Buhari is arguably Nigeria’s most popular politician today. He wields the largest individual political grass root followership and vote gathering prowess. On mass appeal, he is in the proximity of the highly esteemed first republic premiers who attracted fanatical loyalty from their followers. Some of his ardent followers in the north east and north west zones love him as passionately as the people of the old western region loved Awolowo.
That analogy may irk some but it is a presumption supportable by the events of 2011 presidential elections. The reasons some politicians are able to summon such passion from their followers are diverse and some are pretty mundane but they are not so important because ultimately politics is a game of numbers. Regardless of the basis of his popularity in the north, the reasons many in other places like Lagos like Buhari are unquestionably rational , objective and noble.
He is reputed to possess a sense of honesty and rectitude many other politicians are destitute of. General Olusegun Obasanjo has ruled the country longer than anyone else. But you may not vouch for his electoral value. He commands little or no votes and that gives you another picture. Yet they are all ex military Heads of State. Buhari definitely has an X factor.
He is often not given due credit for his political prowess. Many argue that he is able to achieve such a followership by embracing and promoting, to some extent, religious fundamentalism which endears him to millions of people in the north who are vulnerable to political exploitation by those who employ such religious sentiments as political tool. Buhari is so popular across many states in the north when other more zealous and advertised fundamentalists aren't. Senator Yerima and his fatwa dispensing deputy come to mind. So Buhari's popularity cannot be just about Islam. Identity politics is however part and parcel of Nigerian politics.
Buhari has occupied positions of power and privilege. His contemporaries are extremely wealthy and maintain a network of extremely rich and loyal cronies. Buhari has neither men nor network of rich friends . And While that may be the main reason he is not known for expensive campaigns , that is also the reason he is still running and is favoured by many. Buhari is touted by his supporters as incorruptible. To suggest that he had been hampered by finances alone in the past is to overlook his glaring lack of political astuteness.
Buhari never engages the public on topical issues, doesn't champion any social causes, practically remains apolitical until he is approached and drafted by one group or the other to take a shot at the presidency. Some may read opportunism. He has never hidden his disdain for the dirty things that happen in our politics and has managed to stay above the fray perhaps to sustain his status of incorruptibility. That is perhaps hypocritical.
Does he seek to reap the fruits of the despised dirty works of others? So why wouldn't such a frugal, spartan, inflexible, brutally frank man stay away from party politics like many others for whom party politics is pure filth? He appears to be possessed by a messianic zeal. Such a zeal may lend some internal justification to flirtation with filth if the motive is ultimately to save.
Three failed attempts at the presidency albeit on weak platforms, Buhari, now referred to as a serial loser by the PDP propaganda machine, ought to have grown weary of trying. Accusations of being desperate and blinded by ambition to the detriment of younger elements who would be formidable candidates with his support have merits. He is not alone. Many old Nigerian politicians never deliberately leave the stage to give room to youth.
On a closer assessment the party platforms he has used in the previous attempts have been so bereft of any cohesion and structure that he could well have run as an independent candidate. And that is why even those failed attempts were revealing and they showed his overwhelming personal popularity in the north.
Now surrounded by astute politicians of all shades and riding on a rugged well oiled machinery Buhari has gathered momentum and he looks every inch electable. You crunch the numbers and vary permutations and he is in there barely 2 weeks to the vote. A Buhari victory once considered only possible is now arguably probable. And that heightened prospect rests not just on a projection of a clean sweep of the North east and north west but on the pro Buhari trends in Kwara, Lagos, Oyo, Ogun. Edo is it. With Imo and Rivers now in play, many APC stalwarts are dreaming victory parties.
The Buhari candidacy comes with bags of votes but is fraught with complications inherent in the person and personality of the General and atrocities committed by his defunct military regime. These blemishes are perhaps elaborated by his depiction as an old, out of touch, inflexible ethnic chauvinist and religious fundamentalist who despises the rule of law and is intolerant of dissent, and somebody whose abysmal human rights record is ordinarily grave enough to banish him from leadership of any sort. This politically unflattering impression of him has gained traction amongst many in southern Nigeria.
The opposition he now leads knows Buhari's baggage and knows that some of his apparent shortcomings would be exploited maximally by their opponents. But Buhari brings much more to the table. Buhari is almost indispensable to the unity, stability and progress of the opposition coalition. There are cogent compelling and pragmatic reasons why Buhari should lead APC at its inception, at its most vulnerable phase.
Political mergers have routinely failed in this country and even Zik and Awolowo with all their political sagacity could not fashion one. APC, many believed, would only succeed if the principal actors in the parties prioritized the nation’s need for a second national party above their individual interests. A one party rule, and that has been the fate of Nigeria, is antithetical to practice of proper democracy because democracy entails freedom to choose and there is no free choice in the absence of real alternatives.
One great understated aspect of checks and balances in a democratic setting is the political vigilantism offered by political competition or rivalry of political parties. A one party state is a civilian dictatorship. In the interest of democracy and national unity PDP's domination had to be challenged or broken. The merger that became APC was a great national service.
Buhari had vowed not to run after three failed attempts but a major problem remained because in the absence of a towering figure everyone could defer to, the field would be open to many northern politicians and a proxy war of the main characters could still breed acrimony.
The party needed a political figure that would command the respect of all and achieve needed cohesion for the party especially in the north where it must have a strong foothold. Tinubu claims Buhari was begged to run, to lead. Buhari was the party’s most viable option - the one to whom everyone could concede defeat without mourning any loss. He won the party ticket overwhelmingly and the party contrary to expectations and fears came out of the presidential primaries stronger. Many had begun contemplating his second coming.
He was unknown when he came the first time. Frail, cold and taciturn but resolute and strong willed, he sent the politicians packing and packed many into prisons. It was the last day of 1983, the good old days when Christmas festivities were customarily, for my family and we enjoyed in the village. The news of the coup had injected a dose of excitement into the merry atmosphere. Radio sets blared martial music with intermittent replays of the coup speeches as adults gathered in exhilarated clusters.
When Buhari was announced as new head of state, my father looked at the faces of his brothers and found blankness. They continued with furrowed foreheads to pronounce the name ,Buhari, as if in so doing they might remember something about the man.
They must have been searching their civil war mental files. He was unknown. GOCs weren't widely known those days. They were surprised to learn that I recognized the name. They spoke of their fears of Hausa- Fulani’s perpetual domination of the country, and this didn't make sense to me. I was too young to understand them. I am grown now, and that worry lingers in the hearts of many Igbos.
I was a student of Air Force Military School Jos then and Buhari was the GOC of 3rd Div, about 3kms from my school down the old airport road. We had all come to know Buhari, his figure and his voice. A couple of months before the coup, day and night traffic of small military planes into our school (old Jos airport) had increased and many times we had paused our military activities to pay compliments to the slender General who always replied our "Good evening sir! Permission to carry on sir" with high pitched almost feminine "Carry on". I imagined he was easy going and soft but I was wrong. Buhari has remained relatively incompletely bared till date. Late Tunde Idiagbon did all the speaking for that regime.
The regime engaged in the most radical attempts at social engineering ever in this country and left many reeling in pain. And horror. Draconian decrees were promulgated and many heinous human rights breaches were perpetrated. From the Dikko abduction and crating to the obnoxious decree 20 and the sacrilege of the execution [of] Barth Owo and and 2 others to the repressive decree 4 and arrest and detention of Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson to the Ekwueme mistreatment, it was a litany of rights transgressions on an unprecedented scale.
He was too uncompromising, even for his fellow coupists and military colleagues and his rule , though short, left different marks on different people. His 'War Against Indiscipline' had soldiers whip people to stay on queues and civil servants who came late to work were physically punished. His methods were crude and brutal but his interest and passion in arresting moral decay and impunity could not be questioned.
Buhari’s negative antecedents have been regarded by many as formidable obstacle to his electability. Time heals, they say, Again, there were also some gains. For the first time Nigerians started queuing up from the banks to the bus stops. Unbelievably, Nigerians respected discipline and orderliness. All that is gone now.
Often, our leaders get away with so much. Perhaps we treat with levity lessons from history.
Others say Nigerians suffer from a debilitating collective amnesia. But if we have made light of Buhari’s gross human rights abuses we would not forget his patriotism, discipline and forthrightness and apparent resentment for corruption. And some of the atrocities committed by that regime could be explained as fall-outs of an overzealous but patriotic attempt to arrest decadence in the society by a youthful and naïve military junta.
Keeping Alex Ekwueme in Kirikiri while Shagari enjoyed a house arrest in Ikoyi was wrong but to interpret it as evidence of ethnic bias then one must ask why Umaru Dikko who was very influential in the Shagari regime suffered some of the worst forms of human degradation in history.
He was picked off the street in London, crated and bound for the luggage compartment of a waiting Nigerian Airways plane at Stansted Airport . He was a northern Muslim. Some will say, "what about the 53 suitcase?" "And what about Uba Ahmed?" Buhari has many questions to answer. He owes this nation a comprehensive memoir.
If time has done Buhari a favour, then the fortune of his new alliance with advertised pro democracy activists, APC’s progressive credentials and endorsements by many human rights activists has provided him with some further sanctification.
Allegations of Islamic fundamentalism and consequent religious intolerance leveled against Buhari have remained largely unsubstantiated with his supporters claiming that these conjectures, as they refer to them, show the extent of desperation and frustration Buhari’s growing electoral acceptability has instigated in his opponents.
All voices in northern Nigeria including the Sultan of Sokoto and senior members of the Jonathan government have made call on Boko Haram similar to Buhari’s calls of tactful engagement to stop the menace of Boko Haram. Boko Haram, at the time, had not evolved into this monstrous compulsive blood seeking strain. The Jonathan administration in consonance with such widely held sentiments established a committee to approach and bargain with Boko Haram and to work out an amnesty protocol.
Remember Obasanjo visited Yusuf’s family. So Buhari’s call didn't happen in isolation and had some wisdom at the time. Buhari has since publicly labeled the group as a bunch of "mindless bigots masquerading as Muslims". Repeated suggestions by members of the ruling party that Buhari has links with Boko haram have not been supported by even a shred of evidence despite Jonathan’s control of the investigative arms of the criminal justice structure.
Nigeria lacks the sort of national cohesiveness that would naturally make everyone think - nation first. The hearts of Nigerians are with their clans and tribes and religions before the country. So its all too common to hear so called statesmen speak in tones that betray these primary allegiances.
The accusation that he will Islamise Nigeria lacks basis and a ruse to beguile Southern Christians. If Buhari suffers from any major handicap it must be his age. Regardless of the arguments of his supporters, there is a reason why people generally retire at 70. Many worry about his ability to cope mentally and physically with the rigours of the office of the president of a country like Nigeria.
Governor Fashola has inadvertently corroborated these fears when he warned Lagosians not to vote a 57 year old Jimi Agbaje as governor as he considered him too old. Old age they say comes with vulnerability to infirmity . Hilary Clinton is almost 70 and may be the next US president. That is not to suggest that we should not rather have a much younger president.
Without caution, the ruling party and their agents have engaged in all manner of unethical ploys to suggest that Buhari isn't just too old but that he is too frail and possibly terminally ill. Suggestion of infirmity and terminal illness without verifiable evidence is political rascality of the most despicable sort. And when a governor like Fayose engages in an outrageously abominable act of suggesting in paid advertorials that a president Buhari may die in office then its evident the ruling party isn't just capitulating they are disintegrating morally.
Buhari didn't tender his certificates and that is a procedural lapse. He ought to have submitted at least one relevant certificate. The ruling party has latched on that and even claimed that Buhari had no secondary school education. It doesn't matter to them that he progressed in the army, holding command positions and became a general and that he attended a course at US War College amongst others. It doesn't matter to them that the constitution sought to ensure a certain level of educational exposure for political office candidates.
Watching Buhari's interview on television a few weeks ago he came across as passionate, spontaneous and mentally alert .
Many have wondered if zeal and patriotism alone are enough. And if honesty and harsh anti corruption stance are the only qualities needed to usher in good governance. Julius Nyerere possessed those qualities, didn't amass wealth but left Tanzania poor. Clinton, during his visit to Nigeria before leaving office, emphasized the need to have not just honest leaders but capable leaders who can create platforms for individuals to maximize their potentials and for the nation to prosper.
Capability and suitability are context specific. If the hole is square, the right peg has to be square- shaped. Mandela, out of prison, offered south Africa the leadership they most needed, a leadership that fostered unity. African countries generally have never suffered from lack of economic theorists and technocrats. No. They have always suffered from lack of leaders who have the political will to be fair and just to the ordinary people, who will place the interest of their countries above personal and group interests.
Nigeria suffers from a grave security challenge posed mainly by the now seemingly intractable Boko Haram insurgency. Buhari once led a successful military onslaught against a similar insurrection by the Maitasine sect and routed them. He has the courage and capacity and political goodwill to confront the insurgency militarily and diplomatically.
The Nigerian polity has suffered a widespread decay in societal values. The country needs moral regeneration. Buhari has a reputation for moral rectitude and steadfastness. He can provide positive symbolic leadership to re-engineer societal mores and enthrone a culture of order and discipline and check pervasive corruption and impunity.
Nigeria needs a discussion by the constituent groups to fashion out the protocols of their association and perhaps agree on a new workable constitution. The present constitution is defective and problematic. Buhari has the courage and political goodwill to commit the conservative and hesitant north to such an arrangement for the benefit of the country.
The Nigerian nation needs a leader who will act as a political back bone. Many feel Buhari is a man whose time has come. If it comes he must expressly clear doubts and fears of his coming to further Hausa Fulani hegemony, he must stay away from Sharia and foster religious plurality. He must enthrone an order that rewards merit and excellence and must discourage mediocrity under any guise. He must rout Boko Haram root and branch. He must give Nigerians steady power and diversify revenue generation making us non-oil dependent. It has to be jobs, jobs , jobs.
A Buhari victory will be good for the PDP because the party needs reformation and it can only do so in opposition. A reformed PDP is an asset to the nation.
If he doesn't win, he must fortify the party, prevent decampments and help institute a virile opposition. The institution of a virile, competitive and electable opposition is perhaps as worthy as being a good president.
The earlier APC wins and becomes entrenched the better for the country because the country needs at least two very strong parties even if those parties are identical in all respects except name. With competition the parties will mature and evolve differently.
Dr UGOJI EGBUJO (MBBS, LLB, LLM)
Source: Vanguard
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