President Muhammadu Buhari gave the impression before his election in 2015 that he was a man whose lifestyle and politics were anchored by a strong moral compass. For instance, he was supposed to be an ascetic who shunned all kinds of extravagance. He was supposed to be a principled politician whose body language alone would scare the daylights out of politicians of dubious characters. Yet, all of these were myths! In power, Buhari has turned out to be just a typical amoral politician, who enjoys the trappings of power, and would do anything to gain and retain power!
Recently, President Buhari rolled out the red carpet for Femi Fani-Kayode, one of Nigeria’s most opportunistic politicians, after he defected to Buhari’s party, All Progressives Congress, APC. Of course, Fani-Kayode was just the latest prominent defector to the APC that President Buhari welcomed with lavish fanfare at the presidential villa.
The defection itself is of little interest to me, although one must say those unprincipled politicians, who put self-interest above everything else, perverse democracy and destroy the party system that underpins it. They corrode public confidence in politics.
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In that context, what’s of more interest to me is President Buhari’s role in incentivising and fostering turncoat politics in Nigeria. I am concerned about how he abuses his incumbency and uses his office to encourage party hopping by luring opposition politicians with all kinds of inducement and giving them a red-carpet welcome at the presidential villa.
Truth is, over the past years, President Buhari’s indulgence of turncoat politics, and his unprincipled poaching of opposition politicians, have damaged Nigeria’s democracy and party system and undermined his government’s supposed anti-graft war.
Of course, unprincipled politicians will always switch parties at the drop of a hat. But when a president uses his office and state resources to encourage party hopping, that’s political corruption, abuse of power. And, certainly, Buhari’s red-carpet treatment of turncoats like Fani-Kayode has busted the myth about his political morality.
We will come back to that issue in a moment. But, first, let’s bust another Buhari myth. And the one that really fascinates me is how a man once described by the Economist magazine as a “sandal-wearing ascetic” has suddenly become attracted to the trappings of power and the epicurean life of extravagance.
Last year, I wrote a piece titled “Buhari is succumbing to profligacy and the trappings of power” (Vanguard, January 16, 2020), in which I argued that President Buhari’s lifestyle was contrary to his reputation for asceticism but betrayed an endearment to the trappings of power like, for instance, as then reported, allowing his daughter to use a presidential jet to attend a private event. Such epicurean indulgencies were out of sync with Buhari’s image.
So, was Buhari’s famed asceticism a myth? Well, Farooq Kperogi, academic, and columnist, thinks so. In a fascinating article titled “Top five lies about Buhari that won’t go away” (Tribune, August 14, 2021), Kperogi wrote: “The notion that Buhari is ascetic is another lie that has refused to go away”, arguing that the president always enjoyed the pursuit of pleasure and the good life!
The harshest criticism of the tenuousness of Buhari’s reputation for prudence came from Daily Trust, a newspaper not known for sensationalism. The newspaper was so piqued by the opulence displayed at the wedding of President Buhari’s son that it wrote a stinging editorial titled “The ostentatious Yusuf Buhari’s wedding” (Daily Trust, September 1, 2021).
In the editorial, Daily Trust said: “One of the attributes of President Buhari that endeared him to Nigerians pre-election in 2015 was his simplicity and the fact that he was not given to waste”. It added: “That is why the scenes and pictures from Bichi were shocking and disappointing. It was a show of affluence; indeed, the whole event cut a picture of opulence”.
The newspaper’s main points were that such display of opulence was not in consonance with Buhari’s reputation for prudence or frugality and that, in any case, the show of affluence “is not okay in a country that is the poverty capital of the world”.
Well, just in case anyone would attribute the ostentations to the generosity of others, not the president himself, the newspaper said: “The arguments that most of the gifts and activities for the day were sponsored by well-wishers should not even come up at all as the president should not be accepting such considering his position”.
Of course, President Buhari shouldn’t have accepted such lavish gifts, if he did. You can’t be fighting corruption and be receiving stupendous gifts from politicians and business people, especially if you will not disclose their identities, as it is done in civilised countries. As the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, UNCAC, noted: “The acceptance of gifts by public officials is a factor fuelling corruption”.
But corruption is not only pecuniary in nature; it also concerns abuse of office. And, so, the president should also not be using his position to induce party hopping. This is why President Buhari was wrong to roll out the red carpet for defectors like Fani-Kayode, whose justifications for defecting to APC stretched credulity.
For instance, Fani-Kayode said he joined the APC “to foster unity and peace of the country”, but spent the past years calling for the break-up of Nigeria and identifying closely with Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho, the arch-secessionists. In any case, why is defecting to the APC the only way to foster unity and peace in Nigeria? Presumably, his old party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), is working against the unity and peace of Nigeria! Of course, the defection was utterly self-serving.
President Buhari’s special adviser on political matters, Babafemi Ojudu, described Femi Kayode’s defection to the APC as the “saddest day” of his political career. What advice did he give to President Buhari on the matter? Or was Ojudu, who is paid by the state to advise the president on political matters, not consulted by President Buhari on the rightness or wrongness of rolling out the red carpet for Fani-Kayode at the presidential villa?
Well, Femi Adesina, Buhari’s spokesman, who regularly insults the intelligence of the average Nigerian with his sophistry, framed the president’s red-carpet treatment of Fani-Kayode as an act of mercy. Adesina said: “Buhari displayed amazing capacity to forgive, to show mercy and let bygones be bygones”. He said the president showed “an outstanding large heart” and “a capacity to forgive and forget”. Really? What an utter sophistry!
President Buhari is mercy personified, right? So, why is it that the same Buhari, who hands out congratulatory and condolence messages like confetti, cannot bring himself to condole the family of Dr. Obadiah Mailafia, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and former presidential candidate in the 2019 general elections, who died nearly two weeks ago? Where is the mercy? Where is forgiveness? What negative things did Dr. Mailafia say about Buhari that Fani-Kayode did not say far worse and many times over?
Of course, the difference is that Dr. Mailafia refused to kowtow to Buhari or join APC, whereas Fani-Kayode eventually did, despite vowing he would “rather die than join APC or bow to Buhari”. That is the difference. Anyone who joins APC would be forgiven, whatever his or her “sins”; anyone who does not would die a “sinner”, undeserving of the president’s mercy!
But why are prominent defectors to APC not joining the party at their wards or the party’s headquarters? Why, as Adesina said, are they making a “triumphal entry at the Presidential Villa, with President Buhari himself as the host”?
Some may wonder: Why does this matter? Well, it matters because turncoat politics damages the party system undermines democracy, and breeds corruption. And President Buhari is wrong to use his incumbency to encourage it.
