Buhari And The Principle Of Justice

From the ringing clangour of change that blared from the ginormous megaphone of the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the 2015 electioneering to the ear-splitting applauses that greeted the historic swearing-in of General Muhammadu Buhari as the fourth president since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, a strong indication was given that Nigeria was clearly on the threshold of a defining transformation. At home and abroad, the message energetically bruited about was one of Nigeria changing tack and finally ready to walk the path of justice, order, development and progress.

President Buhari amplified it in his inaugural speech, stressing that ‘Nigeria has a window of opportunity to fulfil our long-standing potential of pulling ourselves together and realizing our mission as a great nation’. Quoting confidently from Shakespeare’s well-known Julius Caesar, the president explicitly made it known that he understood his brief as leading his country’s folks to take at the flood the tide of change and lead the country on to fortune.

But as every compatriot whose critical mind-set is not skin-deep knows, the new beginning that the turn in the tide of the country in March 2015 generously vouchsafed is being incredibly recklessly frittered away. Rather than take the current of that new beginning wholly and heartedly when it was served and from there move steadily on to creatively improve the human condition, the new administration elected, wittingly in many instances and unwittingly in some cases, to omit the great and golden opportunity of a fresh start. The consequence of this errancy is the oceanic number of Nigerian lives and businesses ‘bound in shallows and miseries’.

It is a confounding irony and a perplexing paradox that it is an acute lack of a deep sense of justice that is at the heart of the heart-searing failures and limiting feats of the Buhari administration. What hobbles the administration since inception is not largely the giddily overstated fact of a nearly empty treasury necessitated by the combined profligate bents of previous administrations or the drastic reduction in the revenue accruable from the sale of crude oil. Rather, the present administration is finding it harshly difficult to transform Nigeria and remake it into a liveable emporium of progress and prosperity because its understanding of the principle of justice is superficial. Being unable to heal the wounds of Nigerians with the balm of justice which it does not admit it lacks, it casts around for kindergarten excuses, deflects public attention from grave issues, scapegoats its critics, and basks needlessly in the constricting streams of inchoate successes. Unable and unwilling to see the forest for the woods, the Buhari government thinks that with more money and not justice and structured thinking, it will reform the country and make it a reference point in the discourse of viable nations.

More specifically, President Buhari’s numerous appointments since assuming office – from his kitchen cabinet to the security agencies – prove aright the claim of his alienation to the principle of justice. A plural society, indeed any society, cannot abide and thrive on the principle of injustice and narrow considerations. Had the President really taken the tide when it was served, he would have known, ab initio, that his appointment must unavoidably reflect the plurality of the country. When your choices and conducts make segments of your plural society to distrust and consider you as one winking in the dark, you cannot attribute the problem assailing your efforts to lack of funds. A proper diagnosis will reveal it is plainly an issue of lack of justice and good thinking on your part.

This is what President Buhari loathes to appreciate. Yet, he cannot do without it if he hopes to transform the country. The structured thought of the abolitionist, Frederick Douglas, is apposite here: ‘Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.’

Similarly, President Buhari’s disposition to the extrajudicial murder of many Nigerians in different parts of the country advertises his uninspiring appreciation of the criticalness of justice in building a functional country. As the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, he has neither questioned the unprofessional propensities and unseemly conducts of the troops he commands nor has he demonstrated believably to anyone that he feels greatly disturbed by the cruelties they unleash(ed) on the civilian components of the country he swore to protect.

When the President responded to question on the activities of the Shia claque in his maiden televised Presidential Chat in December 2015, he gave the impression that the group got the right treatment, arguing instead that its members were thorns in the flesh of their neighbours. Like the self-possessed Governor el-Rufai of the state, President Buhari could not be bothered that the army under his watch orchestrated the death of harmless citizens. It did not, and still has not, occurred to these men that there is something called justice, which can be done for both the offender and the offended. Not a soldier or a commander has been summoned to account for the unjust deployment of brutal, excessive force in both Kaduna and some of the states in either the South-east or South-south.

It is equally the absence of justice that is evident in the continued incarceration of El Zakzaky and Nnamdi Kanu of IPOB, and a couple of other Nigerians, in flagrant disregard of court pronouncements. The tenuous crisis-management capability of the Buhari administration is worsened incrementally by its niggling appreciation of the indispensability of justice to the whole project of nation-building. It is strange that this administration learns nothing from the unpleasant conducts of the police under the watch of President Yar’Adua, during which that agency of government extra-judicially killed the Boko Haram kingpin, Muhammed Yusuf, and thereafter brutally cracked down on many more of his followers. If the state under the control of past administrations spurned justice and consequently came a sad cropper, can it be argued sensibly that the Buhari administration has not ignored the tide of a new beginning when it is the case that the colour of the injustices playing out in its time is indistinguishable from those before May 29, 2015?

Look to the avoidable tragedy of the Internally Displaced Persons and the inability of the Presidential Initiative in the Northeast to account for about N2.5b meant for the wellbeing of the IDPs and how the presidency is pussyfooting in doing the right thing, you will see a glaring picture of an administration inured to the culture of injustice. Rather than heal and be made ready for decent living outside their present temporary abodes, the IDPs are being re-endangered and re-traumatised. Does the President remember what he said in his inaugural speech? Here is it: ‘I will not have kept my own trust with the Nigerian people if I allow others abuse theirs under my watch.’ Sadly, many Nigerians have been serially ill-treated under his watch by those he saddles with vital responsibilities.

If President Buhari wants to succeed, he must perforce re-examine his attitude to the principle of fairness. He cannot continue to listen to the surface thinkers and self-serving savants who tantalise his ears with the testimonies of unreal realities. Will President Buhari take the tide of opportunities to do justice to the lingering aches of the land? Will he pull down the strongholds of injustices scattered across the country?

Ademola writes from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.