Muhammadu Buhari: Two years after (2)

AFTER an election has been conducted and a government formed, it is required that such a government should, in practical terms, cater for every citizen and section of the country. Whoever becomes president is regarded as having the mandate of the entire citizenry and required to see the whole country as his or her constituency, regardless of the fact that a certain percentage of the voters might not have identified with his or her aspiration at the polls. The Nigerian Constitution clearly endorses this guiding principle. It was in this light that, in his inauguration speech on May 29, 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari declared that he belonged to everybody and belonged to nobody, which meant that his mission was to further deepen national integration by being fair and just to all. However, he was later to declare, rather unfortunately, that those who gave him five per cent support should honestly not expect to benefit from his government like those who gave 97 per cent.

Alarmed by the crass indiscipline in the country, particularly among the political class, the administration wasted no time in trying to infuse sanity into the polity. This commendable move was widely applauded across the nation. However, other problems soon cropped up in the process. For instance, appointments and recruitments into governmental positions in the last two years have been very sectional. In clear defiance of the Federal Character Principle, the administration converted over 200 members of the Civilian JTF from Borno State into soldiers of the Nigerian Army at a time when such a gesture was not extended to the rest of the country, while the recent recruitment into the State Security Services (SSS), otherwise known as the Department of State Services (DSS) where Katsina State, the home state of the president, allegedly had more candidates than some geopolitical zones in the country, followed the same pattern. Indeed, the majority of the policies and actions of his administration in the last two years detract from the impression that he belongs to nobody, especially against the backdrop of the cardinal democratic principle of the rule of law and good governance.

The ignoble rule of the thumb is fast becoming a fad, as amply evident in a number of high-profile cases. While lack of due diligence on the part of the prosecution has been largely responsible for the loss of some of the cases, the administration has, time and again, defied court orders. It has openly spurned the constitutionally guaranteed reprieve granted the persons on trial by courts of competent jurisdiction, just as the law enforcement agents have tried to elevate and institutionalise gangsterism and subterfuge as art.  The cases of the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki; leader of the Shiite Islamic movement in Nigeria, Sheikh Ibrahim el- Zakzaky and even the recently released leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, are typical sore examples.

The handling of these cases, among many others, has invited comparisons with the most brutal regimes in the global history. Worse still, as if completely uninterested in public opinion, the administration has canvassed infamous arguments to justify the open disdain for the rule of law, for instance by claiming that persons in manacles despite court orders are in detention for their own good. The security agencies, most notably the SSS, have done their level best to reduce the country to a police state while in pursuit of allegedly corrupt citizens. In the recent case of a business mogul, the SSS even claimed that he had committed economic sabotage punishable with death, thus arrogating to itself the power of conviction vested in the courts. Paradoxically, the Service has defied more court orders under this administration than at any other time in the nation’s history.

We also believe that another sore point in the leadership style of the present administration is its propensity for policy inconsistency, which has impacted negatively on national integration, cohesion and harmony. It is commonsensical that governance is a continuum and hence the government ought to have leveraged on the gains of the policy and programmes of the preceding administration to avoid the approach that encouraged occupation and threatened national integration and unity in the Niger Delta and other areas.  At no time since the end of the three-year Civil War in 1970 has the country been more divided. The suppressed anger under military dictatorship naturally found opportunity for expression, resting on the democratic finesse of the rule of law, consultation and lobbying.  But the siege mentality of the military appears to subsist among a segment of the security architecture, which sees the rights and freedoms of the citizens, as clearly defined in the 1999 Constitution, as an affront.

The law enforcement agencies fail to accept that virtually all the issues, including political imbalance, favouritism, lopsidedness and high-handedness that necessitated the agitations in the land, remain deep-rooted in the minds and psyche of the various ethnic groups making up the federation.  Rather than acknowledge these issues, the government has often ignored all complaints therefrom. Nonetheless, these issues aggregate to foster the demands for justice and equity by ethnic groups in the country. The movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and IPOB seem to be the loudest because of the approach and style of the promoters of those organisations, unlike other similar bodies that engage in passive resistance.

The foregoing notwithstanding, the administration must be commended for fostering national integration through a change of strategy in the Niger Delta. Indeed, if such an approach is sustained, it will contribute significantly to reducing the agony in the land.