The president has always seen
silence as a mark of dignity in a time of crisis. When he opens his mouth
eventually, he spews out venom that neither gives him nor the office he occupies
any form of dignity.
Tall, gaunt, lean of face with a straight stare and loping
strides, his smile comes across more like a lickspittle than a royal. Yet,
behind that simpering exterior is a granite heart. However, little cunning or
high thinking dresses up his hearty resolves. So, in the final analysis, what
we have is not the Buhari of nobility but a pretension to the high moral act.
Sometimes that façade confronts us in the form of silence.
Occasionally he does speak. When he breaks his silence, he
ruptures not only peace but logic. As I have noted in the past, Buhari’s soul
is a battle between the martial impulses of his breeding and the entitlement of
his ambience as a Fulani hierarch. And then there is a third. He has managed,
since his ouster from power as head of state, to cultivate the talakawa. So, he
sees himself as a sort of royal with a common touch. He is simultaneously on
top and at the bottom, a prince and pauper, a head and herdsman, at once
erupting from the floor and swooping down from heaven.
How does such a man operate in a democracy? Well, unless
democracy tames him, he will see it as his right to tame democracy. That is the
war going on with the man we elected president. His silence on the N9 trillion
scandal only portrays his contempt for institutions and persons who want to
tame him like colt to the discipline and humility of popular persuasion. If
democracy is about the triumph of popular persuasion over collective will,
Buhari is bending to the side of the will. As French philosopher Jean Jacque
Rousseau has argued, collective will often cloaks despotic arrogance.
Robespierre and Danton, even Napoleon, were culprits.
As a soldier Buhari works with diktat. As a royal, he sees the
world from the hill top. As a talakawa patron, he gives them love in his own
light. In return, they give him worship. Democracy therefore will work for him
the way he operates with the talakawa. He expects us to bow down to him. He is
the king of our democracy. He abides the contradiction. Men like Churchill or
General Dwight Eisenhower had high-born sensibilities, but hey were cowed by
the institutions of democracy. Buhari acts otherwise. The thing is that Buhari
is not high-born, he has acquired the streak by age and his rise in the
military and social graces of the land. When you expect to give, it means you
define the love in your own image. The targets of your love only do one thing:
worship you.
What we have is the making of the Aristotelian tragic flaw. Like
Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Buhari’s flaw is hubris. That
explains why his speeches and comments in times of crisis tend to be
condescending.
We witnessed it early in his tenure when he would not set up a
cabinet. Or when his wife rattled him, or when he reacted to the scandal around
his army chief, or when recently he fouled the air when he returned from his
medical leave and came down in primitive anger against the Southeast. There are
some storms he has never found worthy of his tongue. Chief among them is the
poisonous lop-sidedness of his appointments. He is still mum on Babachir Lawal
and Ayo Oke, and even the rumbles among his principal officers in the
presidency. Some jump out of the shadows. Like his request to a World Bank
chief that the institution should focus work on the north.
This perhaps explains why he has been frozen from the neck up in
spite of the uproar over his NNPC appointments. So, following from that, why
would we expect him to say something about the new tempest on Nigeria’s oil.
All he did was retreat to is familiar terrain on the N9 trillion ambush of our
national treasure.
Now, he may see his silence has golden, as a way of standing
above the rolling waters, of asserting his rectitude. But that could be so if
he has come out with a line of wisdom through his lieutenants. His lieutenants
have actually been quiet, too. It was all left in the hands of the
culprit-in-chief to hand over the boil to his appointee, Maikanti Baru.
If his explanations had found traction in reason, we could have
pardoned the president. We could say, well, it was all a case of mistaking a
mouse for an elephant. But the big elephant in the room has remained one man:
Muhammadu Buhari.
He acts as though it is mere matter. It will pass over, his
image as a man of purity will shield him, so he does not have to be above
board.
After all, some of his followers have been treating him as a
god. They swear by him, they risk cholera by drinking water on dirt roads, they
worship head on the ground as though on prayer ground. So how can he submit to
mere mortals to explain.
He does not need to explain when Baru says he sought permission
from him (Buhari) to make such a consequential decision. He does not need to
react when he bypasses the man he appointed to the position as board chairman
of the NNPC. He does not see it fit that he set up a board that the NNPC Act
invests with powers and a mere mortal he puts there as GMD subverts their
authority and boasts about it in Buhari’s name. Does he not know that as
president, the only person to whom he can hand over authority is a minister or
vice president?
The constitution says so. Or does he read the constitution? If
he cannot delegate to himself since he is oil minister, he automatically hands
over to his minister of state. By bypassing that, he has violated due process.
And he does not want to talk about it? By the way, is it damning to note that
these contracts were purportedly signed when he was on medical leave? He
himself had said his men brought him files to sign in London. If he did not
sign Baru’s, did he give him a nod. If he did, he violated the oath of office,
and is that not enough for him to resign, or for impeachment proceedings to
begin?
Does he not know that matters like this should involve the BPP?
Did he not hear the voice of Oby Ezekwesili on that? Did he not hear his GMD
draw false equivalences by saying that Kachikwu did the same thing, therefore
there was nothing wrong? Is that the way to fight corruption?
If a man like Baru can play fast and loose with our endowment as
a people, where do we place those who are faithful like Dakuku Peterside in
NIMASA and Professor Ishaq Oloyede at JAMB. The president was quick to order
the probe of the predecessors and rightly so. But he is easy on the humongous
erring of his “man” Baru. They say it is not cash contract, and so not contract
“as such.” Abi dem think say we be mumu?
As far as this column is concerned, unless Buhari reviews and
annuls the contracts, his war on corruption is melodious lie, an exercise in
hypocritical grandstanding. He is therefore hiding in silence. The silence is
roaring, and our ears are full with its every decibel.
Comments
Post a Comment