Muhammadu Buhari was a military head of state and later civilian president. After he was overthrown in a coup d’etat by General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, he was briefly detained and later sent into private life, spending his time ‘taking care of his 150 cows.’
He tried becoming democratically elected president twice and was beaten by General Olusegun Obasanjo, himself a former military head of state and two-term civilian president too.
After Obasanjo left office and before returning from prison to becoming democratically-elected president, he wrote some books—My Command—gave speeches, and tried his hands on his administration’s Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), which he converted and called Obasanjo Farms Nigeria Limited (OFN). The farm sold chickens and eggs. He became a member of the Eminent Persons Group, joined Amnesty International, gave speeches, wrote letters, and pretended to be a concerned Democrat after causing his own chaos as president.
When Goodluck Jonathan lost the election to Buhari and quickly conceded defeat and saved this country from a bloodbath, he was actively engaged, visiting here and there and giving lectures ‘on how to concede defeat in an election you lost.’
But I doubt if Buhari’s herd of cows grew from 150. I have no record of him writing any books or delivering speeches anywhere apart from speaking as a religious fanatic and causing chaos here and there.
Finally, when he had given up on politics and wept, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, our current president, with an eye on the nation’s top post, used the press, packaged him, and sold him to us as a reformed democrat’.
We bought that and allowed the lanky man from Daura, Katsina State, who had not added any value anywhere outside his 150 cows and caused confusion with his fundamentalism, to become our civilian president.
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For eight years, he ruled this nation with no direction except to put his brothers and sisters in virtually every post available.
We watched as this country deteriorated and as bandits held it to its jaws. His administration remains the worst this country has ever had, with bigotry elevated to statecraft.
Bola Tinubu never complained or publicly criticised him. It was Obasanjo who did and was largely ignored. Tinubu bided his time. Smart Alec.
But my piece this Friday morning is not about all this sordid past, which this country went through in the hands of a clueless Buhari. It has to do with the old man’s life out of office and away from politics.
Nobody has heard him give any speech since leaving office. He has not written any books nor had one written for him. Apart from the one Femi Adesina—his erstwhile Special Adviser (Media and Publicity)—wrote for himself, Buhari is not known to have made any speeches that one could read and digest.
He retired to his house in Daura after causing chaos, and the chaos followed him there with armed bandits holding the state and the ones close to it by the jugular.
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As I woke up to use the restroom, the thought of Buhari hit me. I remembered he’s been out of office for one year now. I thought about his legacies of bigotry and vindictiveness. I thought about his leadership both as a military officer and a civilian leader.
And I wept.
To have such a character rule this nation as a military man and as a civilian president, leaving the country as divided, polarised, and as insecure as it currently is, leaves much to be desired of us and our ways of doing things.
No autobiography. No biography. No speeches of value. Nobody has invited him to give lectures both internally and externally. He has not given anybody any ideas on leadership. Nobody knows how many of his 150 cows remain. Meanwhile, we have not forgotten how he desperately wanted to create an office for the cows. I don’t want to talk about the lives lost in defence of those cows.
As you read this, think about what we went through for eight years while this guy was president. Think about the billions spent on the National Identity Card (NIN) project. We were told it would stop kidnapping, internet fraud, and banditry. We were told that once the Global Systems for Mobile Communications (GSM) service providers linked all our numbers to Isa Patani’s NIMC, all the criminals would vanish.
The last time I checked, Yahoo boys are still cashing out; kidnapping is on the rise; ransom collected from hapless Nigerians is being shown on social media in a manner of ‘ntooooor’ to us.
So, how did Buhari happen to us? What can we do to recover from the eight years of bigotry he foisted on us? How do we begin to repair this country and return it to the path of peace and prosperity? Isn’t Tinubu continuing on that trajectory with little modifications?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. Neither do I expect you to know, because, for me, the eight years of Buhari’s tenure were wasted leadership.
And the country is swimming in debt and insecurity.
