KEN UGBECHIE

In his quiet moment, President Muhammadu Buhari by now should be a disturbed man. Behind the steely mien of a war-tested retired general, the president – a father, family man, uncle and above all a human being – needs to take a trip into the bowels of introspection. He should weigh the tides and twists of his administration against similar undercurrents that attended the regimes of his predecessors. If he does this, I expect him, as someone sold to Nigerians as a man of integrity, to admit the fact that he is no better than Goodluck Jonathan, the late Umar Yar’adua and Olusegun Obasanjo, all former presidents of Nigeria.

As a man famed for honesty, Buhari would have realized by now that everything he accused his predecessors of has happened under his watch as President. He accused his predecessors of monumental corruption; he has offered no less than this. Under his watch, Nigeria has witnessed grand display of corruption especially within the precinct of the Presidency by persons perceived to be the confidants of the president himself. Under Buhari, Nigeria has witnessed grand fiscal corruption. From Babachirgate to Mainagate; from the disappearance of millions of dollars from the office of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the spooky contract transactions in NNPC that his own cabinet minister spewed to the public, to deliberate distortions of national budgets with intent to undercut the system, we have seen them all.

But unlike his predecessors, Buhari has offered more than financial corruption. He has exhibited nepotism in a manner never before seen. And in case our President doesn’t know it, nepotism is at the core of graft. The practice and display of nepotism is the father of corruption. Nepotism divides a people, throws up emotion and makes the leader look away when his cronies, kinsmen and loyalists infringe the canon. We have seen this in our president. It’s troubling, it’s disturbing especially coming from a man who is being marketed as Mr. Incorruptible.

By far, the area where President Buhari has sunk into the same pit as did his immediate predecessor is his inability to tame the bogey of insecurity haunting the nation. Jonathan was without a doubt a weak president. His lack of steel and lustre manifested in the manner insecurity festered in the nation, in the manner military chiefs became military thieves and overnight billionaires, in the manner money voted for munitions was converted to personal booties and bounties, in the manner a certain Mrs. Diezani Madueke turned the receipts from crude oil into her personal purse. The list is long. It was in the weakness of Jonathan that Boko Haram mushroomed from a rag-tag gang of goons to a regimented and organized army of ruthless murderers.

Unfortunately while Boko Haram waxed from strength to strength, Jonathan waned in strength and control. He could not control or contain the brazen thievery among the military top brass. But Jonathan was not only weak, he was also naïve. He was Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces but didn’t know how and when to command. His naivety was exemplified by the abduction of Chibok girls. First, he was stuck in the web of disbelief. He doubted the kidnap, allowing the abductors to escape further and deeper into the fortress of Sambisa. Then, he hurriedly released money, big money, to the military to acquire more arms forgetting that you do not wait until war has started before you ready your troops. The best art of war is preemptive strike not reactionary strategy. Jonathan’s insurgency containment stratagem was configured to fail and it did.

Then entered Buhari. He accused the military under Jonathan of being weak. In his electioneering messages, he stopped short of taunting Jonathan. He did not only promise to rescue the Chibok girls, he gave a timeline when he would rout Boko Haram. He talked as if he had the password to the innermost sanctum of the insurgents. Today, two and a half years after, Boko Haram still lives. Buhari did not defeat Boko Haram. All the claims by Lai Mohammed, the mouthpiece of the Buhari government, has turned out a choreographed piece of propaganda. Both Buhari and Lai Mohammed lied to the nation. They deceived the people. Evidence of their grand deception was the recent abduction of 110 Dapchi School girls in Yobe State by the same Boko Haram “we defeated many months ago”.  There has never been any defeat of the insurgents. This is the downside of propaganda. It may win for a moment but its victory does not endure.

As it now stands, there is no clear difference between Jonathan government and the Buhari administration. They are both stewed in the juice of corruption. They are both overwhelmed by the Boko Haram insurgents. Buhari even scores worse in security matters because aside Boko Haram, his body language has triggered a surge in herdsmen attack on Nigerians such that some people even argue that the herdsmen have become more fatalistic than Boko Haram. Under Buhari, we now have a double-prong onslaught on the nation: bellicose Boko Haram and belligerent herdsmen. Both are dangerous. They bring no joy. They breed pain and death.

The recent abduction of Dapchi school girls completes the Buhari story. It is a story we cannot write in blue ink. It’s a story scripted in crimson, deep red, ink; a story of pain, perfidy and death. I have lost count of the gory incidents of herdsmen attack on whole communities; I have lost count of kidnaps and abductions of innocent Nigerians and expatriates on our highways and byways by the same herdsmen. I have lost count of the harvest of deaths carefully and strategically orchestrated by this growing and better organized army in Nigeria called herdsmen.

Yet, we have a president who is a retired Army General, a tough and taciturn ex-soldier experienced in ground combats and military strategy (at least by his training). Under Jonathan, the nation’s security apparatchik showed a lack of dexterity in intelligence gathering. Boko Haram insurgents showed superior intelligence. Jonathan even admitted that the insurgents have infiltrated the military rank but our military could not infiltrate the camp of the insurgents. This also could be a safe deduction under Buhari. The military has yet to infiltrate the camp of Boko Haram otherwise the Dapchi abduction would not have happened. Attacking a school and successfully bolting with 110 students was not an accident. It was a carefully planned operation which escaped the radar of the security agencies with all their trainings, with all their acquisition of more weapons, both infantry and aerial surveillance tools and with all their big budgets. What then is the difference between Jonathan and Buhari in the area of securing the nation? Nothing! Buhari has even offered more fears than Jonathan. And this is where, Mr. Buhari, as we say in local parlance “fall my hand”. As a tough soldier in his days, I had expected he would secure the nation more than anyone. He has failed. But he can still redeem himself, his reputation and the reputation of the military.

At the moment he offers little hope and I fear. I grieve for my country. When Chibok happened, we played politics with it. Now, it is Dapchi and we are still painting the narrative in the dialectics of politics. Can’t we ever learn?

Culled from Sunday Sun