While we cannot credit President
Muhammadu Buhari with a transformative genius that has redounded to the
citizens’ wellbeing, we must not ignore his masterstrokes in self-preservation.
What we have been confronted with in the past three years is his craving for
self-protection with its trappings of paranoia.
Thus, beyond the need to punish crime
no matter the station of life of the allegedly culpable, the alleged linkage of
Senate President Bukola Saraki to armed robbers who raided banks and killed
over 30 people in Offa, Kwara State seems an
extension of the politics of Buhari’s self-survival.
Through his words and
actions, Buhari has not concealed his prejudice that it is only from the
executive arm of government flows a genuine desire for good governance that
would improve the citizens’ lot. Buhari feels trammelled by the legislature and
the judiciary. He is riled by the absence of military powers that could enable
him to decree life or death in a democratic milieu. This was why he sought
emergency powers that the legislature refused to grant him.
Since then, Buhari
has been deploying state powers in a bid to whittle down the influence of those
who stand in his path to the fulfilment of his notion of development of the
country. The first was the judiciary. Buhari is apparently rankled by the
suspicion of a collusion between the judiciary and past governments that denied
him the opportunity to become president earlier. For him, it is time to remind
the judiciary of the injustice meted out to him when he was powerless. He has
striven to make the citizens to see the judiciary as an arm of government in
which corruption festers.
To him, its members,
the bench and the bar, are the aiders of the corruption in which the nation’s
politicians luxuriate. They must all be defanged and made to realise that they
cannot constitute an obstacle to his anti-corruption fight. This was why judges
were arrested and prosecuted. Their homes were raided and the proceeds of their
corruption in dollar or naira were said to have been found in septic tanks and
other unfathomable places. Clearly, while we would not hold the view that the
judiciary embodies transparency expressed in creed and deed, our grouse remains
that the manner of ferreting out the corruption in this arm of government is
questionable.
After the judiciary,
Buhari turned his attention to the political class. Its members must also be
silenced so that they would not use their stolen money to fight against the
anti-corruption campaign. This is why Buhari has descended heavily on them. But
those who saw the light early enough quickly defected to Buhari’s All
Progressives Congress (APC). Once there, they are thus seen as not posing any
danger to the anti-corruption fight. But those who have refused to defect are
subjected to an endless prosecution in courts.
But now that it is
the turn of the legislature to be silenced, Buhari is not using a cache of
dollars found under the beds of lawmakers to prosecute them. This is despite
the lawmakers’ notoriety for earning fabulous salaries and sundry allowances
including those for constituency projects and their wardrobes. Buhari’s
new-fangled strategy to silence the members of the National Assembly is to use
his minions to accuse them of providing hoodlums with guns.
While Dino Melaye is
still battling with his charge of arming some thugs in Kogi, his home state,
Senate President Bukola Saraki is now faced with the same allegation. While
even a single life is important, the number of those who have died due to
Fulani herdsmen’s terrorism is higher than that of those felled by the Offa
robbers’ bullets. But the Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris has failed
to demonstrate the same alertness to his responsibilities in respect of reining
in these cold-blooded Fulani murderers as he is doing now in Offa. When
President Buhari sent him to Benue to restore security he did not
bother to obey him. Even when the IGP’s behaviour became a public embarrassment
to the president, he did not change his mind and go there. Worse, when the
Senate summoned him repeatedly to assure them of the measures he had put in
place to stop the killings and restore security, he did not deem it necessary
to respond as requested by the lawmakers.
But it is the same
police still headed by Idris that have summoned Saraki to appear before them
because the suspected Offa armed robbers have accused him of supplying them
guns. But Saraki did not resist the summons. He was willing to meet the police
until they themselves declared that the Senate president should rather respond
in writing.
To be sure, Saraki
should be prosecuted if there are established links between him and armed
robbers. But what is clear to us is that Buhari has followed a predictable
pattern of silencing those he perceives as opposed to him. What is happening is
a clear indication of Buhari’s frosty relationship with Saraki and by extension
the Senate. And for now, before the police evidence linking the armed robbers
to Saraki is considered unimpeachable by a competent law court, we must
appreciate the fact that he is on a higher moral ground than Buhari and his
proxies, the police.
The Offa robbery
suspects allegedly confessed that while they were Saraki’s thugs, he did not
send them to rob. If that is the case, when did the fact of politicians having
thugs become a criminal offence in our political environment? If Saraki is
guilty of having political thugs, which politician is not guilty of the same
offence? Is it not thugs other politicians use to intimidate, maim, kidnap and
kill their opponents? Have all these other politicians been arrested and
prosecuted? Why must it begin with Saraki if not because of his turbulent
relationship with Buhari? Even if Buhari denies having thugs, then he needs to
explain to us those who attacked Charly Boy and other protesters
in Abuja last year because they were calling for the president to
return from medical vacation in London or resign. Or are we to accept
that these were not thugs simply because Charly Boy and his fellow protesters
were not shot dead? Buhari’s search for politicians with thugs is not different
from his hunt for campaign funds. The same Buhari who claimed he was so poor he
could not pay for his nomination form had enough money for his presidential
campaign that involved flying private jets. Where did all this money come from
if not part of the sleazy acquisitions of his sponsors?
Buhari is a present
danger to the nation’s democracy because if he and his minions could subject
the Senate president to this ordeal, then every person who opposes his
presidential ambition in the coming days would suffer a grimmer fate. If
presidential aspirants are not charged with corruption, they would be
prosecuted for the allegations of their either having thugs or providing them
with guns. How much threat Buhari’s current impunity poses to democracy and
good governance is seen in the fact that the National Assembly is ready to
fight back.
The lawmakers might
reduce their cooperation with the Buhari government thereby making it more
difficult to snatch the barest measure of good governance from this floundering
administration. But ultimately, it is not Saraki who is the loser. It is Buhari
who is portraying himself as an enemy of democracy and blithely prosecuting an
agenda that would truncate it. But he must leave democracy to Nigerians who
fought for its return and cherish it while ruing his fate because it is too
late for him to be shored up as a born-again democrat dressed in suit and not
in military uniform.
*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is on the Editorial Board of The Guardian
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