Buhari’s Strategists Chasing Ants By Reuben Abati

Buhari’s Strategists Chasing Ants By Reuben
Abati

President Muhammadu Buhari’s strategists, if
they are at work at all, are chasing ants and
ignoring the elephant in the room. They do him
great disservice.
Their oversight is hubristically
determined either by incapacity or a vendetta-
induced distraction. It is time they changed the
game and the narrative; time they woke up.
It’s been more than 15 months since the
incumbent assumed office as President, but his
handlers have been projecting him as if he is a
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua or a Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan, first time Presidents who could afford
the luxury of a learning period before settling
down to the job, and who in addition must prove
themselves to earn necessary plaudits. In making
this mistake, President Buhari’s handlers created
a sad situation whereby they have progressively
undermined his image.
The truth is that Muhammadu Buhari is neither a
Yar’Adua nor a Jonathan. He may have sought
the office of President in three previous
elections, before succeeding at his fourth
attempt in 2015, but he came into office on a
different template. He had been Head of State of
Nigeria (1983-85) and had before then served his
country at very high levels as military
administrator, member of the Supreme Military
Council, head of key government institutions and
subsequently from 1985 -2015, as a member of
the country’s Council of State, the highest
advisory body known to the Nigerian
Constitution.
In real terms, therefore, General Muhammadu
Buhari did not need the job of President. If he
had again lost the election in 2015, his stature
would not have been diminished in any way. His
place in Nigerian history was already assured.
That is precisely why it was possible to package
him successfully as a man on a messianic
mission to rescue Nigeria from the People’s
Democratic Party (PDP) and whatever is
ascribed to that in the emotion-laden field of
Nigerian politics.
He might have acquired many IOUs when he
assumed office in 2015, as all politicians do, but
he was not under any pressure to pay back and
he was so well positioned in the people’s
reckoning and historically that he could call
anyone’s bluff and get away with it. That much
is of course obvious. Many of the persons and
groups who could claim that they helped him to
get to power a second time are today not in a
position to dictate to him.
Long before such persons left their mother’s
homes for boarding school, he had made his
mark as a Nigerian leader. He could look them
straight in the eye and cleverly put them in their
place. Corrupt patronage is a strong element of
Nigerian politics and so far, President Buhari has
shown a determination to limit the scope of such
politics. Whether that is right or wrong is a
matter of political calculations, and if current
intimations are anything to go by, that may even
prove costly in the long run.
Nonetheless, when a leader assumes office with
his kind of helicopter advantages, it should not
be expected that he would hit the ground like a
tyro in the corridors of power. Not too many
persons in his shoes get a second chance to
return to power after a gap of 30 years. As it
happened in his case, he would be expected to
run the country as a statesman, not as a party
man, as a bridge-builder, not as a sectional
leader and as father of all.
The writer of his inaugural speech alluded to this
last point in that borrowed statement about
belonging to everyone and to nobody. Charles de
Gaulle of France originally made that statement
in 1958 when he returned to power as President
and founder of the Fifth Republic. Charles de
Gaulle had been an army General and one of the
key figures in the drama of World War II. In his
second coming, De Gaulle built an unforgettable
legacy.
President Buhari’s handlers may have had an
idea of going in such direction but so far, they
have taken their eyes off the legacy project. The
best way to remember a President of the
incumbent’s status