The story of Muhammadu Buhari presidency, especially in the last few months, has taken on a lot of stormy elements of drama and broken hearts in both the economic and security fronts not seen in many decades in our nation. Last Tuesday alone was like living inside the army of terror. Two horrifying attacks happened within an interval of few hours: first was bandits’ attack on his advance convoy to Katsina ahead of his visit to Daura, his country home, for the Sallah celebration. According to Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu, two persons were injured and taken to hospital. Later same day, at night, Kuje medium prison located in Abuja, came under heavy bombardment. At least 300 inmates were reported missing. Radical Islamic group, ISWAP, had since claimed responsibility for the attack.
Together, these terrific attacks have once again opened up a new conversation on the worsening insecurity in Nigeria. But the sad development tells more than that. First, it’s an indication of a nation on the brink, of a nation lacking good, farsighted leadership, focus and direction. It also speaks volumes of a leadership deficit that prefers to lead from the rear rather than from the front. In short, it’s all about a government that has gone AWOL, absconded and abandoned its constitutional responsibilities. And you are compelled to ask: What wrong has Nigerians done to this government, this President, that it’s often aloof, completely absent-minded to the concerns of the people, leaving them at their own peril?
Like a cake walk, terrorists are steadily, with uncommon audacity, taking over Nigeria. As President of the Senate Ahmad Lawan said about the Kuje prison invasion, ‘it is a failure of our security system’. But, it’s more than that: it’s about what leaders do while they are trying to get power, and what they do after they have it. The difference reveals why President Buhari has proved incapable of dealing with all the challenges of immediate concerns that confront Nigeria. For sure, this didn’t begin today. That’s what you get from people who want to be leaders, but don’t understand what it means in the true sense of it, that’s: using great power for great purposes. President Buhari represents that classic example.
Recall that was the point His Eminence, Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar IV made two years ago, at the 4th Quarterly meeting of the Nigeria Inter-Ministerial Religious Council, that took place in Abuja. His voice was hollow with emotion and the echo of the horrific killings in the North, He could not betray the feeling of emptiness that often accompanies a thick pall of grief. Now, not only the North, no part of the country is safe. For the Sultan, it was no longer time to sit on the fence. It was time to speak truth to power. And he did. “People think the North is safe”, he began, “but that assumption is not true. In fact, it’s the worst place to be in this country because bandits go around in the villages, households and markets with their AK-47, and nobody is challenging them.They stop at the market, buy things, pay and collect change, with their weapons openly displayed”.
As a former soldier himself who served in the elite Armoured Corps, and headed a presidential security unit, the Sultan can foretell a present security danger. From the killings that happen every day in Nigeria, it’s clear the government didn’t heed to his call. Like many other voices of reason, he was snubbed. Former Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Ishaya Bamayi narrated the same experience in the hands of the present government in an interview he granted NTA, recently. And, again, you ask: Is there a conspiracy of some sort within this government with terrorists? I don’t know. But it calls to question: where’s the Commander In Chief?
Former President Goodluck Jonathan once alleged there were some “fifth columnists”, within his government that made the war against terror hard to win. Few weeks ago, the Chief of Defence Staff, Lt.Gen. Lucky Irabor, admitted that fifth columnists are active in the Armed Forces. You see that! Life and hope are fast losing meaning in Nigeria. Hardly any week that terrorists fail to unleash one form of attack or the other. We were still counting the losses in the Shiroro attack that claimed the lives of 37 soldiers and policemen before the bombing of Kuje prison. Nigeria has become a killing field, a cemetery of sort. Yet, government appears all is well.
Everyone’s patience is growing thin. Across the country, anger is evident. Statistics bear this out: In 10 years, no fewer than 40,000 people had been killed by insurgents, 657 civilians, 592 military personnel killed in 2020, and more than 2.5 million people rendered homeless in the North East alone. These figures are conservative estimates. Between January 2020 and June 9, 2022, over 2,000 people have been reported killed in 68 massacres across the country, according to SBM Intelligence, Nigeria’s leading-edge geopolitical intelligence platform. Also, between January 2021 and July 4, 2022, about 139 clerics and worshippers have been murdered in churches and mosques across the country. Every passing week, more killings occur.
How did Buhari go AWOL, sleepwalk into other things, taking his eyes off the ball? Or is Nigeria getting harder than he had prepared on assumption of office? As some people had said, he was never prepared for the office, he simply wanted to be President at all cost? As his presidency is on a homestretch now, he must ask himself the following questions: how will I like to be remembered? A preserver of my nation’s peace and unity? Or a president who presided over the division of my country? The judgement of history doesn’t come fast, but historians do. And their verdict on the Buhari presidency may be unsparing and unkind for leaving Nigeria worse than he met it in 2015.
As historians will tell us, a president is like a shepherd who knows what stirs the hearts of his people and take concrete actions that work in their overall interest. Such challenges are like milestones around the president’s neck. How he solves them or fails to solve them, will determine to a large extent, how history will judge him. Can Buhari make amends now? Is a question only him can answer.