President Buhari with service chiefs at the independence anniversary parade in Abuja

If President Muhammadu Buhari was a groom and his service chiefs were his brides the relationship between him and them could neither be more faithful nor stronger than it is at present.

Buhari loves his service chiefs warts and all. It seems there is nothing anybody can say that could lead to a divorce between the president and his beloved service chiefs.

But like the relationship between the Kano State legislator, Alhassan Ado Garba or Doguwa and his wives, the relationship between Buhari and his service chiefs appears to be based on nothing more substantial than simply the idea that a relationship exists – or merely in number.

For Buhari, in the number of years he is able to keep the men in office both in spite and because of their rejection by what would seem like the majority of Nigerians. In the case of Doguwa, his relationship with his wives is rooted in nothing more than the number of children the four of them are able to give him.

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The last couple of weeks have seen many Nigerians from different parts of the country and across different political spectrum demanding that the country’s military chiefs, in particular, be sacked in the light of the broken machinery of the country’s security system.

But there is something about the Buhari administration, if one would be charitable not to say President Buhari himself, that is marked by wilful disregard of public opinion, however informed and well-meaning.

The administration would rather stick to a course of action by which it seeks to prove the rightness of its position than admit that an error has been made and retrace its steps. Unless otherwise forced.

This is the exact opposite of the posture of one Umaru Yar’Adua that was all too ready to admit to an error and make amends even in a matter as significant as the election that brought him into office which he said was flawed, demanding an overhaul of the electoral system.

But not so Buhari. It’s either his way or something worse than the high way. It was in this mood that the president has insisted on keeping his military chiefs, particularly the Army, Airforce and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in office, even when their careers in the military ought to have since ended.

For a president whose major plank of campaign was anchored on security signposted by the Boko Haram insurgency, it is a remarkable admission of failure that he could in exasperation say he could not understand why and how it has been impossible to terminate the existence of the murderous group.

Buhari’s admission is of a kind with that of General Ibrahim Babangida who at the height of his implementation of the Structural Adjustment Programme in the late 1980s told Nigerians he could not understand by which logic the Nigerian economy had not collapsed. Much like a murderous doctor who kills his patient by a slow injection of poison wondering why the patient is still alive.

When Buhari won the election of 2015, his mandate was clear. And so was his promise: to provide security by a firm and clear termination of Boko Haram. The regime made no offer of a “technical defeat” of the insurgents.

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None would have been accepted then. When he appointed his service chiefs, the Goodluck Jonathan military chiefs were already pushing back heavily on activities of the insurgents. But for most Nigerians then, that was too little too late. The only thing they wanted was the replacement of the apparently tired and corrupt military chiefs.

The election of Buhari ensured that not only the military chiefs but also their principal, President Jonathan, were shown the way home. What Nigerians wanted was action measurable in terms of the reversal of the fortunes of Boko Haram.

Five years after Buhari appointed his service chiefs, Boko Haram has gained renewed strength. The security situation has taken an additional virulent dimension with the rise of banditry, kidnapping, and so-called herdsmen terrorism.

Rather than replace those who have failed to deliver on their mandate to end insecurity, Buhari has kept them in office to spite those he apparently views as critics of his administration. Against every parameter of logical reasoning, he has so far insisted on rewarding ranking failure with confidence.

Nothing could explain this mode of behaviour on the part of a leader. It is the worst form of corruption imaginable.

Rather than take the military chiefs, whose very presence must be embarrassing to them, out of their misery, Buhari has chosen to prolong their ignominy under the illusion that he is spiting his critics. The problem could also be that Buhari yet has not found the Northerners or Muslims he could appoint at one fell swoop to replace the people to be ousted.

Or is it the fear of how Nigerians from outside his favoured corners would react that has held back his hand? Until Buhari finds his way around this conundrum, his and his service chiefs is a marriage that must not be annulled.

Like Doguwa, the real-life incarnate of Baba Segi, the fictional character of Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, Buhari could only measure his prowess as a military tactician by the number of years his military chiefs have spent in office, his loyalty to them and not their productivity.

Doguwa, the erstwhile Chief Whip of the House and now Majority Leader of the All Progressives Congress, had nothing to tell Nigerians of the progressive laws, by which I mean legislations that have positively impacted his constituents, he has proposed. He has no news about how to ensure that the growing population of a country that bears the unenviable label of the poverty capital of the world is well-provided for.

No, none of such issues are the business of a supposed legislator from a state with one of the highest numbers of out-of-school and poverty-stricken children. All that matters to Doguwa is how to exponentially increase the poverty index of Kano State by flippantly adding to the population. His virility is the measure of his relevance as a legislator!

With 27 children from four women, Alhassan Doguwa is a poor specimen of an irresponsible Nigerian. Yet it is his likes that take up the law-making task of a country of nearly 200 million people, most of whose young population are either driven by desperation to various shades of heinous criminality where they cannot flee the country in a bid to seek their fortune abroad.

Doguwa, with his access to free money as an Abuja legislator, could wallow in irresponsible love-making, raising children as from a human factory and yet rise in the parliament to present the evidence of his irresponsibility.

Vanguard News