FEATURE ARTICLE

Comrade Ifeanyichukwu MmohMonday, December 11, 2017
[email protected]
Jos, Nigeria

WHY I THINK PRESIDENT BUHARI'S LEADERSHIP HAS FAILED:
(1) HE HAS IGNORED THE NEED FOR PEACE AND HARMONY


feel it was wrong for folks to say that President Buhari was all set to lay the foundation for a new Nigeria every time they tried to justify his stay in office two years on. This is because Nigeria, like every other country on planet Earth, has a history that is peculiar and therefore the style of leadership she needed in order to attain that desired greatness beneficial to all required that it took into cognizance certain fundamentals of governance which may not even work for another country.

It is unlikely that in a country where there existed a long history of bitter squabble among the various ethnic groups and religious beliefs in the fact of coexistence and whose bitter past has largely remained a deep wound, that such a country could make any meaningful progress if the leadership made no effort to heal the wound first but rather added insult to injury. This is the first point the Buhari administration should've noted and which they chose to overlook.

For crying out loud, where can we place the relationship between the Moslems and the Christians in today's Nigeria in a rating scale? Can we say that the relationship was better today than it was in 1960? Can we say it is healthier since he came on board and has grown stronger than it was 10 years ago? So can a leader who determined from the start to make an ethno-religious statement by his style of leadership now be said to be working out a national prosperity plan? How can that be?

What Nigerians thought by voting Mr. President in 2015 was that he was the man who could galvanize the country having shown a great distaste for corruption and corrupt persons. Nigerians reasoned that so long as corruption did cut across the ethnic and religious divide, that Mr. President would no doubt be as detribalized as he possibly could and also be as moderate in his religious views as he possibly could.

Unfortunately, those were never to be as he made sure that those ethnic group who were only mildly marginalized before he came to power were now openly subdued under him. The minorities of the north remained largely powerless and among the Majority tribes, representation was basically to save face otherwise the north in his calculation was the only tribe that qualified for the title of majority. There was no strategy put in place to win back even perceived political enemies.

The charm to give Nigerians a sense of belonging in their own country was practically lacking. With the arrogance of a former soldier, Mr. President flaunted his hard-line idiosyncrasies to the consternation of the Nigerian people. Here was a leader who felt he had a stake in who was to be a first-class and who was to be a second-class citizen because he fought in the Civil War. Clearly these are signs that this administration is failing! But how could he have approached governance at a time like this?

This is what I'd be dissecting; one of the fundamentals that today's governance needed not to overlook if the quest was to lay the foundation for a new Nigeria. Every lover of a new Nigeria cannot agree more that for a new Nigeria there was need for leadership to realize that a blueprint that guaranteed peaceful coexistence and equal citizenry was starting point. It is not enough to say that Nigeria's unity was not negotiable or that upholding Nigeria's corporate existence was a task that must be done.

There was need to put in place very practical steps towards achieving that goal otherwise the laughing-stock stigma which has since become the alias of the Federal Republic of Nigeria may well continue to build. Nigeria's sorry condition had its roots in the lack of a harmonious relationship among the different tribes. The reality of the diverse tongues which provided the excuse for violence against fellow citizens has been found to be fading fast in today's civilization since the internet revolution.

Having transformed the world into a global village today, the internet has exposed the fact that there existed diverse tongues as well in Europe, Asia and America, hence the continued use of tribe as excuse in Nigeria was anachronistic. Here was a country where intolerance against one another found expression in religion, region, party politics, employment, resource control, commerce and even political appointment! And a leader fails to realize this yet he wants me to believe he was the messiah.

By his appointments, President Buhari openly showed that he did not have what was needed in the leader that'll address Nigeria. He repeats the mistakes of Sir Ahmadu Bello and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of the First Republic. Little surprise therefore that there arose a renewed calls for secession and militancy by the Igbo youths and the Niger Delta youths respectively, like the chaos that broke out in the early 60s in the Western Region. Has he done anything about the Fulani herdsmen attacks?

No. The herdsmen - in Mr. President's eye - had every right in the laws of Nigeria to crush whoever refused to let them graze openly. Surely, for his kinsmen to have embarked on a military-style campaigns against the Nigerian people - to me - was indication that the country was doomed for the period that President Buhari will hold sway. As predicted, what has he really achieved during these two years of protecting 'his brothers' and hanging his 'neighbors' in the gallows?

Is Nigeria better now than 3 years back? How many of those who backed his campaigns with millions of Naira before 2015 can stake one hundred thousand Naira for his re-election bid today? Just recently, Dele Momodu confessed to being sentiment over his support of the Mr. President's candidacy in 2015. That tells you what? That tells you Mr. President is destroying what held us together as citizens of one country. The CPC could not bring him on board in 2011 but the APC did in 2015.

This tells you something; that Nigerians wanted unity and not division. Nigerians knew his integrity as a person who hated corruption and abuse of office but no one was ready to have him become Nigeria's president from a party with sectional coloration. So when he came to the APC, Nigerians shunned every other aspirant for the APC's presidential ticket to vote President Muhammadu Buhari just to let him know that what mattered to the common man was peaceful coexistence.

Mr. President did not get the message and still does not, two years down the line. He has failed to understand that a country without harmony like the family where there is no love lost between the spouses, there cannot progress even if all the heavenly powers stood behind that country. Why? Because the peace that preceded progress was a cardinal principle of nature! This is why I'll tell you that the only meaningful thing that this government will accomplish in the end is perhaps just formulate policies.

Policies; some of which might be implemented by subsequent administrations. This is the reality except of course if he repents! Follow me. Why is the federal government fighting the Boko Haram terrorists with the Nigeria Army that comprised all the tribes in Nigeria? Why did she not gather only army officers from the northern extraction to do the job? Now you know why Nigerians wished they never voted President Buhari to power. Now you understand why the anti-corruption war is stagnant.

The majority of those who have messed this country up are from the north and with Mr. President (or is it Mr. Sentiment?) on board, how can there be any meaningful progress? Watch him. He has never been able to probe the five hundred million Naira allegations against Mr. Abba Kyari neither has he been able to check out the IGP's or the Maina misconducts. His inaugural speech should have read "I belong to somebody and I don't belong to everybody" instead of his "I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody", because his actions clearly justifies it.

Favoritism. This is one of those sentiments that has crippled Nigeria. National interests are recognized only during electioneering but soon after stepping on board, sectional sentiments takes over. A president who decided to play sentiments and favoritism must be foolish if he expected to still enjoy the patronage of those he openly disdained. Unfortunately, this is the bitter truth. The bulk of what will happen as from next year 2018 against Mr. Sentiment will be the pound-of-flesh demands!

When you looked at the story of Nigeria since independence, the lack of harmony has remained the unbridgeable gulf. It affected the patriots who obtained her independence in 1960. It led to the horrors that was meted out against the Igbo people in the name of defending Nigeria's territorial integrity between 1966 to 1970. The lack of harmony among the ethnic groups is reason why the Nigeria Constitution is regarded by some but disregarded by the others.

If there was national cohesion, the Late Head of State Murtala Mohammed would still be alive today. If there was peaceful coexistence, there would never have been any drama to swear in Goodluck Jonathan after the demise of Late Umaru Yar'Adua. If Nigerians operated under one banner of love, there would not have been a case of the political class living in splendor while the masses wallowed in poverty. If Nigerians were fond of one another, religious intolerance would never have existed!

If there was national cohesion, the debate for restructuring the polity would be non-existent as the various ethnic groups would surely have seen the bigger picture instead of the way it is seen presently from the regional angle. What's more? The population of Nigerians that have left the country - many of whom had perished in the deserts and the Mediterranean - since APC's rise to power in 2015 would never have hit the triple-time mark.

The only reason why the northern region has remained so powerful is the lack of harmony among the various ethnic groups. Therefore, I maintain my argument that Nigeria's greatness was not founded in the American style of presidential democracy neither is it founded in the idea of gender equality in politics nor on a dependence on the IMF's blueprint for sustainable development. It does not depend on Agriculture or the Black crude.

If you let me, I say that the first step to greatness for Nigeria is peaceful coexistence founded on equal citizenry as well as on a national ideology which if violated (in any way) should attract the kind of punishment that was meted to an enemy of the State. Only when this is done, can it be said that a solid foundation for a new Nigeria has been laid. After all, we all accept that a country without peace cannot talk about progress of any kind.

Hate speech could only thrive among us because of the fact of the question mark that has hung on the quality of our coexistence. It found a fertile ground because of the disharmony that has defined our togetherness since amalgamation. But we imagine hate speech as something new or even contemporary but it's not. Hate speech is as old as Nigeria before independence. It became so prominent in the First Republic to the point of bringing that era to its disastrous end yet it did not die with that era but was transmitted to us through the youths of that time who are now elders today!

If the labor of our heroes past are obscured today because it was already obscured then due to a lack of harmony; our labor no matter how sincere or well-purposed it was will certainly suffer obscurity. Nigeria's immediate needs now is whatever can guarantee that peaceful coexistence became a permanent feature of the contemporary Nigerian history. This is the great need of the hour and only today's youths especially those who'd never been tainted by politics can make it happen now!

Join me on the next fundamentals for governance.

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