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General Buhari and Nigerian Politics By Bashir Usman
To most observers especially those informed about the dirty tricks involved in struggling to get oneself elected, selected or even out rightly appointed to hold any public office in Nigeria today, General Muhammadu Buhari [rtd.] has taken a quite wrong and risky decision to soil his hands in the dirty waters of Nigerian politics. A few, however, see it right given the sorry state of the Nigerian nation and his renowned ‘no nonsense’ mentality in running the affairs of Nigerian economy as evidenced during his days as Nigeria’s seventh military Head of state in the mid-eighties .A brief look however into his life, regime and career will reveal to the nation whether the General still has a room in the toxic air of Nigeria’s fourth Republic.
Born on Thursday,17th December,1942 in an ancient village called Dumurkol near Daura town[now under Katsina state ],General Buhari is traced to a noble Fulani family since his father, Adamu was the village chief and his mother,Zulaihat was the daughter of Musa Sarkin Dogarai [ i.e. the Head of the Daura infantry Division] who still doubled as the son of Kauran Daura Lawal[ i.e. the Head of the Daura Armed Forces] at the time.He grew up in nobility and started his education from Daura and Mai Adua primary schools,1948—52;Katsina Middle school 1953—55;Katsina Provincial secondary school [now Govrnment college Katsina]1956—61;Nigerian Military Training college, Kaduna 1962;Mons officer Cadet school, Aldershot United Kingdom,1962—63;Defence Service Staff college, Wellington, India January –November 1973 to Army War college 1979—80 in the United States of America. I wish the space would allow me to itemize his military career for the benefit of my readers. Meanwhile, General Buhari is married with eight children and I pray that all of them will become [i. e. spiritually speaking ] the carbon copies of the father.
He became Nigeria’s Head of state via a military coup against the then government of Shehu Shagari on 31st December, 1983.The aim of the coup according to Nigerian military elite was to save Nigeria from impending economic and political collapse as a result of crass mismanagement of resources, crisis of confidence and general insecurity in the country occasioned by the recklessness of the serving second Republic politicians. In his inaugural speech on 1st January, 1984 Buhari had this to say: “Fellow Nigerians, you are aware of the change in the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which was announced early this morning. In pursuance of the primary objective of saving our great country from total collapse, I, General Muhammadu Buhari of the Nigerian Army have, after due consultation among the services of the Armed Forces, been formally vested with the authority of the Head of state of the Federal military government and commander –in –chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The change became necessary in order to put an end to the serious economic predicament and crisis of confidence now afflicting our nation.”
“The last general elections were anything but free and fair. The only political parties that could complain of election rigging were those that lacked the resources to rig. There is ample evidence that rigging and thuggery were relative to the resources available to the parties. While corruption and indiscipline have been associated with our state of underdevelopment. These two evils in our body politic have attained an unprecedented height in the past four years. The corrupt, inept and insensitive leadership in the last four years has been the source of immorality and impropriety in our society. This government will not tolerate kickbacks, inflation of contracts and over invoicing of imports et cetera. Nor will it forgery, fraud, embezzlement, misuse and abuse of office and illegal dealings in foreign exchange and smuggling. Fellow Nigerians, this indeed is the moment of truth. My colleagues and I in the Supreme Military Council must be frank enough to acknowledge the fact that at the moment, an accurate picture of the financial situation is yet to be determined. We have no doubt that the situation is bad enough. In spite of that, every effort will be made to ensure that the difficult and degrading conditions under which we are living are ameliorated.” Indeed, the&n bsp; address is space—guzzling that I had to quote only a few of the relevant statements he made concerning the general state of the nation at the time. Now --let me analyze the regime.
From the onset, the government accorded unquantifiable priority to to the issue of national development [as against the bulky mess it inherited from its ousted civilian predecessor ], vowed entrench discipline and in he highest speed possible, stamp out corruption in the Nigerian system. Against this backdrop, a currency change policy was initially adopted and announced two weeks before its delayed annual budget of 1984.The policy had some shortcomings but the aim was to isolate black marketeering , counterfeiting activities and to reduce the unhealthy circular flow of money into the recesses Nigerian economy. Another strategy was the merging of the Federal Ministry of Commerce with that of Industry and the vesting of the authority to grant import license in one central authority: the permanent secretary of the combined ministries. That became necessary for the granting of import license was anything but a melting pot for corruption during the second Republic. Many parasitic elite enjoying patronage were awarded licenses only to sell it, in the end, to the true importers. By such a strategy however, granting of import license remained ethical and the goods to be imported narrowed down to only essenti al commodities in order to achieve a sovereign standard in the both the short and long term interest of Nigerian economy.
Besides, Buhari’s military
administration believed largely in internal revenue generation [as
against periodic borrowing from the international finance capital] and
thus, severe reduction of government expenditure with the objective of
controlling [if not eliminating] budgetary deficit and conserving
Nigeria’s meager foreign reserves and internal funds was effected. In
that sweeping wind of revolution, foreign trips for government officials
were suspended and their hitherto bountiful traveling allowances cut
from
The entire civil service workforce was sized down by 30% as it appeared so many people had been recruited not on grounds of productivity but largely because they were being rewarded by the corrupt politicians they helped bringing into public offices. The retrenched forces however became useful in the government’s ‘Back to Land’ programme that was meant to boost agricultural production in the country. In that regard, public moneys that would have been wasted on paying unproductive workers [where as some states were not paid salaries of up to four months in some cases] became available for the contemporary ‘Fund Conservation Drive’.
‘No hardship was intended against anyone, the Head of state remarked; our aim is to remove made set up to look into the causes, nature and consequences under the supervision of Professor Olarewajo Fapolundo, a Director of Human Resources and Research Department, university of Lagos at the time. Buhari’ s government decision and assertion that Nigerian people must imbibe the habit [ or custom as grammarians would better say ] of conspicuous consumption, fiscal discipline and that the actual brain behind the chronic underdevelopment of the Third World has been their problematic propensity to consume the type, quantity and quality made ava ilable to them by modern industrial economy without equally having the needed capacity, sophistication, organization and mentality to produce such goods and services is indeed, historically determined and totally excusable. I will prove this theory to the reader as soon as possible.
In his book: “Freedom from Debt,” Jacque Gelinas theorizes that: the real name of development is indigenous capitalization. Progress begins when a society consumes less than it produces. When it uses the surpluses to make or acquire tools. And what is a community seeking when it endeavors to acquire tools? Essentially one thing: To produce more goods and services with less effort, less time and less labor. That is productive investment. The making and use of these tools not only means increased production and productivity but also human resources training through pract ice. It leads to the development of those who invent, make and control these tools,” [Freedom from Debt, page :87].Besides, the author of the American Farm Act, senator Rudy Boschwitz of the Republican party in the congressional debate leading to the enactment of the said Act maintains : “If we do not lower our farm prices to discourage these developing countries from aiming at self –reliance now, our world wide competition position will continue to slide. This discouragement should be one of the foremost goals of our agricultural policy,” [John Mihevc; The Market Tells Them So, page :167]. Thus, Buhari’s dogged stance against the Euro-Western economic conspiracy was to say the least, out of genuine sense of patriotism for his country. And this fact remains discernible even to the average mind.
When the issue of foreign loan emerged, the regime stuck to its gun reading what happened to Somalia, Ethiopia on the one hand, and the likely implications of the proposed conditionalities [i.e. Devaluation, subsidy removal and trade liberalization] to the Nigerian economy on the other. That point alone marks a stark difference in his level of nationalism compared to the present crop of political leaders. While the former would stand fixed at all cost against plunging Nigeria into the risky hole of Debt predicament, the latter could even sell at will, the nation to the international finance capital. Of course, the regime came under severe criticism from the West abroad and its sponsored agents at home yet it regarded most of the suggested approaches as only workable in peculiar economic environment which unfortunately Nigeria was not a party to in those days. I will come to explain this sooner than later.
Devaluation for example was held to
be a workable solution to the problem of unfavorable balance of payment
for Nigeria by neo- classical economic theorists. With mounting pressure
on the foreign reserve and unfavorable balance of payment Catastrophe
–the IMF believed devaluation of its currency to be a lasting panacea
to Nigeria’s economic predicament. Buhari’s regime held otherwise
because of two main reasons: That our oil production quota was [and is
still] being set up by OPEC and the whole prices were usually valued and
paid in American Dollars have been our bane for a long time. Economic
theories hold that for a Devaluation strategy to work effectively on an
economy-first the country’s exportable commodity must be priced in its
native currency, second the quantity exported s hould be substantial
enough to fill the vacuum it suffers through her imports and lastly, the
quantity exported must fall at a faster rate than the price is
increasing. Otherwise, it would ne devoting more of its wealth to import
less and receive less of its earning from the goods exported. In other
words, a wholesale devaluation not backed by mass production, trade
liberalization without any restriction would, inevitably lead to
inflation, unemployment and total destruction of domestic industries
respectively. These were damning evils of Structural Adjustment
Programme that Buhari rejected during his days as the military
president of Nigeria. I dare those lambasting the regime for cutting
some of the expenses on social welfare to go and read, research and see
the historical consequences of what the Buhari avoided. Let me buttress
the point below briefly. J. R. Jaywardene, the Sri Lankan finance
minister remarked in his annual budget of 1947- 1948 that : “we do not
intend to stop or starve any of the progressive social and economic
schemes of development such as education, free milk feeding and free
meals for children.” To turn his words into action, about RS140 million
was allotted to education, RS96 to health, RS78 to food subsidies while
some RS79 million went to the agricultural purse of the nation. By 1953
however, food subsidies gulped a whopping 2.7% of the Gross National
product [i.e. about RS675 million
Indeed, the regime would have turned Nigeria into a
fulfilling Promised Land had it not been sacked by the fifth columnist
of the Nigerian military elite in August, 1985.For example, the
government’s frantic effort to mop up cash for indigenous development
alone led to the dropping of inflation from 40% to 5.5% between 1984 and
1985[Tom Forest :Politics And Economic Development In Nigeria,
page;98].Besides, poll taxes yielded
That was General Muhammadu Buhari whose two years as petroleum commissioner in the late seventies brought so many unprecedented achievements to Nigeria’s oil industry. Let me cite examples. Nigeria’s first petroleum storage and distribution depots with a capacity each to store between 14 and 45 day fuel for domestic consumption were set up during his tenure. Second, oil pipelines stretching about 2,800 km throughout the country with a view to transporting crude oil to the various depots including Kaduna refinery were laid. And lastly, it was the man that signed the construction contract of the existing Warri and Kaduna refineries plus the partnership agreement between Nigeria and the two operating oil companies: Shell and B. petroleum companies for the production of liquefied Natural gas in the country. I need not comment on PTF because it always seems there is virtual consensus among Nigerians that the fund was nothing but success to the entire nation.
Now—General Buhari in Nigerian politics. As said earlier, many Nigerians see the man as an unsuitable fisher in the murky waters of Nigerian politics. Of course, they have my vote too largely in view of the following considerable reasons; From the onset, this is a country where the ruling elite, with virtually few exceptions, civilians and/or military, have looted public treasury dry during their days in power; reversed to a quasi-democratic administration with military caps and civilian garments and thus, confined the possibilities, means and machineries of governing the nation within their monopolized cabalistic territory for the sole fear of being tried, probed or prosecuted by any revolutionary successor. People like Buhari are therefore uninvitable.
Second, it is a sorry state in the West African subcontinent where as late Wada Nas would put it, state terrorism and assassination of perceived political opponents and anti-establishment are sponsored from high quarters with the full knowledge, if not complicity, of state security outfit with reckless impunity. Once more, it is a republic where one has to buy or even force his way to win elections with the criminal collaboration of state electoral commissions with usual impunity. It is not the votes that matters but the incumbency factor where winning a tazarce is concerned in today’s Nigeria. It is a supposed democratic country where mass looting of public treasury is the reigning race between the political classes. Here is a nation where Ghana –must –go motivation could make ,at every turn, elected [or selected as they better seem ]legislators approve every Executive proposal without recourse to their constitutional obligations. Ours is a democratic experiment where public opinion is not a yardstick for making and implementing governmental policies
The last but certainly not the least, it is sad republic where human lives are valueless as long as personal, political interests are strategically negated. What happened in Anambra state and the gory murders of late Harry Marshall,Okadigbo, Dikibo and Chief Bola Ige are notable examples here. To me, a serious statesman with unquantifiable record of nationalism; an honest and forthright figure in the person of Buhari, who means what he says and says what he means and who cannot sell the heir loom of his native country because of patriotism as is currently being done under the criminal guise of economic reform, does not have a room within the dirty landscape of Nigerian politics. And what happened to him during th e 2003 general elections and the legal petition he instituted against the fraud in both the Appeal and Supreme courts of the land are good cases in point here. This is my conclusion and I believe that of most visionary Nigerians. On that account, I am of the opinion that General Buhari should at least as a matter of personal interest, quit the dirty landscape of contemporary Nigerian politics as soon as this is possible. Or will this parochial, power-hungry and squander maniac elite, together with their criminal collaborators abroad, allow him to rule Nigeria come 2007? Meanwhile-I rest my case here.
Muhammad Bashir, based in Tudun Wada—Kaduna can be reached at bashirsenior@yahoo.com
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