Mahatma Gandhi, a former Indian political leader, said: “Men say I am a saint losing himself in politics. The fact is that I am a politician trying my hardest to become a saint.”
Before the general election last year, many opinions were bandied on who the real Muhammadu Buhari was. Some said he was a no-nonsense person; some argued he was a religious fundamentalist; some countered that he would not be able to do any magic to change Nigeria, since according to them, the person who made his military regime thick in the early 80’s was the late Tunde Idiagbon, the then second-in-command.
However, the dominating impression pre-2016 general election was that Buhari was better than most typical Nigerian politicians in terms of attitude to power. But Buhari knows himself better than anyone else (knows about him).
Today, a good number of critics converge on a conclusion that President Buhari may not be saintly on political turf afterall.
Critics say that overtly and covertly, the President, since he mounted the power stool, may have manifested certain traits that are common with typical Nigerian politicians. In their estimation, the President appears to be a politician, trying very hard to become a saint, just like Gandhi.
Pundits have also alleged that Buhari has a weakness of not congratulating winners of election but only those of his party.
“It is on record that he does not congratulate those who win election in other parties. This is a dangerous precedent. He still does not know that he is not only the president to APC members but Nigerian president, and everybody, irrespective of party affiliation, is his subject,” Maxwell Nnadi, a public affairs commentator, said.
According to Nnadi, “We have seen situations in the past where a sitting president congratulated members of the opposition as soon as they were declared winners either by the INEC or the court of law. Jonathan also called to congratulate Buhari even when the results had not been made public. So, if the present President is not doing so, it is a dangerous precedent.”
Recently, Austin Tam-George, Rivers State commissioner for information and communication, reacting to an observation that President Buhari had not congratulated Seriake Dickson who won the Bayelsa State gubernatorial election recently, said: “Well, concerning whether the President has congratulated the winner in the Bayelsa election, that is an open question. It is up to the President to decide whether to congratulate him or not, but because he occupies a very pivotal position in our democratic structures, I think extending a congratulatory message could help to tone down the rhetoric in that place.
“We have, fortunately, the tradition of a sitting President extending congratulation to his opponent who defeated him even long hours before the real result of that exercise was announced. So, we will have to leave it for him to decide.”
But the Presidency has since explained why President has refused to congratulate Dickson.
But Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, may have provided the answer when he told journalists in Abuja that “This President is not in the business of interfering and intervening in elections. What of if he sent a congratulatory message and they go to court and the election is overturned, will he call back the congratulatory message? This President believes that the presidency should be insulated from the conduct of elections and their outcomes.”
However, last week, Buhari congratulated Patrice Talon, president-elect of Benin Republic, on his electoral victory in the presidential run-off last Sunday, as announced by the Autonomous National Electoral Commission, a development that some observers also criticized.
Critics believe that the President’s decision not to congratulate members of the opposition may be sending wrong signals and creating the impression that he is not promoting the sportsmanship in election expected of his high office.
It is also being said in some quarters that the inability of the President to sternly warn his members on the need for them to eschew electoral violence may have emboldened them to think that they are in every electoral contest for victory, at all cost.
It was the level of silence in Aso Rock towards electoral violence and what appears as the willingness of the APC-led government to ensure that 36 states were under it, if possible, that may have given vent to insinuations that some state governors under the PDP were being lobbied to decamp to the APC.
It could be recalled that when the President went to commission the superhighway road project of Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State last year, it was touted that Ayade may have been compromised and coerced to join the APC.
By the same token, when the Appeal Court sitting in Owerri, Imo State, gave a judgment on Thursday, December 31, 2015 nullifying Okezie Ikpeazu’s election and ordering immediate swearing in of Alex Otti of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), critics alleged that Otti must have been prevailed upon to join the APC if he became the governor. Indeed, Buhari’s body language is sending all manner of signals that are being interpreted in different ways depending on who is doing the analysis.
Anthony Ayandeji, an aggrieved member of the PDP, who spoke with BDSUNDAY on what he termed “Buhari’s segregation theory”, faulted some of the statements made by the President in his speech at the at inauguration of the National Economic Council (NEC) last week.
“I want to quote where the President forgot that he was at a meeting of all Nigerians, irrespective of party differences, and decided to be playing politics. If you look at the text of his address, you would see where he said, ‘Some estimates put Nigeria’s housing deficit at about sixteen million units. In our successful campaign to win the general elections last year our party, the APC, promised to build a million housing units a year. This will turn out to be a very tall order unless: The Federal Government builds two hundred and fifty thousand units. The 22 APC States together manage another two hundred and fifty thousand units.’ So, what happens to the PDP, and APGA-controlled states? I think by now the President should be weaning himself of that dangerous and destructive sentiment. It is such rhetoric that makes some APC members think that the entire country belongs to them and that they must win election by every means possible,”
Before the recent Rivers State rerun election, President Buhari made a threat to deal with anybody who would dare to foment trouble before, during or after the exercise.
Before the recent Rivers State rerun election, President Buhari made a threat to deal with anybody who would dare to foment trouble before, during or after the exercise.
“We will deal decisively with all sponsors of violence. I have given the security services clear directives in this regard,” the president said.
What is not in the public space is if he had any meeting with members of his party (of Rivers origin) on the need for them to tone down their dangerous rhetoric.
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) of trying to win Rivers State by every means possible.
Tam-George, Rivers State commissioner for information and communication, recently told BDSUNDAY that John Odigie-Oyegun, national chairman of the APC, specifically said that Rivers was so important a state to be left in the hands of the opposition.
Tam-George said: “Oyegun made the bizarre suggestion that all oil-producing states of the Niger Delta region were prized assets to be acquired at all costs by the APC.”
He quoted the APC chairman as saying that “We have lost very important resource-rich states to the PDP. No matter how crude oil prices have fallen, it is still the most important revenue earner for the country.”
Analysts are wondering if President Buhari has the same mindset as Oyegun. They also alluded to what they termed “selective judgment” and “double standard” in the anti-graft war being waged by government at the centre.
According to the political pundits, while the Buhari government is probing the source of PDP campaign funding, it has remained silent on the sources of the APC’s despite allegations that some of those in his cabinet literally emptied their states’ purse to bankroll the party’s candidate.
Moreover, observers are questioning the seeming silence of the Presidency in the midst of the alleged jaundiced judgments that were being dished out by the Appeal Court in favour of the APC. It took the intervention of Mahmud Mohammed, Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) to halt the drift and restore sanity in the system.
Questions were also raised on whose directives the various security apparatuses in the country moved their men and made some transfers that were condemned by members of the opposition.
Samuel Chelu, an IT consultant in Lagos, said he blamed Buhari for the escalating level of electoral violence in some states in the Niger Delta.
“We know that violence has been the way of Niger Delta during elections, but I think the drive by the APC government at the centre to conquer the region was responsible for the increasing level of violence in Bayelsa and Rivers. I am yet to hear President Buhari address his APC members to see election as sports and the need to exhibit the spirit of sportsmanship. I think the problem is that he wants to satisfy the stakeholders of his party by closing his eyes to their activities. I am sure that if he had given stern warning to them to eschew violence, things would have been a lot better,” Chelu said.
“I read what he said at the APC meeting the other day on the failure of his government in Kogi, Bayelsa and Rivers elections. The President should go beyond lamentation to action. Things can’t just continue the way they have been,” he added.
A media practitioner, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was difficult to actually know where President Buhari stands in all of this.
“His statement ‘I am for nobody, am for everybody’ is nebulous. It is difficult to understand him. But I think he appears helpless,” he said.
Zebulon Agomuo
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