- By Sonala Olumhense
I WISH to enter 2016
by voicing my disappointment at President Muhammadu Buhari’s inaugural media
chat.
Remember, he waited
30 years to return to the leadership of Nigeria, having been summarily thrown
out in 1985.
And then he battled
for at least 12 years to win that chance, finally realizing that ambition in
May 2015. That was seven months before he faced his interviewers in December’s
live interview. And yet, President Buhari arrived largely unarmed, unprepared
and uninspiring. I do not mean he had lost his outrage or his reformer-posture;
he just did not arrive with persuasive substance for his supporters, let alone
his critics.
Yes, it was evident
that the Nigeria leader intends to fight corruption. This was his unique
selling point and the single most important factor, which propelled him into
office. And yet, presented with the prime time opportunity on live television,
he did not make an inspiring case.
To be clear: it is
important that he intends to get every penny from everyone who has stolen from
Nigeria, as tough as that task sounds. But it is even more important to ensure
that those funds are not re-looted and that, through clear and specific laws
and structural changes, such practices are discouraged in the future.
I hoped to learn of
an informed vision of the Nigeria he is engineering, but didn’t hear it. I
hoped to learn of the Nigeria he hopes will emerge of his efforts in the next
50 or 100 years, but didn’t hear of it.
In other words, 30
years after he must first have punched the walls of his detention cell in
anger, 12 years after he first tried to win the presidency, and seven months
after he arrived in Abuja, Mr. Buhari seemed to be more outrage than strategic.
Everyone knows that the Nigeria leader inherited a tough task. But that is
exactly why despairing Nigerians chose a man they perceived to be equal to the
task.
Eight months into
this monumental assignment, Buhari has not made the waves that those Nigerians
expected. Perhaps it was too much to have expected that he would arrive with a
machete, chopping off the limbs—including the human among them—of all the
problems.
Until the media chat,
however, he was merely thought to be holding his cards close to his chest.The
problem is that at the event, those cards were not in evidence. Many of his
answers were no answers at all; some were half-informed, and a few were not
inspiring. It is now unclear whether his government is unwilling, or just being
slow.
I mean this only in
description of Buhari’s performance, not in indictment of his presidency. In
the election of 2015, he was vastly-superior to his immediate rival, an
incumbent who did not seem to know what time of day it was.
But now, Buhari must
show the potential for which he was elected: vigorous, confident and exemplary
leadership. That challenge requires him to get to the bottom of the menace of
corruption, which is sadly rooted in some of his friends and former colleagues
in the military. I have written in the past that unless Buhari is willing and
able to reach those tap-roots of corruption in Nigeria, he will not win the
acclaim of a good job.
The other challenge
before him is the nurturing of democratic values, without which other reforms
would be laughable.
This is one of the
reasons why I say he arrived at his media chat unprepared, claiming his
government would be irresponsible to allow bail for a man granted bail by a
court of law. That, in effect, defeats the objective.Let me be clear: nothing
would please me more than to see every thief of federal funds picked up at the
first smell of such a crime and held until jailed and every penny recovered.
But that is illegal.
Outrage—even political power—is no law, and there can be no democracy without
the rule of law.
It is critical to
remember that the oath Mr. Buhari took last May was administered not by the
Secretary to the Government, but by the Chief Justice of the Federation. This
underlines the constitutional separation of powers, and reminds anyone who may
be tempted to feel differently of the primacy of the law.
This means that doing
the wrong thing out of concern that someone else might do the wrong thing is,
in the end, simply vanity. Illegality does not justify illegality.
Technicalities do not justify technicalities.
Mr. Buhari attempted
to justify the illegalities being perpetrated by his government by citing the
atrocities allegedly committed by its targets, saying they are certain to jump
bail if given the chance.
No Nigerian who gave
his vote to Buhari wants to see such an outcome, but it is eminently preferable
that such people jump bail than to have a government, which chooses to fiddle
with the law and the protections it grants against authoritarianism, even
benign authoritarianism.
Equally disturbing,
for me, are the two distinct standards Buhari hinted of: the first being
against those he has something against, and the other in favour of those he
pretends he has nothing against.
The first is
represented by people like Sambo Dasuki, the former National Security Adviser,
and Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the so-called Indigenous Peoples of Biafra. In
their separate cases, each man has seen bail duly granted him by a court of law
voided and violated by Buhari’s government.
But the same Buhari
then says of his predecessor in office: “See, the former president wrote to the
governor of Central Bank and said ‘give N40 billion to so, so and so, and then
he gives account.’”
It is of deep concern
that Mr. Jonathan—who is going around the world hoodwinking people about what a
success he was as President of Nigeria—has not been asked to answer questions
relating to this offence alone.
Buhari speaks of the
documentation of many other “atrocities”. One of them is evidently that of Mr.
Dasuki, the poster-child of Nigerian corruption whose tenure turned the NSA
into an ATM for the executive, at the expense of the country. According to the
president, the victims include “over two million people displaced—most of them
orphans—whose fathers have been killed.”
But while Dasuki is being
routinely and illegally denied bail—by the executive, not the courts—Buhari is
saving Jonathan any embarrassment whatsoever. I wonder why, and worry about
whether this indicates the way former leaders who have clear cases to answer
will be let off.
Finally, until Buhari
tried to justify why his government is violating Nigeria law in order to
protect Nigeria’s interest, I did not know his “anti-corruption war” had begun.
It would be nice to
have clear rules of engagement, and to know the role of the ordinary Nigerian
in its prosecution. Let it be clear that fighting corruption is only part of
the challenge. The objective is to reinvent Nigeria. And that challenge is
bigger than anyone, and capable of consuming anyone. Happy New Year, Nigeria.
Twitter: @SonalaOlumhense
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