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The Emerging Buhari Persona By Mustapha Shet Shehu How has General Muhammadu Buhari become the rallying point of the opposition in Nigeria and how did he build this persona? This position was hitherto monopolized by the Yoruba (no pun or disrespect intended) and Mallam Aminu Kano’s brand of Talakawa politics in the North, for decades. Since the Talakawas love and admire Buhari to the point that were it right to worship man, they would worship him, we can understand how he filled in the oppositional vacuum in the North. But how could Buhari, who unlike the likeable, enlightened and democratic Yoruba was despised by not a few Nigerians for being “a religious bigot, an autocrat, a dunce and a sadist,” emerge as the inheritor of the “Yoruba legacy?” Although Buhari was petroleum minister, governor and GOC at various times, he reached the pinnacle of his career in 1983 when as Major General, some officers in the Nigerian army comprising Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Domkat Bali, Aliyu Gusau and a host of others overthrew the democratically elected government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari in a military coup and invited him to take charge as Head of State and Commander in Chief. It was a time Nigerian politicians under the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) were at their most unruly behaviour and Nigerians were fed up with them. Buhari’s choice by the executers of the coup was probably because they perceived him as God fearing, disciplined and fair. They banked on these traits in him to stabilize the new military government and reposition the country. While he was head of state, Buhari, along with Major General Babatunde Idiagbon, his deputy, herded most of the crooked politicians into jail after tribunal trials. They diagnosed Nigeria’s culture of lack of discipline as her biggest problem and launched the War against Indiscipline (WAI) starting with the rudimentary but important social etiquette of queuing. They recognized the danger hard drugs posed to society, went out to fight it headlong and in the process; three young cocaine pushers were executed, sadly under a retroactive law. Then those who put them there decided enough was enough, they booted them out in a palace coup and held them under detention for years. By the time they were released, Buhari was a “bitter” man after losing his mother whom he could not see during her terminal illness, and also losing his marriage, for no other reason than what Babangida, in his palace coup speech, termed “he was rigid and uncompromising.” Despite being used, detained and dumped by those who overthrew the democratically elected government of Shagari, his acceptance of this onerous responsibility has been his albatross since he ventured into politics. The former NPN elite, while wining and dining with those who actually overthrew them, were unforgiving towards Buhari. His fear of God, discipline and fairness became vices. Being God-fearing, he was portrayed as a “religious bigot,” being disciplined he was portrayed as “mean and rigid” and being fair he was portrayed as a “hypocrite” who allowed the “smuggling of some 53 suitcases (of whatever) into the country by his ADC” while he was jailing others. However, despite these portrayals by particularly the rapacious northern political elite who loathed him, the northern masses still loved him. His last two outings in the presidential elections prove this. It was in the south that the picture of religious bigotry stuck and understandably so, because his democratic credentials were yet to unfold. His stoic pursuit of justice through the law courts on the two occasions he contested the presidency against the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the revelation of the type of statesman former president Olusegun Obasanjo is, must have given a glimpse of his innate qualities to the Yorubas in particular. They must have perceived his unfolding picture of a true statesman from his peaceful play of politics. There was a story going round that Dim Chukwu Emeka Ojukwu once told Buhari that if he had the kind of near fanatical support Buhari had, he would declare himself winner of the presidential election. But Buhari always took to the courts. His decision to resort to legal processes, tedious as they may be, than declare himself president after elections even the PDP knew they didn’t win, must have saved the country from chaos. With Obasanjo, a Christian southerner as the other contender, it could easily have been the Christian south vs. the Muslim north. And we would have had a religious war of a magnitude surpassing what they had in Sudan. Buhari, the “religious bigot” knew this. As Buhari’s democratic credentials began to unfold, the picture built around him as an autocratic military despot began to fade in a clear defeat of the propagandists. Through tolerance, patience, perseverance and discipline, he is able to build the persona that is attracting him to all shades of politicians in the opposition. Also, as more Nigerians, particularly those born in the sixties and before, reflect on his attempt to reposition Nigeria through the WAI, they would realize that if the palace coup plotters that booted him out had allowed the war to succeed, electricity, quality education, employment and empathy would now be given. We wouldn’t have had the terrible image we have abroad nor be bogged down with this mind boggling corruption, kidnappings and this feeble attempt at re-branding. Given the narrative of the over ten-year rule of the PDP, after 14 years of the purposeless military regimes that brought it to power, it would not be surprising if in the near future we see a wild pro-Buhari fire engulf the whole country. If it happens, Buhari, who says he was converted to democracy after the fall of the repressive communist regime in the USSR, deserves it because he has become a true personification of rule of law, which is the cornerstone of democracy.
Mustapha Shet Shehu Graduate Program in Journalism Harvard University, Cambridge USA |