By Philemon Amos
When asking objective Nigerians, whether they are partisan or not, for their assessments of former President Muhammadu Buhari, it is highly likely that a significant majority of their evaluations would rightfully be harsh.Their assessments are not fueled by hatred but rather a response to their initial perception of Buhari as a man of integrity and messianic qualities during his 2015 campaign. However, over the course of his eight-year presidency, he ultimately proved to be one of the biggest disappointments in the history of leadership in the country.
It is indeed ironic. Former President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, has bid us farewell, and we now have a new President and Commander-in-Chief in the form of Asíwájú Bola Ahmed Akanbi Tinubu, GCFR. Tinubu, who has previously served as a senator and accomplished two-term governor of Lagos State, has assumed the highest office in the nation.Buhari’s exit should be considered a huge respite of long overdue stage exit. Buhari’s a man that dealt serious avoidable blows of inept governance on his countrymen. Blame Nigerians for installing an extinguished General Buhari on a country that was tired of the irresponsible government of then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015 and one won’t be crucified.As l write this, my mind wanders over that 2014 early morning phone call from our newly installed President Tinubu. When l picked the international call, it was Mr. Sunday Dare, outgone Minister for Youths and Sports that echoed, ‘Good morning Mr. Sanusi and please hold on’; and from the other end bellowed the incisive voice of Asíwájú who must have been following my Friday column in
The Nation newspapers, highlighting at that period in time, reasons why Buhari, who was then being touted to contest for the presidency, should not be considered.
Asiwaju discussed the Buhari issue with me on phone and l was respectfully emphatic in telling him about my doubts regarding whether the man can be trusted, with reasons. In a persuasive voice, Asíwájú asked a rhetorical question: ‘Don’t you think we should give him a chance’ ? Obviously, he wasn’t expecting an immediate response from me. But having been tired of the badly managed state of affairs under Jonathan/PDP, like millions of other Nigerians, l gave the esteemed Asíwájú’s persuasion a deserved consideration.
Again, this becomes easy having erroneously believed that anybody but Jonathan/PDP would rescue Nigerians from the impending collapse of Nigeria’s ship of state. From thence, l started giving the Buhari presidential aspiration a serious thought, because of Asíwájú. That was in 2014 and by 2015, he got elected as President. And the rest, as they say, is history.
One thing is constant. And that is the widely known Asíwájú’s invaluable role in the emergence of Buhari as the President of the country. One significant but ignoble blight of his presidency was his early traits of ingratitude, indifference to good policy actions, and sometimes,self-centered policy actions; his impervious disposition to words of wisdom; his unbridled nepotism and reckless contempt for the security and wellbeing of Nigerians that yearned, futilely for official intervention from the cruelty of mostly Fulani bandits/kidnappers.
From Buhari’s inaugural day, he sent a clear signal of his ungracious intentions to sidetrack Asíwájú by his infamous phrase: “l belong to everybody and l belong to nobody.” From that day, it became clear to me and other discerning Nigerians that Asíwájú’s support for Buhari marked the dawn of an error. Error of choice and a serious political miscalculation. But for God almighty,Asíwájú would have become political history by now. Buhari detests seeing Asíwájú being called APC national leader. This disdain, he manifested at one of the iftars during one of his Ramadan months in Aso-Villa where he clearly proclaimed himself to be the only national leader of the party; thereby seemingly displaying intolerance to Tinubu being referred to as a national leader of the progressive party.
Buhari formed his cabinet, poaching Asíwájú’s foot soldiers without really seeking his inputs. Most of these men distanced themselves from Asíwájú’s interests and more importantly presidential ambition. But most of them, especially those that served in Buhari’s government are back in President Tinubu’s fold pretending to be his locker-room loyalists. I hope President Tinubu will not misplace their hypocrisy for loyalty.
While Buhari’s ‘gbedu drum’ was aloud, his cabal and administration’s beneficiaries sustained their evil political plots against Asíwájú, as their principal looked the other way. But Asiwaju, a cat with nine lives, survived the conspiracies by first winning the party’s presidential primary, and against all odds; won the presidential election and now got sworn-in as President and Commander-in-chief on May 29. If he had lost the primary, what would have been his fate?
The reality should not be lost on the newly installed president. Nobody should blame Nigerians for voting Buhari to power. Neither should anyone blame Tinubu for masterminding his emergence at his party’s 2014 presidential primary in Lagos and later during the presidential poll by deploying all his vast contacts to achieve this end. For all of us, including Tinubu that voted for Buhari in 2015 and 2019, our electoral mistakes were an error of judgment. And it is important for us to note that an error is not any fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment giving impetus to that which is not true. It is also important to note that the error
on voting for Buhari was done in good faith which is to establish that sincerity, even in error is strength. By leaving Nigerians worse than he met us, he crippled himself with ingratitude.
Today in the country, once presided over by Buhari, the only thriving enterprise is government patronage and banditry. The economy, he left in shambles and bedevilled by debts purportedly used to prosecute projects that are either misplaced like the Maradi railway project or left comatose by insecurity or badly executed or scandalously yet to be concluded after eight years.Under Buhari, crude oil theft is on the increase without any sufficient official efforts to stem the tide; oil subsidy rackets were on the increase under Buhari, the value of Naira keeps tumbling to an all time high; power is epileptic, borrowings on an all time high, automobile prices are beyond the reach of average Nigerians as a result of his misplaced automotive policies cum extremely high customs duties.
•Sanusi, a corporate legal consultant and immediate
past MD/CEO of LASAA, lives in Lagos.