The Muhammadu Buhari presidency has come down to its final week. What a relief! It ought to be. Even at that, it is not over yet. As it appears, a day or two of the Buhari government still portends a serious menace. There is, for instance, no guaranty that the government will not, within its remaining few days, apply for a fresh huge loan and obtain approval for that from the National Assembly. Or award new outlandish project contracts. Or make further tendentious appointments and postings in the public service. Or worse.
Committed in a most twisted form to the interpretation of what ought to be a positive work ethic, the Buhari presidency seems out to work till the very last day, if not hour. In this case, however, the Buhari government is busy, in the main, doing awkward and provocative things. Indeed, the government has been uncharacteristically hype-active in its final days.
On a positive note, the government in its final days inaugurated the N21 billion State House Clinic, with an impressive VIP wing, the credit for which First Lady Aisha Buhari was not ready to share with anyone. She said it was her initiative. Fair deal. Aisha always says it as it is. Whether her counsel to future presidents and possibly, first ladies, not to go abroad anymore for medical attention, as the new clinic has all they will ever need, will be received, in many quarters, without cynicism is doubtful. Whatever the nobility of her intensions, the charge of her counsel being a classic case of ‘do as I say and not as I did’, will have ample ground to back it up.
Sadly, a rash of violence and senseless killings have erupted across the country in the final week of the Buhari presidency as well, holding up, as it were, a closing testament of the sanguinariness of the Nigerian environment in the eight years Buhari reigned. The light cast by the latest round of killings in various parts of the country on the Buhari presidency, as it winds down is gloomy. It speaks of unmistakable indictment. The President will be leaving office a failure in the area of insecurity, among others.
In the Mangu area of Plateau State, a hitherto peaceful part of a once-alluring Plateau State, scores of innocent citizens were slaughtered in the last one week or so in continuation of a ritual of killings in which the indigenous people have steadily been decimated. It is strange that security agencies have not been able to apprehend or neutralize perpetrators of these heinous crimes in the last eight years. Once again, the natives will wail over their murdered relatives, bury them and wait for the next attack and killings. That is the way it has been. As he leaves office after eight years, the security the retired general promised has obviously not reached Mangu and Plateau State. Nor has it truly reached anywhere.
In Anambra State, about the same period, a few days before the end of the Buhari presidency, in a very puzzling act of criminality, a team of officials of the United States Consulate travelling to inspect erosion sites, with a view of bringing solution to the ravaging environmental problem, were waylaid, killed and kidnapped. Two of the kidnapped members of the travelling team were lucky to be rescued a few days after. Interestingly, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the group that the security agencies pre-emptively indict for all crimes in the South East, has requested the United States of America to undertake a thorough independent investigation to establish those who attacked its travelling personnel. The call is indeed interesting, with a loaded import. Of course, there is no love lost between the Buhari government and IPOB. The group may consider using any back channel it may have to help the US Consulate, if not the security agencies, to gain a clearer view of where it believed the bullet came from.
Over in Kaduna, which has become a fixture in every discussion on killings and violence, the last few days have not been quiet. No fewer than nine people were killed last Sunday in Birnin Gwari Local Government Area, supposedly by the so-called bandits who came to uncontrollable murderous prominence in the last eight years.
The actual and symbolic import of the escalation of these nationwide security crises in the final days of President Buhari’s government cannot be missed.
This is not a matter of declaring victory and heading home when the war is still raging on, which is what Buhari has been trying to do recently. For the retired general, there is no victory on the security front. The quick reference by his lieutenants and propagandists to his success in pegging back Boko Haram is, at best, a recourse to sophistry. President Buhari was not elected to go and fight Boko Haram alone. Or was he? His pitch and promise were to come and ensure security in Nigeria.
Now, even if, for the sake of argument, it is granted that he pegged back Boko Haram in the North East, so what? By the time he was elected president, the North West had no serious security issue. The South East was very peaceful, by far the most peaceful zone in the country. North Central had a few ethnic challenges but no mass killing as has become routine in the last eight years. Niger State was not a hot bed of bandits and terrorists. Kaduna was not a killing field. The South West had virtually no case of noticeable insecurity, as eventually emerged through terrorist incidents in Ondo and Oyo, specifically. Terrorists did not have the chutzpa to strike at the Nigerian Defence Academy.
About a month or so ago, in one of what has turned out to be his quirky utterances, which Nigerians must have realized very late in the day not to place any value on, President Buhari declared that he will restore security in the country before leaving office. Well, he will leave in the next six days. Where is the promised security? As his exit day drew closer, Buhari resorted to scoring himself and awarding himself A+ all through. Obviously, he uses a different marking scheme from Bola Tinubu, who scored him all F, in one heady day of a presidential campaign in Abeokuta months back.
It bears recalling, for the records, that Buhari also promised Nigerians the best election ever. That too has gone with the wind. What is even worse now is that he cannot even bequeath the country a peaceful, seamless succession. When he dismounts from his high horse in a few days and walks away, Buhari will leave Nigeria with a huge challenge of navigating the landmines he laid across the vast space of Nigeria’s political, social and economic landscape. Even for all this, whatever the challenge may be, whatever the crisis may be, let him go. As his aides will say, he has tried his best.