Unable to enforce law and order, contain heightened insecurity and with groups of terrorists now encircling Abuja, the seat of power, the Nigerian state under the rule of President Muhammadu Buhari is teethering on the edge of failure. In the last seven years of the Buhari administration, Nigeria has deteriorated rapidly from exhibiting early to advanced signals of state failure as the government increasingly finds it difficult to assert its monopoly on the use of legitimate force, a steady eroding of the legitimacy of state as a result of the inability of constituted authorities to enforce law and order as well as provide basic public services to the people.

Like an absent-minded sailor, President Buhari has stirred the ship of the Nigerian state in a rudderless manner, which has it lost at sea with complicated security and economic problems threatening to push it off the edge the cliff of statehood. While it is undeniable that Nigeria has suffered from a long history of misrule, the current administration of President Buhari has clearly worsened Nigeria’s leadership woes as manifested in his failure to make real his much-anticipated promise of change upon which he was first elected in 2015. And in addition to his hyper-partisanship, at the root of his acute leadership failure is his inability to rise above primordial sentiments of ethnicity and religion in his administration of the Nigerian state and the discharge of his responsibilities as commander-in-chief in the last seven years of his presidency.

It is a basic lesson in statecraft that the national unity, social cohesion and peace of the constituent peoples of a sovereign entity such as Nigeria are fundamental conditions precedent for national security and socio-economic development. But to achieve a reasonable level of social cohesion, national unity and peace that are essential to ensure an appreciable level of national security and socio-economic development, the state must be administered by its political leadership with the principles of social justice, equity, fairness and inclusion towards all without discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and religion. A fundamental quality the political leadership of multi-ethnic and multi-religious states must possess to be forge a united nation of citizens out of a country of tribesmen such as Nigeria is diversity management skills and the ability to put national interests above sectional interests.

Unfortunately, President Buhari failed this basic test of leadership following his election in 2015, when, rather than take deliberate and purposeful steps towards reconciling a divided country after an election that pitted the Muslim North and the Christian South in a fierce contest for power, he actually took wrong steps that aggravated the problem of disunity. Rather than take a conciliatory tour of the parts of the country that did not vote for him to reassure them of inclusion and allay their fears of losing out of the scheme of things in his administration, President Buhari did no such thing but treated the South-East and South-South regions of Nigeria with a vengeful disdain as though they were a politically conquered people.

In a fit of triumphalist rage, President Buhari infamously declared Nigeria an apartheid state, where those who gave him “97 per cent” votes would get more from his government than those who gave him “5 per cent”. And because his Muslim northern section of Nigeria gave him “97 per cent” support as against the predominantly Christian South-East and South-South that gave him “5 per cent”, President Buhari instituted “Arewa privilege” in Nigeria when he elevated sectionalism to a near state policy of his administration. As seen in his appointments, programmes as well as economic policies and national security strategy, Buhari’s Nigeria has increasingly become an apartheid state where Arewa privilege has been instituted, as ethnicity and religion can enhance or reduce a Nigerian’s access to government patronage.

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President Buhari’s sectionalism, which has enthroned mediocrity over competence and induced massive corruption, resulting into a severely dislocated economy, has, sadly, left Nigeria deeply divided along ethno-religious fault lines. However, nowhere has President Buhari’s sectionalism had its most debilitating effect than his mishandling of the killer herdsmen’s terrorism in Nigeria. Characterised by mass abductions, killings, sacking and pillaging of sedentary communities across the country, the murderous activities of killer herdsmen from all over West and Central Africa has left sorrow, tears and blood across the land.

A self-identified Fulani from the northern region of Nigeria, President Buhari has failed to contain the threat posed to the existence of Nigeria by the violent activities of killer herdsmen of mostly Fulani ethnicity by his consistent description of the ongoing carnage that has resulted into thousands of deaths and displacement of many more as a clash between farmers and herders, while urging victims to learn to live with their victimizers.  Not only has he not been able to defeat what has become a bigger security problem than the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East, the Buhari administration has politicised and ethnicised Fulani herdsmen’s terrorism as farmers-herders’ clashes that requires an economic rather than a military solution. And this economic solution is to exhume ancient grazing routes to allow for transhumance cattle breeding or the giving up of land by communities for cattle colonies as a condition for peace. While the Buhari administration was still undecided about what to make of killer herdsmen, the terrorists grew fangs enough to claw down a military jet and tear open officers and men of the elite Brigade of Guards less than 50 kilometres away from the Aso Villa residence of the President in Abuja.

The failure of the Buhari administration to effectively and decisively tackle herdsmen’s terrorism has not only emboldened the terror group but allowed them time and space to acquire more arms from the proceeds of their murderous crimes, just as they have also entered into an alliance with elements of the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP). A convergence of killer herdsmen and ISWAP in the central Nigerian states of Kaduna, Niger, Nasarawa and Kogi has ensured an encircling of Abuja, the seat of power, by terrorists.

A country divided by President Buhari’s level of sectionalism cannot be socially cohesive and united enough to confront and defeat insecurity. From Mohammed Siad Barre, the last ruler of Somalia, to Omar el Bashir, the last ruler of Sudan, when a commander-in-chief takes a position with his ethnicity rather than his citizenship, it inhibits his ability to enforce law and order impartially and undermines national security, resulting into state failure. And this appears to be the unfolding scenario in Buhari’s Nigeria, where things are falling apart and the centre cannot hold.