Buhari’s Plan B and matters arising

In Buhari’s Plan B and Matters Arising, Anikwe takes aim at the multidimensional meanings of the president’s threat to relocate.

President Muhammadu Buhari will be out of office in 17 days, after turning over power to a fellow frail friend. As is the custom with every Nigerian administration, this reality is sweet music to some ears and a cause of wistfulness in others. From his recent testimony, the happiest person over the development appears to be the President himself. This lion cannot wait to bolt from Abuja and dash into his well-appointed Daura den.

However, the troubling aspect of Buhari’s impending exodus is that Daura may not be the last retirement bus stop. The President is threatening to leave Daura for Niger Republic if Nigerians will not leave him alone to enjoy his second and final retirement in peace. Leaving him alone means not disturbing his peace with our incessant chatter about his performance in office.

You cannot help but feel for Mr. President right now. This was the position that he desperately, some say violently, sought for 12 long years. He threatened fire and brimstone each time he lost the Presidency until fortune smiled on him in March 2015. And now he cannot wait to hand over this power that gave him sleepless nights.

Ironically, in the Presidential Election Tribunal, a dozen or so individuals mount their own struggles to rule, in place of the declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission. Judging from the record of most of our past rulers, the typical Nigerian politician struggling for power thinks governance is like refuse collection – picking things up as they go along. Anyone can become a refuse collector; all one needs is the “courage” to continue the struggle for better things.

This is not leadership.

Managing a presidency is an onerous task that requires physical and mental strength to perform, aided by the best human resource one can assemble. And a workable plan. We all know that Mr. Buhari was not in the best physical and mental state at the time he took over power. He had to multitask between battling for his health and nursing Nigeria back to health. From his recent robust military strides, the President improved on his personal health, beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. His doctors did a fantastic job of restoring him to health. Unfortunately, this is more than most people will testify about his efforts to pay it forward for Nigeria. It is our endless moaning about the President’s poor performance that makes him contemplate abandoning Daura for Niger Republic. But any way one looks at it, Buhari’s Plan B is both a bad and impossible idea.

It is impossible task to achieve, difficult for any President to effectively shut out praises or condemnations after they leave office. Not if they intend to live and “enjoy” the rest of their days in the world where the media have become ubiquitous, digital, and globally networked. Niger Republic is not an abbey inhabited by monks and nuns who shut out the world to focus on prayers and the contemplative life.

It is also a bad idea. A President is a national treasure that the country maintains for life. In Nigeria, he enjoys 24-hour security. The state guarantees his all-round comfort at the national expense. If he is not running into exile, should Nigeria deploy these resources to keep him healthy and safe in a foreign country?

Is Buhari’s Plan B a coincidence?

Did our President plan this potential future escape to Niger Republic or is it a mere coincidence?? The question is not naïve. Faced with an emergency, he will be in Niger in no time at all, whether he chooses to travel by road, rail or air.

Recall that one of the first infrastructure that Mr. Buhari built on assumption of office was a helipad in his Daura home. With a helicopter on his roof, he can bound out of the bedroom, hop into the chopper and be in Niger Republic in less than five minutes. If his preferred mode of transport is by road, Daura to Takieta on the Route 10 is less than an hour’s drive. However, if he decides to make it a permanent escape and needs to move his property (including the 150 cows), the brand new rail line from Kano to Maradi will come in handy.

The bad news, however, is that he can run but will never hide. Three things will always drag out a leader for the public inquisition. Conscience is one. The social media is another. And history is the final judge. Of the three, the social media appears to be the most troublesome, the reason Buhari is threatening to apply Plan B.

The social media is also active in Niger.

But really, the President need not fret about the heckling that is to come. It is a leadership burden, and it dissipates with time – the time it takes for his successor to take his turn at making a mess of things.

A little book of achievements

One other thing. A little book of achievements released by his powerful communication team is a source of comfort, or should be. I call this book “little” because, given the President’s famed monumental achievements, and based on simple mathematical calculation, it should have come in a healthier volume. A 344-page book of hard ”facts and the truth” is more like it.

Here is the mathematics. The Buhari Cabinet averaged 43 Ministers per tenure. If each Minister delivered only one monumental project every 12 months, we should have 344 “monumental projects” executed during the Presidents 96-month tenure. Summarize each achievement per page (in pictures and words). How many pages would that be? So, straight away, there is something fundamentally flawed with a measly 91-page Book of Facts on the Buhari Presidency. Squeezing 96 months of epic achievements into a slim volume is not Nollywood. The achievements should have come serialized in Volumes 1, 2, 3, and so forth.

What is the motive for authoring the book? According to media reports, the idea is to challenge the negative narrative of Nigerians who pass harsh judgements on the Buhari Presidency. Media reports say the spokespersons talked about “falsehood” and “propaganda” as they presented the book of alternative “facts” and “truth.” Unfortunately, on the matter of judging the Buhari Presidency, the book may not serve as the final word. No one writes the history of a Presidency quickly and hastily and Buhari’s is no exception. History, the type they attempted to corral into their corner, will be written long after the actors are gone.

On a serious note, the book of achievements is however important as a resource material in writing the definitive history of the Buhari Presidency. But we know that historians will also consult those who write history in a hurry – journalism’s thoughtful interpretation of the events of that era. And finally, since it appears in written and permanent form, social media content increasingly features in the mix.  Undeniably, social media has become the gauge for raw emotions and lived experiences of a people.

The communication team will hope that the slim volume is powerful enough to tilt the judgement in favour of their man.

Finally, our Border Politics

The President’s jocular comment reminded me about things that bother me about the intersection of our northern borders with our politics. With the statement about relocation to Niger Republic, the President gives a hint that he may indeed have dual nationality. The President never hid this fact anyway; his birthplace of Mai’Adua is a border market in Katsina State.

Does the name Abdurrahman Shugaba Darman ring a bell? On 24 January 1980, the government of President Shehu Shagari banished him to the Republic of Chad. Shugaba, as Nigerians knew him then, was not a Chadian but a full blooded citizen, born in Borno State. At the point of his deportation, Shugaba was the majority leader in the Borno State House of Assembly. What was his offense? His party, the Great Nigeria Peoples Party, criticized the ruling National  Party of Nigeria (NPN) to no end. The charismatic Shugaba led the charge and made such an effective show of it that the Shagari government decided to move against him. Internal Affairs Minister Bello Maitama subsequently declared Shugaba a “prohibited immigrant.” Immigration officers came for him in the dead of night, and proceeded to abduct, transport and dump him at a nearby village in the Republic of Chad.

Shugaba fought his way back to Nigeria, sued Shagari’s government and won all the way to the Supreme Court where the courts finally affirmed his Nigerian citizenship.

Fast-forward to April 2019. President Buhari and his All Progressives Congress deposed in a sworn statement that his main challenger, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, is not a Nigerian but a Cameroonian. Atiku, Buhari’s opponent in the 2019 Presidential elections, sued Buhari whom INEC declared winner. APC’s statement of facts on the non-citizenship claim advertised Atiku as an alien who had no business contesting the Presidency of Nigeria. Atiku fought his way from the Presidential Election court up to the Supreme court that finally affirmed Atiku’s Nigerian citizenship.

And now this. After finishing his two terms, it turns out that our President holds dual citizenship? This is possible, given that his father’s State of Origin read Niger Republic (pun intended). In this case, however, his opponents including Atiku are powerless since he has discharged whatever plans he had up his sleeves in the Nigerian-Niger Republic equation.

My concerns about all of this are two.

First is how this Shugaba-Atik-Buhari bordersome affair intersects with Nigerian politics. In their contest for power, northern leaders claim citizenship or accuse themselves of being citizens of Niger, Cameroon, and Chad, our three troublesome northern neighbours. So, is Nigeria ruled by aliens from the North?

The second is also a question. Did our President throw a shade on dual nationality in the south, given the public controversy about the man set to be sworn in as his successor?

Oftentimes, the story of leadership quest in our country reads like a Nollywood flick!