Why Are Nigerians Obsessed With President Buhari?

By Agbada S. Agbada Esq.

There is a common, but erroneous belief amongst Nigerians that President Muhammadu Buhari is the personification of Nigeria’s multifaceted problems. This belief has become very potent and has even assumed a mythical character. It has taken a fanatical dimension amongst its many subscribers and any attempt at pointing to any other direction to explain the very dire situation in the country is fiercely resisted and dismissed as insincerity or sycophancy. But as it is with myths, it lacks factual basis.

This is however not to say that Buhari is blameless for the current downward spiral of the country. He is the President and Commander-in-Chief, and as it is commonly said, the buck stops on his desk. While every objective observer will agree that Buhari took over an ailing country from Jonathan – a country that was struggling with and defaulting even in its basic responsibilities of paying salaries, he was expected to come on board with solutions – solutions he promised. Leadership is not a walk in the park; it is expected to be tough. As a matter of fact, leadership is tested during periods of difficulty and crisis. History is replete with individuals whose leadership credentials were established by the problems of their times and their handling of those problems. Franklin D. Roosvelt etched his name on stone by successfully steering the United States of America out of the Great Depression with his New Deal agenda and for leading the Allied Forces to victory in the Second World War after the Japanese daring, utterly devasting, but miscalculated attack on Pearl Harbour. Lee Kuan Yew earned his place as the father of modern Singapore by building Singapore from a third world country to a first world country under difficult conditions. Deng Xiaoping immortalized his name by pulling China from economic doldrums and setting it on the path of rapid and steady economic development, while maintaining a low international profile. With all his oratory and charm, Barack Obama’s success in the White House was defined by the problems he solved, especially his successful handling of the Great Recession, and not his personality.

The challenges that were inherited by Buhari therefore served both as an opportunity as well as a burden. I will therefore not venture into a defence of his administration but will only attempt to highlight the oft dismissed truth that with all his powers and responsibilities as the President – and with all his failings, Buhari is not a personification of Nigeria’s problems; he is a mere fraction of our problems. I believe this truth-telling is important because our obsession with the shortcomings of Buhari has diverted our attention from others who are equally responsible for the parlous state of affairs in the country. Some of the men and women who share equal or even greater responsibility for the ailing system easily find favour in the sight of Nigerians with an anti-Buhari posturing. Nigerians accept the alibi of these pretenders and even treat some as the models of democracy and good governance. And of course, this gullibility is exploited to the hilt.

Nigeria is not running a unitary system of government with absolute concentration of powers at the centre. We run a federal system of government with government powers distributed between the federal, state and local governments. (I know that the question whether ours is truly a federal system remains a matter of debate – a debate I will take on in another piece.) While the quantum and quality of these powers differ among the different tiers of government, they are all vital for the overall and proper functioning of the country. I am not deaf to the arguments in some quarters that the distribution of powers between the federal and state governments is skewed in favour of the federal government and that the state governments are arm strung by this uneven distribution of powers from effectively delivering the fruits of good governance. The proponents of this argument point to the 1999 Constitution as the source of our problems. In their view, the Exclusive Legislative List conferred too many powers on the federal government and denied the state governments critical powers to function effectively. But this is a fallacy that Nigerians seem to accept hook, line and sinker and have refused to probe deeply.

The state governments are not bereft of powers; they enjoy enormous powers under the Constitution and have jurisdiction over such important sectors as health, education, taxation, agriculture etc. under the Concurrent Legislative List of the Constitution. In addition, the state governments enjoy residual powers over matters that are not within the Exclusive and Concurrent Lists of the Constitution which allows the state governments to creatively explore possibilities and opportunities in areas which are completely outside the purview of the federal government to make impact. So, the story about paucity of powers is a hoax. The issue is not about sufficiency of powers; it is about the application of the available powers by the various state governments. It is also important to note that the state governments have absolute autonomy over their financial (not natural or mineral) resources. This means that the federal government does not dictate to the states on the application of their funds. This neutralizes to a large extent, the excuse of insufficiency of powers.

For people who are wont of casting blames on the federal government and the President, one would have expected that our state governors would at least try to be different, even if superficially. But there are rarely any visible efforts by our state governors to deliver good governance to their people. This abdication of responsibility by our state governors is largely responsible for (or at least have greatly exacerbated) our current problems. Poverty, insecurity, illiteracy, unemployment etc. are all biproducts of bad governance. Therefore, our state governors have an opportunity and indeed the powers to deliver prosperity, reduce crime, improve the standard of education, provide quality health care, provide employment, improve their internally generated revenue by attracting investments with the right incentives and policies.
But what do we get? Utter neglect! Mindless plundering! Cluelessness!

There is rarely any state in Nigeria that can boast of a semblance of good governance. (This is not to discountenance the impact a handful of governors, past or present have made in their respective states.) The dividends of good governance are in short supply (if at all in existence) in every state of the federation. Poverty, lack of clean water, absence of decent public schools and hospitals, unemployment, lack of decent housing etc. are spread across every state of the federation (even though not evenly). Every state of the federation is a breeding ground of kidnappers, armed robbers, bandits, terrorists and all other classes of violent criminals who, in some cases are motivated by a sense of neglect, lack and the quest for survival. This explains why every state of the federation has its fair share of insecurity. But our state governors are on permanent honeymoon while their states are being consumed by one crisis or the other. Well, Buhari is there to bear the burden of their collective transgressions.

In addition, state governors are the worst culprits of abuse of power. They are largely responsible for the stunted growth of our democratic process. Our state governors are hypersensitive to dissent of any form. There seems to be a morbid fear amongst them of any meaningful opposition and they deploy the resources, instruments and institutions of the state to gag and stifle dissent. These men have held our democratic institutions to ransom. Rule of law, free, fair and credible elections, independence of the judiciary, legislative and local government autonomy, freedom of expression, freedom of association and other integral elements of our democratic system of government are in the stranglehold of our state governors. They demand for free, fair and credible elections from the Independent National Electoral Commission, but local government elections are almost always charades to legitimize the appointment by the governors of the local government chairmen and councilors.

State Electoral Commissions are populated by their party men and loyalists. Peaceful protesters are met with state sponsored violence and critics are incarcerated at the whims of the governors. The state judiciaries survive at the mercy of the governors. They treat statutory allocations of local governments as their personal funds and strip that critical tier of government the ability and resources to conduct governance. These men rule their states like emperors, dispensing favours to the loyal from the state coffers and beating opposition to submission with the instruments of state. There is zero accountability in the administration of state funds by our governors. But we seem to gloss over the degree of damage our state governors are causing our democratic system, perhaps because their misgovernance occur in smaller geographic units and seem to be compartmentalized. However, this culture of impunity that pervades our thirty six states has now become our national norm.

If the thirty six states of Nigeria are being efficiently governed, the shortcomings of Buhari or any other president would have been benign. But our problems have been exponentially amplified by the inefficiency, lack of probity and the aversion to rule of law by our state governors. If the states are fixed, then Nigeria is fixed. On the other hand, even with a saint as president, we will make no progress without a change at the state levels. If anything, the resistance of the state governors to Buhari’s efforts to implement financial autonomy for the judiciary and the local governments is testament to the fact that even the best policies of the federal government can be effectively truncated by the governors. If we truly desire change, we need to tamper our obsession with Buhari and divert some of that energy to demanding accountability from our state governors. Otherwise, our quest for change will forever remain an illusion.

By Agbada S. Agbada Esq., Stephen.agbada@yahoo.co.uk