The President’s Service Chiefs

When crossing a stream, use the leader to know its depth. Nigerian proverb.

It must be difficult being one of our current military  Service Chiefs. Imagine being in the eye of storms well past your service’s expiry date, with all and sundry asking that you be sacked. Imagine being in a situation where you may want to leave but cannot, and staying on is entirely at the pleasure of a President who says publicly he is displeased with your performance. But many will not shed tears for them.  After all, were not plucked from the air. They were part of the military that Nigerians punished President Jonathan for, and trusted a former military General and Commander-In-Chief(C-in-C) to do better with.

These Service Chiefs held senior positions when the war against Boko Haram was a tiny speck that was bungled into a huge monster by the ‘YarAdua/Jonathan administration, and they witnessed it grow into a new and difficult enemy. They were part of a military under whose nose the Chibok girls were abducted. They could not have been entirely isolated from, or oblivious of the reported scams and sleaze around defence contracts. They were part of the military that was chased out of vast tracts of Nigerian territory under the Jonathan administration. They rose through the ranks of a Nigerian military that was (except for those moments when they overthrew democratic regimes and each other)strong, with a proud tradition. 

So our current Service Chiefs were part  of a mixed past that President Buhari charged with responsibility for creating a new future. It was assumed that he had searched deep and wide, and his selection of NSA, Chief of Defence Staff, Chiefs  of Army, Navy and Air Force,  even given our national creed for geographical spread, had to be the best from what was available. What reasons would the nation have for doubting that a former General now President  will not lead a military with new leadership to raise its levels of professionalism, effectiveness, morale and integrity?

If, therefore,  six years after the nation’s hopes were raised, the chorus now is that we are less secure, and the nation is baying for the heads of Service Chiefs, serious questions need to be asked. First, what is it about our military that has made major improvements in capacities and effectiveness virtually impossible to achieve under the new leadership? My thinking here is that our military has been fighting two major wars for longer than a decade, and losing both. The more damaging war the military has been losing is against itself. It is very likely that exposure to power and corruption in the past have made major inroads into the military, and hallowed values like professionalism, integrity, honour and good leadership have eroded discipline,  morale and institutional integrity. No military can win a war of any type if its foundational values have been emptied by corruption and loss of morale created by nepotism, politicization and discredited leadership.

The second war the military has been losing is one  that pitches it against every threat or security challenge in a nation  that grows more insecure almost by the day. The virtual collapse of policing institutions and the dramatic erosion of social structures that  had worked to  reduce the incursion of  violent criminal activities  in the past have created huge vacuums around the security of citizens and growth of large  number and varieties of internal security challenges. Poor political leaderships at all levels, unread in the complexities of governing a  rapidly-changing country, have consistently  adopted a single-track approach to solving all security challenges and conflicts: use force, and more force. Unfortunately, that force is only the military, and there is not enough of it, or even reasons for its involvement in the first place.

Even if its strength, funding, standards of professionalism and quality of leadership have been consistently addressed and improved in the last two decades, it might just have been able to defeat Boko Haram and consign restiveness in the Niger Delta as a permanent feature of our national life. Now it engages these  security challenges with mixed results, and is then spread thin all over the country with orders  to separate many  fights between communities, fight bandits and rustlers and kidnappers and perform a dozen other duties that are responsibilities of policing institutions and communities themselves. The military loses all its battles against old and new  enemies, not just because it does not know how to fight them, but because its rank and file understands that politicians create problems which they want the military to solve with lives, limbs and poor motivation.

A second question that has to be answered is related to the role of the President and C-in-C. How, and at what stage does a former general and military head of state realize the weaknesses of the military he is commander of? What yardstick does he apply in judging effectiveness? What manner of C-in-C leaves a military engaged in fights in many fronts virtually unchanged and its leaders sitting tight over subordinates who should assume more responsibility? The sad fact is that as C-in-C, President Buhari has failed the military, and the military is failing the nation under its current leadership.

When the Senate recently joined ranks with the House of representatives to demand the removal of Service Chiefs, a presidential spokesman made a comment that has more truth in it than any he has not made. He said the fate of the Service Chiefs was entirely at the discretion of President Buhari. In a sense, he reminded the nation that the military may be failing the nation because President Buhari cannot, or will not fix it. He recently gave its leadership a slap on the wrist with a public rebuke and a demand for improvement. This has not worked, because reports suggest that more soldiers are dying at the hands of insurgents and bandits, and communities are as exposed to armed criminals as they have been in the last year. The answer to the second question therefore is that the military is poorly led not just by Service Chiefs, but by President Buhari, and it is difficult to see how it can win any of its multiple wars with this type of leadership

A third question that needs an answer has to do with the type of leadership the nation needs in the face of its many political and security challenges. The first answer that comes to mind is that at the very worst, it must do a lot better than President Buhari’s leadership. It must have a vision of a secure and peaceful nation with growing opportunities. It must be willing to take tough and informed decisions, develop an effective sense of timing and hold all persons with responsibility to account. It must operate with high intelligence and a sense of purpose. It must build and sustain strong institutions, including defence, security and law and order institutions and public service that are run by competence, integrity and accountability. It must be a leadership willing to take an informed view about the state of the Nigerian political and administrative structures, with the goals of addressing key issues that represent developing and existential threats.

In the meantime, it will be important for President Buhari to realize that Service Chiefs are not aides he can retain or fire at his personal pleasure. They are public servants who are accountable to him, as he is accountable to the nation. The bottom line is, he has not improved national security under their leadership. Keeping them in place suggests either of two things. One, he alone is satisfied with their performance, and the nation does need to know why. Even making allowance for the need for secrecy, this is unacceptable. Two, he does not care enough for all opinions to replace current Service Chiefs with others who may do better. That is intolerable contempt from an elected President.

President Buhari needs to do a lot more than replace Service Chiefs. He needs to look deeply at our defence, security and law and order assets and liabilities and address them before the end of his term. The nation will not survive its current challenges unless he accepts to affect major improvements  in the management of national security. The replacement of current leadership of the military and security and policing agencies should only be a part of this.

The young Nigerian

“The young bird does not crow until he hears the old ones do” – African proverb

Read more: https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/the-young-nigerian.html

he young bird does not crow until he hears the old ones do” – African proverb

The arguments around whether Nigeria will submit its over one and a half  million young people to sit for the West African Examinations Council Examinations (WASCE) or, in more general terms, the debates on possibilities and timings of re-opening schools must be additional sources of depressing young Nigerians. There are hundreds of thousands in federal and some State universities who are being reminded that studies will not resume even when governments give the approval to open schools and tertiary institutions because their teachers will be on strike. There are millions of schoolchildren who are bored and stressing parents at home. A few receive on-line lessons at home, teaching methods that are still of questionable value, but are important because they allow parents and schools to create a semblance of movement beyond a static, depressing stage. There is another category of the young Nigerian, the almajiri who was swept away here and there in the initial panic triggered by the pandemic, but is now back, very much in business on the margins of existence.

No one had a say in the arrival of COVID-19, a phenomenon which so rudely interrupted our life as a nation fast depleting its store of faith that there is the possibility of a good future for our young Nigerians. There were already attempts to patch a few sore points such as the huge numbers of unemployed graduates through blurry programmes like N-Power and even more blurry dole-outs to vulnerable groups. Now the plan to borrow N56b and throw it at 774,000 young people to sweep streets and have pocket money for three months after which they resume normal hopeless existence is entangled in quarrels over how much goes to lucky, un-connected  young people, and how much goes to others as largess and patronage by politicians. There will be much bitterness after selections into temporary relief are over, as majority will be left out because they lacked powerful people who will push them through irrespective of their rights or merit.

The young Nigerian is an expert in the science of getting ahead without rights or  merit. He is well taught by adults who have perverted every standard they set for others. For every position available in the public service, one hundred graduates will apply. The one who gets the job would have been decided long before the process even begun. When multitudes began to appear and cause scandalous stampede, government found a way to ask for approvals to be exempted from advertising vacancies. Positions are quietly shared between statutory regulatory agencies, leadership of employing agencies, legislature and other powerful people. Still, the young Nigerian keeps hoping that one day he will find his own big man, or someone who will teach him how to circumvent tough barriers against the powerless.

The young Nigerian knows all about circumventing barriers. Very few children go from kindergarten to the end of tertiary education without indulging in a widely known and tolerated practice of bending examination rules. Parents know this, and in most instances, the level of efficiency involved in the arrangements involving school authorities, parents, teachers, invigilators, children and young people to assist students cheat is breathtaking. It is no exaggeration to say that if we had collectively deployed our energies and resources that we use to subvert basic education standards towards improving the overall quality of education, Nigeria would be counted among countries with the best education standards. At the end of his education, wherever that point is decided by a system where progress is made by abilities to fund and cheat, the young Nigerian resumes a life of extreme frustration. Groomed by a broken system to work for a salary, the vast majority of young people finishing schools and tertiary institutions will not know what else to do with all their years in school if their lives depended on it.

There are millions more of our young scraping a living in a highly volatile informal sector of the economy. Many work hard to make a little here and there, and then hope that the opportunity does not dry up. There are others who have no education, skills or hope of securing a productive existence. In terms of numbers, this category is frightening. This group is open to scrapping an existence through crime. Drugs cushion marginal and brutal lives. Organized violence sweeping across the country provides an outlet. Many young people join, deploying rare brutality at victims and law enforcement agencies and expecting same in a life that is very likely to be short. Finally, there is a growing group that services a political process that is fueled by illegal money, perversion of all rules and violence. This process teaches its young apprentices and foot soldiers one lesson: win at all cost, or lose at great cost.

The young Nigerian will be familiar with the underlying values that surround the Magu saga, the revelations from the  Niger Delta Development Commission(NDDC), the controversy over how many slots out of the 774,000 sweeping jobs the legislature will take, the corruptions in the management of COVIC-19 all over the country, and just about every facet of public and even private lives. He has not been groomed to expect honesty, integrity or justice from leaders, or even religious people. The most important lesson he learnt from home, school, streets and forests is this: survive at all cost, and do not expect any favours. He lives with multiple standards, which leaves him free to choose his own.

Yet the young Nigerian has to sit and wait while quarreling and thieving leaders decide whether he  goes back to school or not. If he lives on the margins of a shrinking economy, he has to worry over his fate at the hands of government officials and law-enforcement agencies. He has no idea when or if he can resume studies at the university, since his teachers and governments are involved in the usual cat-and-mouse that is entirely about more money for them and less for quality education. He lives with the demands and restrictions of COVID-19, bottling-up huge energies or finding outlets in unusual places, while adults plan and scheme their ways around rules and scandals right under his nose.

The young Nigerian is the biggest casualty of a failed political system. It feeds him on a solid staple of fiction that there are groups out there that are his enemies, thus diverting attention from massive failures. He is taught to hate, not leaders who have let him down, but other Nigerians who are held up as reasons behind his desperate or hopeless existence. He has no faith in his nation; no trust in leaders or authority, and no hope that he can affect a change in his life. For many, it easier to fight against his community and his country that to work for it. Millions have left the country, taking their raw labour or skills to other nations that value them. Thousands have died trying to get there. Those working for others feed the narrative of a failed nation that has no right to exist unless they re-design it.

If this nation will survive the next decade as one, it will have to address a number of major issues. The first is to begin to see and do something about the foundational threat of official, stupendous corruption that is feeding insecurity and creating millions of alienated young people who feel they owe nothing to it. The second is to fix a broken political and electoral system that breeds bitterness, incompetence and frustration that the nation is stuck, or rapidly regressing. At the very least, there must be better quality of leaders who will emerge to provide renewed hope and a vision to rebuild the nation from the bottom up. Thirdly, it must revisit its priorities. Its biggest asset is its young. It is also its biggest threat. We must commit to providing  good education and skills and opening up employment opportunities for children of the poor. Our young must be better than us.

A final word. I apologise to any young Nigerian who feels this material has been unfair to them.

Inevitability of the inevitable

“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat”. Lily Tomlin

In governance and leadership positions, bad things happen when you do not fix what is wrong. There are reasons why problems do not get fixed until they become disasters. Those who should fix them may not know that some things need fixing. Plain ignorance or inadequate exposure to the way problems are identified and fixed are responsible for this. Another reason is unwillingness to fix problems. This is a function of an understanding that problems represent advantages and opportunities when they are not fixed. Another reason is inability to fix problems. This is to do with lack of capacity to fix an obvious problem until it grows into a disaster. Finally, there is simple, old-fashioned indifference. This is a combination of contempt for consequences of inaction and failure to recognize the imperatives of fixing problems.

The seeming mess involving Ibrahim Magu’s current circumstances provide an interesting study into how and why things will go wrong under the administration of President Buhari. Out of deference to the process that should establish guilt or otherwise of Magu, it is important to limit temptations to hang him higher that his traducers are taking him. At this stage, it is safe to say that Magu merely represents a symbol of a very deep malaise which has been a key part of the DNA of the Buhari administration. The basic character and structure of this is made up of a President whose basic conception of leadership is to let a few trusted people do most of his work the way they think he wants it done, and he retreats to being President while they wield his power, most times against each other.

These elements form powerful groups or factions which carve areas of influence, growing on the vacuum allowed by a remote President. In most instances they fight each other over spoils of a closed system with virtually no mediation. No part of this structure is neutral, and power flows and ebbs largely on the basis of who can demonstrate access to, and support of the President. There are fixed power points in this structure, but they operate at a position substantially outside the basic structure. They are, nonetheless, extremely powerful in determining friends and enemies and keeping boundaries fixed. The entire structure creates near perfect-settings for abuse, inefficiencies that are tolerated and grow bigger, opacity and loss of control  over systems, structures and processes.

These are  the contexts that inform the basic failures that have produced the Magu embarassment. Lets look at this from the prisms of decision-making. President Buhari wins an election substantially because he had an image for not being corrupt and promising to fight corruption. Magu comes to him recommended as the man to help him head the premier anti corruption agency. It is possible that even Magu’s nomination to the President had some dust from skirmishes over candidates of different factions who were already in place. In any case, he was recommended to the 8th Senate for clearance by the President, who may have needed to consult powerful insiders like the former DG of the DSS before doing this, but a president who knows his powers will consider this a disposable luxury. When asked by the Senate to screen Magu, the DSS advised against clearing him, reportedly giving strong, damning  reasons. This is where other leaders will be strong and decisive. If your own security outfit says do not appoint, you need to show due deference to its mandate and professionalism, unless other interests have one of your ears whispering that you should ignore advise from a powerful outfit under you like the DSS.

President Buhari had a number of other choices here. He could have replaced Magu with another nominee. He could have stood his ground against the DSS if Magu was really worth it, and persuaded the agency not to oppose his clearance again. He could even have undertaken a major investigation into why his nominee for a very sensitive post was shot down by his own agency. If what DSS said was correct, his continuation in the police under a corruption-fighting administration would even have been untenable. If the DSS had motives other than a desire to prevent the wrong person become Chairman of EFCC, another leader would insist on establishing this and taking appropriate action. He could even have prevailed on Saraki and his colleagues to treat the DSS report as fictional mischief, but he was in the trenches attempting to strangle Saraki. It is possible that the president did not know he had many options; or that camps had already taken control of his presidency; or that it was not a problem when  his troops were shooting at each other; or, indeed, that it was not worth his bother. So he kept Magu, as an unconfirmed chairman of a very important agency in a country with at least 50,000 people who could do the job well. But Magu had been wounded and would always know he had enemies lurking, so he had to fortify himself with allies and spoils.

When the president sent Magu’s name to the Senate for the second time, no one would have had cause to believe that he had not done his homework. Even if the nation did not hear of it, it was expected that the president had sorted out whatever it was that was behind the indicting recommendation of the DSS: an error or mischief which had  been rectified or  punished. Apparently, as it turned out, the president had done nothing. The DSS insisted that Mr Magu was unfit to hold public office, again. For the second time, the president’s nominee for a very sensitive post at the heart of his credibility collapsed under unfriendly fire from his own side. At this stage most  Presidents  will replace Magu with another nominee. Our President Buhari went the other way. He ignored grey areas in law, principles governing public office and even morality in allowing Magu to continue to superintend a very sensitive agency.

If Magu thought he could get away with just about anything, who should blame him? If the faction that produced him, protected him and kept him safe and sound against the other side, why should he fear? If Magu read his mandate in its widest form, and literally designed his modus operandi as an untouchable, who should blame him? Who was he accountable to? The President. How was he to he account? Through offices that had themselves been  part of the bitter factional warfare since appointed  people (and others  who were too powerful to be appointed) close to Buhari knew about the gaps around him. Magu was not entirely alone. Powerful people had his back, and they kept him in place for five years.

If this nation has stomach for shocks and disappointments regarding the stewardship of President Buhari, it should not waste it on the outpouring of outrageous revelations that will spill  out of the investigations of Magu. There will be enough in asking why a public officer will exercise massive powers in a very sensitive position for five years in an acting capacity, even when he was adjudged a major liability by a government agency and rejected by the Senate? There will be more in asking why all the allegations and investigations of Magu took over a year, his reported transgressions went on for years, reports of abuse, impropriety, highhandedness, favouritism, manipulation of the public media to get dubious outcomes, insubordination, corruption and possibly more that will be revealed have taken this long to get the president to react?

If the nation’s capacity to be astounded by failures and limitations of this administration still has some room  it should be prepared to know that the disposition, the forces and the weaknesses that created and sustained Magu will be in place long after he takes a few big names with him. Indeed, given the manner all sorts of terms are being given to the circumstances surrounding his current status and the long knives being sharpened for a bruising battle on both sides, it will be unwise to write off Magu entirely. Worse, Magu could go, but there will be many more skeletons in the cupboard. Service Chiefs. Ministers and heads of agencies of government running around with stinking allegations. Someone once said if something is designed to go wrong, it will. There are ways to identify inevitability. President Buhari’s administration does not make it a difficult job to do.

Friends and foes

                  The axe forgets what the tree remembers. African proverb.

Alhaji (Dr) Yusuf Maitama Sule, Danmasanin Kano died three years ago.  There has been some of mentions of this in social media, mostly from young northerners who believe they lost an irreplaceable icon. His compatriots in the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), the last final block he placed  on an incredible legacy of service to the nation and the North would have remembered and prayed for him. It will be comforting to know that there is a book on his colourful and eventful life because it would be a great injustice to history if the story is not told of a man with a towering intellect, a walking encyclopedia on Nigerian  politics and an inimitable combination of greatness and profound humility.

It will not be entirely correct to say that Danmasanin Kano died a happy and fulfilled man. Certainly, Allah knows best, he died in service to God, and nothing would come between him and that devotion. But he died weighed by concerns that the North he loved and laboured for, and the Nigeria he projected and embodied with such distinction were both severely distressed and floundering. Even in his last days, he continued to make the case for service to the North, and the demands that all leadership must be made to respect the values of justice, accountability and sacrifice. It was a message he repeated equally to the most powerful leaders and the humblest citizen, and to young Nigerians who only heard of these values as abstract concepts.

 In his last few years, his beloved Kano was showing evidence of deep, simmering conflicts between systems and values that will neither die nor be born. Like most prominent Kanawa, he had agonized over a historic incongruence: an unusual Emir and a Governor with pronounced paranoia over loss of power. Danmasani felt that it was not going to end well, and Allah saved him the agony of witnessing a most unseemly outing involving the family of late Ado Bayero in a political context that tore a long, proud history to pieces.

His Northern Elders Forum (NEF) was a tear-away from the larger Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), a revolt of sorts by elderly men and women who were exasperated by the failure of the ACF to be more assertive in the protection of Northern interests. The manner Northerners, particularly from the North East, appeared to have been abandoned to an insurgency by the federal administration, and the absence of a strong voice from the North, were the major catalysts behind the creation of the NEF. The new group had solid support from very powerful personalities and looked set to change the way the North did business with power and the rest of Nigeria.

No one was more qualified to lead the NEF than the apostle of moral politics, the man who had evolved from NPC’s band of the best and the brightest into the statesman with a captivating voice. He led it with dignity and a level of sagacity that created a healthy balance between a critical organization of distinguished Northerners and a responsible group that was willing to help with advise and support where necessary. President Jonathan experienced the persistence of a small group of Northerners who would not walk away from locked doors. He met the group a number of times to discuss matters related to the security and economy of the North, including the imperatives of exploring additional options of ending the Boko Haram insurgency. 

As the elections of 2015 drew near, it became obvious that the fate of the North had never been more at stake. The NEF went through an intensive and difficult search for where to invest its considerable weight. It was a choice between an administration that was at best indifferent over the state of the North and at worst a bungling leadership that was a threat to the entire nation, against the opportunity of replacing it with the presidency of General Muhammadu Buhari who had promised to re-secure the nation, fight corruption and fix the economy. It was a very difficult job steering the entire Forum to stand solidly behind a Buhari Presidency. Many members had reservations regarding his track record  in positions of leadership in the past. A few were founding fathers of the PDP, and it took more than a little effort to get them to throw over the remnants of partisan loyalties. Some of the members of the Forum now shoulder responsibilities under the Buhari administration.

Once the decision was taken to support Buhari, no member looked back or dropped out. When the campaign became dirtier and Candidate Buhari was being demonized in Western capitals as likely to be soft on religious extremism and a threat to democratic traditions in the event of a loss, the NEF did the rounds of key diplomatic missions in Abuja and the Danmasani and his loyal deputy, Paul Unongo led  a strong team to Europe and the US at its own expense. The outcome was almost dramatic in its effect: it created a groundswell of positive disposition in the West towards Buhari and a commitment to remain neutral. NEF made no song and dance about this. Here at home, NEF organized a game-changing meeting between candidate Buhari and over 200 senior Christian clergy, an event that was vital in raising the confidence of Northern Christians under his Presidency.

Danmasani’s NEF threw itself into the campaign, hoping that its contribution would help   facilitate  a regime change, create an administration that would stop alarming decline  in integrity levels, defeat an insurgency that had the run of the North,  and provide a new lease of life for Northern political unity. Danmasani broke down in tears while praying for Buhari’s success when NEF paid a congratulatory visit to the President-elect, the first group to do so. Encouraged by the President-elect to support him with advise, the NEF submitted recommendations it thought would consolidate the administration with inclusiveness, and political wisdom that would build bridges where the elections showed some weaknesses. Significantly, it advised him to work with the party and the legislature and get a Northern Christian elected Senate President,  and appoint a competent Igbo person as Secretary of Government of the Federation. It turned out that there were many keys to the new presidency. Senator Bukola Saraki who had been lurking with strong intent saw a unprotected goalpost and scored a winner. A Northern Christian was then appointed SGF, but he was the candidate of holders of other keys to the presidency located in Lagos.

Danmasani witnessed the high and low points in NEF-Buhari relations. Under his leadership, the doors to the President slowly closed. The Forum watched as Boko Haram survived a major onslaught by the new administration, but clung to a territory to continue to torment the population. It watched a President who had promised much settle down to an unimpressive performance in the fight against corruption, insecurity and rehabilitating the economy of the North. Barriers against advise went up. The circle of influence became progressively narrower around a President  who said he belonged to everybody, but in fact belonged to a handful. Danmasani was spared the agony of witnessing much of the North swamped by criminals. He did not live to see his group go back to the trenches from where it fought the Jonathan administration. He was not alive to see the Forum publicly denounce the record of President Buhari from the perspectives of Northerners who had voted for him to defeat an incumbent President. He had sat at the head of meetings with Ohaneze Ndigbo to improve North-East political relations, but the formation of a platform to take a stand against the re-election of President Buhari involving  major regional groups occurred after his death. Death spared him the pain of hearing these same leaders of ethnic groups from the South sweep Nigeria’s entire problems to the doorsteps of ‘Hausa-Fulani Northern Muslims’. 

Danmasani’s North is a lot more insecure than it has ever been. Its insecurity is compounding its poverty at a frightening  rate. He will be proud of his compatriots who have stood solidly in defence of fellow Northerners. His NEF is now the northern frontline in the fight to secure the region, manage ethno-religious conflicts better and arrest increasing  poverty. It is the reference point on discussions on the future of the nation. It is in familiar territory: it took up the Jonathan administration for the North, and it is taking up the Buhari administration for the same North. Danmasani’s NEF is neither friend nor foe. It will only fight or work for a North that lives with dignity and justice in Nigeria.

Rebuilding the North

      When a needle falls into a deep well, many people will look into the well, but few  will be ready to go down after it. African proverb. 

A survey of the causes and consequences of the systemic collapse of northern communities is a most depressing endeavour. There must be tons of high quality research in many libraries on a whole range of subjects dealing with the past, the decline and the collapse of communities that make up the territory that was colonised as Northern  Region of Nigeria, and is now fragmented into nineteen geo-political units that together generate positive or negative sentiments under the political term, North. This is the region with arguably  about 60% of the nation’s population, 70% of its land mass, 80% of its solid minerals, 70% of its food production,75% of its desperately poor and  95% of its Internally Displaced Persons.

 It houses most of the escalating conflicts that have taken thousands of lives, a  huge, young population that includes about 13 million children attending severely underdeveloped Islamic-type schools, millions  of other young people attending western-type schools that do not adequately  prepare them  for a productive future, a large percentage of a female population which exists entirely outside any type of a  productive economic activity,  and a predominantly peasant, agrarian economy without even a rudimentary agricultural industrial base. Its class structure has undergone massive change. Its previous political and economic elite has been supplanted and pauperized; its class formation processes weaken the growth of a strong middle class, and its lower classes are made up of  a peasantry and urban poor with tenuous relationships to the state and the economy. Its plural  ethnic and religious nature makes it vulnerable to divisive influences and conflicts from political and economic competition involving elites. This region currently faces multiple threats to its security, the most pronounced of which could fatally cripple the capacity of the state to survive and provide even the most minimal of service to citizens.

This is the region that is a liability to itself and the rest of the nation. It cannot survive all its weaknesses and liabilities in a incremental manner within a democratic process that increasingly weakens, rather than strengthens it. There are a number of fundamental prerequisites if it  must be salvaged, secured and placed on a path to  sustained recovery. Of these, the most significant is what  happens to the Nigerian state in the next decade. There are  serious threats to the continuous existence of the nation as one entity  from a combination of pervasive poor governance, widening regional differences in economic fortunes, absence of a strong political elite with a shared  view on the future, rising sentiments in support of balkanization and the sheer weight of bearing challenges that outweigh capacities to resolve. If Nigeria survives as one, it will be largely because its political system succeeds in creating major spaces for growth and development of parts of the nation at radically different paces and manageable but different directions. The nation will need to deepen economic interdependence and political inclusiveness, while it allows component parts to design  systems and processes that reflect their basic interests as Nigerians and people who have particular needs that are important to them.

There is a case to be made for the continued existence of Nigeria as a single united entity, but it should not,  and cannot be at the expense of any part. Balkanization will be messy and will not solve any of the  major problems of any parts of the country. Therefore, major structural issues which represent threats to unity and progress of all component parts need to be addressed. The North has the most to gain from a holistic review in the manner the nation is structured, and its elite and thinkers should begin to design options for a future that may involve negotiations with other elites and leaders and an outcome that will give the region a number of advantages. First, it may have an opportunity to re-design its political and social structures  to address the quality of governance, manage pluralism better and give space to its core values in the manner citizens live. Second, it will enjoy greater leverage in developing its human and economic resources for the benefit of its own people. Third, it will relate better with other parts of the nation, as a valuable partner that contributes to the development of the nation, and a region that is vital to the development of other parts of the country. Fourth, it will be better-placed to address its own security by designing more appropriate structures and processes for detection, management and resolution of conflicts.

The North needs to discover a means of engaging its multiple interests and groups in major and productive discussions first. The region is losing its cohesiveness and identity at an alarming rate, and the manner the political process operates does not help the vital goals of enhancing constructive pluralism and peaceful co-existence. The places of religion and ethnicity in particular have to be placed on the table and addressed openly and responsibly. No Muslim or Christian feels that current laws and local environments allows them full expression of their rights to live in accordance with their faith. Conflicts involving ethnic groups are basically about resources, and this will only be dealt with by a combination of real economic progress that benefits all groups, and governance that rests on pillars of justice and equity. Secular systems and the democratic process are creating huge pockets of frustration and conflicts, both because they are substantially isolated from basic values of a large section of the North, and because they create conditions that deepen religious and ethnic conflicts as elites compete by exploiting them. If the North cannot speak to itself, it cannot engage the rest of Nigeria from a position of strength, or at least a respected equal. As things stand, the rest of Nigeria thinks the North is weak, divided and poor enough to be exploited to serve their interests. This is not entirely incorrect, although the rest of Nigeria itself is not a shining example of unity and virtue.

The North is a fascinating paradox. Even on its own, it has the potential to be one of the most developed countries in Africa, but it has to address the roots of its decaying social values and structures, crippling and widespread poverty and widespread insecurity. It is poor in many critical areas, the most damaging being its poverty of leadership. Its elected officials have all the power to make a difference, but they lack capacity, respect of the people and the integrity to lead genuine quality change. The rest of its shrinking elite has retreated into indifference and lamentation  in the face of bitter political competition that take no prisoners. The North needs a new brand of leaders that will lead with competence and an understanding of the fundamentals of integrating deeply-rooted traditional values and structures that have been weakened with processes, and systems that are needed to create a modern economy and society in the North. It needs the space to allow governance that thrives on the values of justice and respect for leadership. It must expand the political space if democracy is to have any future in the region. It needs leaders who will plan for a future, and will not be tied to four- year circles spent on pillaging resources and fighting off opposition desperate to do the same.

For the North, time means everything. Even if the Buhari administration will break the back of the Boko Haram insurgency and bring an end to multiple threats that exploit the absence of effective governance (and this is unlikely given the current disposition of the President and the tendency to punish criminals and security forces with slaps on the wrist), rebuilding social and economic structures and undertaking difficult and comprehensive political engineering that will give the region a new lease of life will need the involvement of people currently outside the power loop. Northerners who are pained at the predictable decline of the North need to get involved in the political process, not to replace current leaders, but as catalysts for genuine and long-term change

Time and tide for Buhari

Truth and morning become light with time. African proverb.

Watching President Muhammadu Buhari deliver an address on the brand new Democracy Day, you will not be alone if you experience a twinge of sympathy for him. The image of a tired-looking and aged President laboriously reading a prepared speech that attempts to capture achievements in five years of leadership at a time much of the nation is looking elsewhere and engrossed in matters far removed from celebrating democracy was sad. There must have been nuggets of solid achievements somewhere in those scores of paragraphs, but they would have been smothered in moods and other contemporary matters which made beating the drums an unattractive or even a hazardous venture in most parts of the country. Those who dragged themselves away from other burdening concerns to give him an ear came with a shopping list, and they duly noted what he said that is fiction, what he should have  said but did not, and what should not have been said, but was.

Time, records and circumstances had combined to make the President's Democracy Day speech a thoroughly forgettable event, unless you are the type that bears grievances beyond their expiry dates. First, Nigerians had disagreed with each other so passionately over the change of Democracy Day from 29th of May to 12th of June,  that  many feel it had lost much of the shine it has garnered for close to 20 years. A political gamble to court an ambivalent political constituency had further alienated another support base  and offended traditional opponents who have ready-made  criticisms long before Buhari even contemplates a decision. Then, many elements combined to make it difficult to switch on the celebratory mood.COVID-19 is settling down to the role of the major facilitator of a new normal, particularly at a time when the federal government had handed the population to States, which in turn has handed the fates of citizens to themselves.

The outlines of its damage to the economy are being felt around, with dire doom and gloom being let out more to make excuses for the government than to trigger a momentum to create a less painful transition into a pandemic economy. Millions of citizens are counting the values of lockdowns and restrictions against permanent losses and setbacks in their livelihoods. People hear of juggled figures that are sold as revised budgets to be funded with  huge borrowed deficits, and they wonder what is new in the entire response of the federal  government to an unprecedented crisis. There are some answers in  hints that government is revisiting questionable advise to lay off thousands of workers, but jumbo pays and privileges of public office holders will remain intact. A private sector with chronic split identity is feeling its way around contexts that make planning beyond the certainty that recovery will be painful and long-term recovery difficult to manage. Millions of people whose livelihoods in the informal sector have been severely disrupted or wiped out will move from the marginal to the desperate category.

As President Buhari pored over a long speech on the achievements of his administration, rural folks in many parts of the North who had stood by him twice during challenging elections were being slaughtered, robbed, raped and displaced by bandits, rustlers and kidnappers. There was a paragraph or two on security of citizens and the state, but it is doubtful if villagers in Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna and Borno had heard him claim near-total victory over Boko Haram, and his firm resolve to eliminate the terrible blight that really came to life under his watch. If they had stopped running away or paused from burying their dead to listen to a man they thought could do no wrong, they were more likely to be even more dismayed. There were mentions of sympathy for them, but the President’s speechwriters appear to be running out of adjectives to describe what Buhari wants done with bandits, if they are caught. In his home state, youth take their angst to highways, stopping traffic until everyone hears their complaints and invocations to God over what  they want done to the President. If bandits paused from celebrating victories over defenceless and undefended villagers  to listen to a President with a past that could be summarized by one word, tough, they may have had a hearty laugh at promises to unleash the might of the air force, army and police against them.

All in all, things are not looking up for President Buhari’s leadership and the nation. In one week when it was planned  that the nation was to put on its best and dance around  a porous  democratic system, the mood was deeply mournful and uncertain. Excuses have lost their potency a long time ago, and most Nigerians cannot even remember a Jonathan era marked by bombs and barbarism of Boko Haram and loud incompetence in governance. President Buhari of old will flinch at the remotest attempt to compare his records with Jonathan’s. Now he may not even stir at accusations from northern peasants facing a Buhari-era menace that the Jonathan-era was golden in comparison. Powerful politicians looking for additional angles to beat opponents now understand that President Buhari will not lift presidential fingers to save them or the party from major setbacks. The melodrama in his party being played out in Edo State says a lot to suggest that when he said at his inauguration that he belonged to nobody, and he belongs to all, what he really meant was that no one should bother him with their problems.

These comments are painful, but they are not unfair. The President does  not help himself with his preference for insularity,  possibly a personal trait that makes him retreat into obscurity when things go wrong, unless photographs are involved, and to leave tired spokesmen and speechwriters  fighting way below  their weight to assume responsibility for explaining away realities, unwittingly creating the impression that President Buhari  really prefers not to know what is wrong in the country. How else does one make sense of the response of one his spokesmen to the scathing criticism of the Northern Elders Forum over the failure of the President to secure northern rural communities, a response that says more about the people entrusted by the President to help him run the country than critics who are raising voices to new heights? Another spokesman defends the woeful record of the administration by relocating blame on community leaders of victims.

Cultural norms and propriety dictate that we should allow family heads to lead their families, and to allow respectable distances between us and the manner they do this. When you are President, however, this courtesy is difficult to extend, particularly when the management of the household spills into the realm of governance and says a lot about crisis management capacities of the leader. When Patience Jonathan held court in the Villa complete with media coverage to harass government employees from Borno State into telling her whether Chibok girls really were abducted, or someone was trying to make her husband look bad, the nation marked the tragicomedy as a new low. Even making allowances that First Ladies are difficult to keep at their corners, the public outings of the President’s wife on issues relating to his choice of aides, relationships with extended family and grey areas in public policy represent genuine subjects of study in the manner powerful leaders manage difficult domestic matters, so that they do not become public and attract attention to strengths and weaknesses. The latest altercation involving his family members and the police, and the decision he took days thereafter to cause for an investigation are a most unflattering testimony to the President’s willingness to nip problems in the bud. There are parallels between managing your home and running a country.

There could still be time for President Buhari to turn things around, but he has to use every minute outside his comfort zone to make a difference. His strongest asset was a huge chunk of the population that had an amazing faith that he could stop rots and change their lives for the better. Those who are close enough, should let him know that those people are walking away from him.

Buhari Presidency: A Comment

"All well-governed states and wise princes have taken care not to reduce the nobility to despair, nor the people to discontent". N. Machiavelli,1469-1526.

How does one provide a fair assessment of five years of the Buhari presidency? A fair answer to this question is likely to be: one does not. The idea that you could undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of an administration and put it out there as a verdict that should be applauded by a large section of the public as a great balancing act is  popular, but simplistic. Yet it is undertaken with such enthusiasm that you have to wonder what its objectives are. It certainly does not impress the administration if your assessment punches large holes on its record. Its opponents will not tolerate attempts to give credit even where it is patently deserved. There is an audience out there that may be the target of all the effort to evaluate the quality of life in a country  for a period of five years, but this audience would have made up it mind long before it is lambasted with figures,  facts and fiction from all sides. Listening to the President’s side make his case, you get the impression that he believes that almost all criticisms are unfair and predictable partisan propaganda, and , more significantly, the nation should actually be grateful for the favour of a Buhari leadership.

This is not a contribution for or against the administration, and no apologies are offered if it appears otherwise. It is an attempt to make the case for the nation to move beyond lamentations and opportunistic quarrels and for the leadership to assume its role with greater sense of responsibility and sincerity, or the country will sink deeper into uncertainty and  insecurity by 2023. Part of the problem here is that President Buhari is not given to shifting ground. The impression is created that he genuinely believes he has largely vindicated the faith of Nigerian voters with the two elections he won, and if there are shortfalls, they should be accounted for by  a democratic system that holds him back from repeating his  performance when he overthrew a democratically-elected government and acquired his reputation for fighting corruption without gloves. He may have won his first election (and defeated an incumbent) with just that image, but not until three attempts during which the nation was driven nearer to where the appeal for leadership without a  stain of corruption was what was needed to win an election.His second term was more a verdict on his opposition than an endorsement of his record during his first term.

So, in spite of registered failures to translate an  image into substance, it was still good enough to win him his second term. This is not to suggest that he does not recognize problems and challenges, but the challenges that got him to stress and strain were mainly related to being elected President. His governance style is entirely shaped by personality of an extreme conservative, the type that believes changing styles or pace is unnecessary and a sign of weakness. This fundamental contradiction around a basically conservative person who acquires power on the back of deep, popular yearning for real change is one of those peculiarities of our politics. Clues for understanding it may lie in the deep recesses of the historic injustice which the poor have borne from past leaders and elites; the yearning for genuinely honest leadership by most Nigerians; as well the outlines of the influence of region and religion in the manner we approach political issues.

Is there enough fight left in President Buhari to reduce the gap between what the nation requires to be done, and where he appears to be content to draw lines? The nation had better hope there is, because the popular narrative that Buhari has three years to leave the Villa is misleading. In real political time, he has less than two years to  resist the alarming slide into pervasive and endemic insecurity, respond to the challenges to a receding economy made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, improve the bonds that hold the nation together and restore hope that the democratic process that gave him the power he worked hard for can actually address needs that go beyond those of leaders. The democratic process will lose many roots if the Buhari's presidency comes to an end leaving majority of Nigerians thinking that it does not yield  leaders who can improve lives.

Those who think recording achievements and looking for clues for legacies are important should note that at this stage, President Buhari’s legacy is being written in blood and tears of innocent villagers by bandits and insurgents. Most of the people who die  or are severely distressed by  organized criminals are the same people who showed  the highest degrees of affection and faith in the person and leadership of President Buhari. Villagers from Niger, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna, Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, Plateau and Nassarawa States do not understand the intricacies and challenges of providing them with security against organized criminals and each other, but they do understand that they have a president whose responsibility it is to do so. They did not wake up one tragic morning to find their lives and livelihood entirely at the mercy of criminals. Some had lived with it before 2015, but had believed that President Buhari would put an end to it immediately and permanently.Many others knew real tragedy only under a President with the reputation for being tough on all matters that affect the weak and the poor.

He did sweep insurgents that bombed mosques and churches and triggered long military checkpoints from towns and cities, but the insurgency drew lines around total defeat  and continues to feed off its resistance against a state under the leadership of a former military general. Others had watched a creeping threat from bandits, kidnappers, rustlers and ethnic militias from the distance until it reached them. Today thousands of villagers are living as internally displaced people in areas that had known no violence for close to a century. They are farmers with no farms to cultivate. Now they are just a burden that cannot be borne by any level of authority, and no one is in a position to say if or when they can resume normal lives of feeding themselves and a nation that relies heavily on what they produce.

There is something the Buhari administration can do that will improve the quality of its legacy. This is to operate with one overarching philosophy  behind everything it does henceforth: damage control. There is  the inherent damage on the nation by a hugely expensive and wasteful political system  that is incredibly easy to abuse.To leave the basic framework the way he found it will be a great disservice to a nation that gave him mandates twice to change systems and processes.He should attempt to reduce the damage that the administration inherited, particularly endemic corruption and weakening institutions of the state.Not  to do so will be registered by history as his biggest failure.He has to address  damage caused by his administration’s  avoidable inertia, complacency around decision-making and failure to explore the more responsive elements of a democratic process that will not be easily reduced to the personal conveniences of a president. Then he has to address damage from opportunistic elements and tendencies that now threaten national security and political cohesion.A weakened and insecure nation will provide ample grounds for those who believe their fortunes lie outside it.The 2023 elections will test the resilience of the polity, but threats to it can be reduced by deliberately taking on those irritants that could make winning or losing the next elections less attractive motives for threatening national co-existence.

It is important that President Buhari understands his place in history very clearly. Right now, the mystique around him has faded thin, and simple folk who thought there was nothing he could not do are bitter that they either over-rated him, or he has badly let them down deliberately. His enemies may rejoice at the demystification of a man and the nation’s loss of eight years, but majority of Nigerians will hope that he will not be overwhelmed by the state of our existence today to resign to  waiting out his time. Countries do not stand still. They improve, regress or decay. If President Buhari cannot turn  the tide, he should work towards slowing it.