally this raises serious questions about his sense of values. However, in those matters that concern his personal or political interests, he will steamroll every obstacle, while defying all constitutional or moral niceties in the process. Most of the time he resorts to guile and dissembling, clad in his natural mask of bland innocence or insouciance, even when he has just exceeded his constitutional powers, or suborned state agencies to break the law.
In spite of his seeming simplicity, Jonathan is a man of over-weening ambition. He craves power and its perquisites. He also cherishes his friends and cronies, to whom he has been very generous, many say at the expense of state institutional integrity, transparency, and the fight against corruption. But the most hazardous thing about a man like Jonathan remaining at the helm of affairs is his open subservience of national considerations, like peace and stability or the public good, to his political ambition and personal aspirations. This has become all too obvious in the desperation with which he has abandoned propriety, scruples, and even decency, in the pursuit of the most despicable means to retain power. A few examples are appropriate: Jonathan has in recent times resorted to bribing and cajoling hordes of unemployed youths in order to secure their votes. It is remarkable that it is only when he craves the votes of these young people that he is aware of the grave youth unemployment problem. He has also largely been making some strange new friends from the most unlikely quarters. About a week ago, MASSOB, and then OPC, two ethnic militias staged violent, disruptive demonstrations in south-eastern major cities, and in Lagos respectively. The demonstrators, some of whom were armed, were led and protected by the police as they asked for Jega, chairman of INEC, to be sacked. Is it a coincidence that Gani Adams, the OPC leader, according to undenied news, has recently won a ₦9 billion “pipeline protection” contract, along with other political friends of the president? At another level, Jonathan unabashedly promotes communal feuds, like the one between the Itshekiri and his Ijaw group, and even within clans of his own Ijaw nationality. But perhaps the most diabolical of the president’s schemes is the exploitation of his Christian faith to win supporters, regardless of the potentials of such gambits for chaos. What does one make, then, of his bland declaration that his bid for reelection is not worth a pint of any Nigerian’s blood? Surely, a typical Jonathanian sanctimonious posturing and repudiation of responsibility, partly for his own unwitting culpable actions, and also for the campaign of hate conducted on his behalf.
Still, Jonathan may be no worse than the average contemporary politician. But the times demand a leader that can disperse the pall of darkness that hangs like shroud of death over Nigeria’s prospects. And Jonathan is not man to do this. Space has not permitted a discussion of his prodigal dissipation of the country’s resources, thereby prolonging the socio-economic adversities that have heralded a dissolution of values and mores, while creating social ills like kidnapping, baby factories and sale of human parts. In the final analysis, Jonathan is a victim of the impunity of power, especially as exercised by Obasanjo, his former godfather, and others before him. It is now up to Jonathan, like former African rulers in his position in Benin, Senegal, and Kenya, to allow the electorate a free choice of whom they want as their leader.
G.A. Akinola
New Bodija, Ibadan
23 March 2015