By Olu Fasan

This week, on Saturday, May 29, President Muhammadu Buhari will be six years in office. Well, as he’s constitutionally allowed a maximum of eight years in office, he has just two years left. But, given that the next presidential election is on February 18, 2023, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, with pre-election politicking kicking in at least six months earlier, Buhari has just one and a half years to make any real difference before he becomes a lame-duck president.

Power is transient, and time flies! In two years, on May 29, 2023, Buhari would be a former president, stripped of the trappings of office. His state-maintained aides, who gratuitously insult Nigerians, would soon find that “the phones no longer ring”, as a former presidential spokesperson poignantly put it. Yet, more than anything else,what should concern President Buhari and his aides is his legacy.

Truth be told, without a history-making legacy, Buhari would forever rue squandering the golden opportunity Nigerians gave him to lead the nation. It’s worth remembering that Buhari was so determined to be president he ran for the office four times. Presumably, he wanted to transform Nigeria, to make it a far more united, stable, safe and prosperous country than the one he would take over as president. But, six years on, Buhari risks leaving behind a far less united, stable, safe and prosperous country!

And why? Well,blame his heroic complacency, his utter lack of ambition and urgency, his paucity of vision and competence. In those regards, it’s hard to avoid a comparison between President Buhari and President Joe Biden, his US counterpart.

In 2015, when Buhari became president, aged 72, he said he wished he were in his forties. He moved at such a snail’s speed that Nigerians nicknamed him “Baba Go Slow”, a moniker he relished. But Biden became president at 78. Yet, his lofty ambition and transformational leadership, his high sense of urgency and his high-octane and results-focused actions belie his being a near-octogenarian and put Buhari in the shade. Indeed, Biden achieved in his first 100 days in office what Buhari didn’t achieve in his first two years!

Unsurprisingly, many of those who helped Buhari become president in 2015 have publicly expressed deep regrets, lamenting, like most Nigerians, that his six years in power have been an unmitigated failure.

Writing in his Vanguard column recently, Dr Dele Sobowale said: “I wake up each morning these days begging the Almighty for His forgiveness; for my contribution towards making Buhari’s presidency possible in 2015″ (Vanguard, May 17, 2021). Another erstwhile Buhari loyalist, Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, said that Buhari turned out to be “dangerously looking as if power was an end in itself, and governance was all about the personal convenience of the leader”, adding that by his second year in office, “it was clear that Buhari was not the solution. Indeed, he looked more like the problem”(Vanguard, October 7, 2020).

But hardly anyone was deceived. Buhari’s personality traits were obvious from his past as a military head of state. The only fair criticism is the one former Vice President Atiku Abubakar made a few years ago when he said: “We have a president who doesn’t learn from the past.” Put simply, Buhari is path dependent, following a well-trodden, yet misguided, path. He has not changed his ways!

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A historical evidence of that surfaced recently after the death of Lt-Gen Joshua Dogonyaro, a former chief of defence staff. The media unearthed the coup speech he gave when Buhari was overthrown as military head of state on August 27, 1985. Last week, in a piece titled: “Joshua Dogonyaro’s coup speech and Muhammadu Buhari’s style” (Vanguard May 19, 2021), the Vanguard columnist Rotimi Fasan brilliantly juxtaposed Buhari’s style, as described in the coup speech,with his current style as president and concluded that nothing has changed. Reading the speech, but looking at the substance of Buhari’s behaviour, I came to the same conclusion: nothing, indeed, has changed!

Think about the following words used to describe Buhari in the coup speech: “stubborn and ill-advised unilateral actions”; “energies were directed at imaginary oppositions rather than to effective leadership”; “the nation’s meagre resources are being wasted on unproductive ventures”; “government has distanced itself from the people and the yearnings and aspirations of the people have been ignored”; “the government is drifting”, and “the economy does not seem to be getting better”.

Those words are remarkable, but even more remarkable is that, 36 years on, they are still very apt today. From arbitrary measures like import bans and border closures to stubborn refusal to yield on exchange rate fixity, Nigeria’s economy under President Buhari has been buffeted by ill-advised actions. Little wonder that, as the Economist noted in a recent piece, Nigeria’s economy is “stuck in a rut”. What about directing energies at imaginary oppositions? Well, as I wrote recently, the Buhari government rules by fear and intimidation, recklessly branding unnamed critics enemies of the state, or coup plotters!

There’s also the excessive borrowing and wasteful spending. President Buhari’s administration borrows and spends significantly more than any of its predecessors, yet unemployment, poverty, insecurity, etc, are at unprecedented levels. The so-called infrastructure development, underpinned by unsustainable projects and loans, disguises the utter neglect of “soft” infrastructure, such as education and health. Despite the massive spending on agriculture, food inflation is 23 per cent, “the highest in two decades”, says the Economist.

Overarchingly, the attribute from Buhari’s past that defines his current administration is, as noted in Dogonyaro’s speech, his tendency to distance himself from people and ignore their yearnings. What better example than President Buhari’s rejection of well-meaning calls to restructure Nigeria, a potential opportunity to secure a lasting legacy.

Yet, time is running out. Buhari needs a legacy project; to build a national consensus for restructuring Nigeria. Otherwise, his historical flaws could define his legacy. He should, perhaps,read the Dogonyaro speech – again!

Vanguard News Nigeria