By Minabere Ibelema
So, you ponied up a couple of million naira to purchase a pre-owned car (yes, dealers don’t call them used cars anymore). You and your family are excited when you first took that shiny thing home. Then in a matter of months, it is one problem after another. First the breaks go out, and you repair them. Then the dashboard goes blank, and you repair that too. Then the transmission got leaky. Then the engine starts to sputter. It’s not long before you realise you’ve got yourself a very bad deal, and you regret squandering your savings on the car. It is a case of buyer’s remorse.
It happens not just with purchases, but with all of life’s choices. It could be that you left one job for another, only to find that it is an ant pit. Or, you opt for what seems like a dream spouse only to find that he or she is a nightmare.
That is the realisation now of many of President Muhammadu Buhari’s fervent supporters in 2015. Their buyer’s remorse has been increasingly expressed for quite some time. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s stinging denunciation of Buhari’s government just peaked the crescendo.
It wasn’t long ago that Obasanjo put on the most theatrical shtick in Nigerian politics by publicly tearing up his Peoples Democratic Party membership card and declaring his support for Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress. Before that drama, Obasanjo had sat on the fence watching intently the direction of the political wind. He swung to the APC when the wind took on a gale force in favour of the party and Buhari’s presidency. In now pummelling Buhari in his periodic equivalent of papal encyclicals, Obasanjo is tacitly owning up to acute buyer’s remorse, though he is too haughty to put it in those terms.
He was in good company in supporting the APC. So many Nigerian notables did, including, of course, political power house Bolaji Tinubu and the astute Wole Soyinka. Though I don’t have the statistics to back this up, I sense that a majority of Nigerian intellectuals did too. It was evident from various write-ups and personal conversations. The buyer’s remorse is now afflicting quite a few.
During the campaign, Buhari’s supporters among Southerners held the moral high ground. They were certain they were discarding ethnocentrisms in favour of national interest. Now, they see Buhari’s as the most ethnocentric government Nigeria ever had. The tables are now turned. Those who held Buhari suspect all along and pointed to his record of parochialism are now saying loudly, “I told you so.”
Meanwhile, Buhari’s erstwhile supporters have become silent or defensive. A Nigerian academic (no name necessary) recently posted a testy argument that says in effect, “How could we have known?” It was a choice, he wrote, between the prospect of a principled governance by Buhari and the corruption and incompetence of then President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.
Should those who now regret supporting Buhari feel guilty and defensive? Probably not. Elections in Nigeria — perhaps elections everywhere — are very much like re-marriage. In the words of the 19th century Irish poet Oscar Wilde, it is “the triumph of hope over experience.”
Obasanjo’s cases against Buhari all converge on his ethnocentricism. His first appointments were of personal advisers, and a vast majority are from the North, especially Buhari’s North-West geopolitical zone. Buhari explained then that the appointments were of people who had been his political allies over the years.
It was an explanation that was remarkably revealing. To begin with, he didn’t seem to grasp the obvious: that his electoral success came as a result of his coalition with other peoples. Nor did he seem to realize that having trusted political allies only from one’s region or ethnicity makes one unsuitable to lead a diverse nation. Alas, that rationale apparently guided Buhari’s key appointments, from the corruption czar to the chief of defence staff.
The problem with it is not just the affront to other ethnic groups and regions. It is that by limiting his appointments to a particular region, Buhari short-changes his administration—and Nigeria —regarding the most qualified people for the offices. Moreover, his rationalisation of parochial appointments is indicative of whom he would listen to and whom he would not, regardless of formal titles. Various dimensions of mal-administration, including incompetent discharge of duties, necessarily follow.
With buyer’s remorse, now comes the inevitable question of what if? What if the majority of Nigerians had not been so disillusioned with the Jonathan administration that they enthusiastically opted for Buhari despite his well-known political baggage that had kept him from the office in three previous attempts? Putting it more forthrightly, would Nigeria have been better off had Jonathan been elected to a second full term?
Those who are experiencing buyer’s remorse may take heart in knowing that the answer is neither yes nor no. As I have argued in some editions of this column, Buhari’s election and the ascendance of the APC have done Nigeria’s some good, regardless of the performance of the government. For the first time, Nigeria had a party-to-party transition. That’s a political landmark. And Buhari’s election assuaged some political passions that were threatening the country’s fabric anyway.
The beauty of democracy is that within four years, Nigerians have a chance to weigh one performance against another. The widespread case against Jonathan was that he was incompetent and that his administration was grossly corrupt. Of the latter, the evidence speaks for itself. What is arguable is the matter of incompetence.
As the first minority president in Nigeria, Jonathan threaded on uncharted political grounds. He necessarily had to dance to the tune of multiple drummers, and that makes one seem like an awkward dancer, an incompetent. Yet, Jonathan deftly handled attempts to derail his succession to then ailing President Musa Yar’Adua and garnered support for his first full term, despite strident agitation for a rotation back to the North. And his appointments were generally meritorious yet representative of the federal character. Incompetence is made of sterner stuff.
Certainly — to use Obasanjo’s case against Buhari — Jonathan demonstrated an acute “understanding of the dynamics of internal politics.”
Jonathan’s said incompetence emanated especially from his handling of the Boko Haram menace. But his critics under-estimated the institutional challenges he faced, the same reasons that “cattle herders” have terrorized the Middle Belt and beyond with impunity. Obasanjo now writes of the Buhari administration’s ethnocentric governance: “This has led to wittingly or unwittingly making the nation more divided and inequality has widened and become more pronounced. It also has effect on general national security.”
As Nigerians go to the polls to elect a president in 2019, the pre-occupation will probably be to find a president who will be most committed to uniting the country. Alas, as Buhari has proved, the potential for buyer’s remorse is always there in electoral choices.
