The integrity of former Head of State and presidential candidate of both the All Nigeria Peoples Party and Congress for Progressive Change, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), is not in doubt. Even though he is not an angel, many of those who attack him are nowhere near him when it comes to integrity.
Why then will Buhari not make a good president? The first reason is that Buhari is not a good manager of men. The second is that Buhari does not have people skills. The Portland Business Journal describes people skills as: “Understanding ourselves and moderating our responses; talking effectively and empathising accurately; building relationships of trust, respect and productive interactions.”
Many diehard fans of Buhari always pontificate that the reason he does not work well with people is because he is too clean to work with dirty people. That is a half-truth. A few examples will suffice.
Buhari ran for president first in 2003 with Senator Chuba Okadigbo on the platform of the ANPP. He ran against an incumbent president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, of the Peoples Democratic Party. He lost that election. Nobody can say for sure that he lost that election fair and square, given the large-scale fraud associated with the election. In 2007, he re-contested again on the ANPP platform, but now with Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke as his running mate. He lost again, even though the election was marred by large-scale irregularities that made the beneficiary, President Umaru Yar’Adua, acknowledge so.
After the election, Buhari fell out with his party. The strained relationship between him and the party hierarchy was so intense that the party did not join him in his court case against the President. Many people saw it from the prism of Buhari being a man that cannot be compromised while his party officials were men of doubtful integrity.
When Buhari led the forming of the CPC in March 2010 for the 2011 elections, many looked forward to seeing a disciplined party under his watch. Even though he lost the presidential election for the third time, his party won a governorship seat in Nasarawa State as well as some federal and state assembly seats. Immediately after the election, many members of his party began to sing discordant tunes over the integrity of the election. While some said that the elections were free and fair, others led by Buhari said the elections were marred by fraud. From that point, it was clear the party was divided, with suspensions and counter-suspensions flying around. It was a sign that Buhari was not in charge of even the party he formed himself.
Some would argue that it was because the CPC had only one state seat. But the Labour Party has only one state seat too: Ondo State. The LP, under Chief Dan Nwanyanwu as Chairman, and Dr. Olusegun Mimiko as Governor of the only LP state, has been well-knit and strong. As hard as both the Action Congress of Nigeria and the PDP had tried to break LP’s ranks and defeat the party or annex it, their efforts have failed woefully. Until 2011, the ACN also was in control of only one state. One can accuse Bola Ahmed Tinubu of many things, but nobody can accuse him of not being in charge of his party, the ACN. But that cannot be said of Buhari.
The way the merger talks between the ACN and the CPC deadlocked in 2011 before the presidential election also pointed to Buhari’s lack of people skills. He just does not know how to manage people or work with people to achieve results. With the benefit of hindsight, one could opine that for the same reason, his military regime is the only one that is described with the names of two leaders: Buhari-Idiagbon regime. As a teenager keenly following political matters in 1984 when Buhari took over government after a military coup, I thought he was always in the background because he was the boss that did not want to interfer. But his activities recently have shown that it was because of his aloofness. Buhari is an introvert: almost reclusive. For that reason, his deputy, Brig. Tunde Idiagbon, who later became a Maj. Gen., was the one many believed was running the nation. Buhari was rarely seen or heard of all through their 20-month regime, even though he was only 41-42 years old at that period. When the then Maj.-Gen. Ibrahim Babangida overthrew their regime, Idiagbon was in Mecca for the lesser Hajj, while Buhari was in the country. Idiagbon rushed back to Nigeria when he got news of the coup. Many have argued — and with good reasons too – that were Idiagbon in the country, that coup would not have succeeded.
Thirdly, consciously or unconsciously, Buhari has also allowed himself to be cast and portrayed as an ethnic and religious champion. Even though he ran a Northern-Northern, Muslim-Muslim regime between 1984 and 1985, most large-hearted Nigerians did not think anything of it, given the zeal of that regime to stamp out corruption and indiscipline from Nigeria. But in 2000 when the Sharia riots broke out in some parts of the North and there were reprisals in parts of the South-East, President Obasanjo announced that following the Federal Government’s agreement with the Northern states, the Council of State had ratified the agreement that Sharia law be suspended. Buhari promptly “told the truth” that the issue of Sharia was never discussed at the Council meeting, adding that the decisions reached by the Council of State in Abuja were legally unenforceable against the Northern states that were seeking to impose the Sharia law. Those “truthful” but impolitic comments from a former head of state at a time many Nigerians were being killed because of religion made Buhari a folk-hero among the Northern Muslims but largely unpopular in the South. Rather than choosing to speak for the North or Muslims, a more tactful national leader would have allowed other ethnic or religious champions to undertake such a duty at such a sensitive time.
When he declared his interest for the 2003 presidential election, whatever comment Buhari made or whatever action he took, past or present, was given the colouration of religion, ethnicity and violence by his opponents. Northern Muslims, especially, became more passionate about him but that distanced many Southerners from him. Before him, three Nigerians wore similar shoes: Sir Ahmadu Bello, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. Even after death, each of these men is still practically worshipped in his region, but outside their regions, they are hated with equal passion. Buhari has made himself, consciously or unconsciously, the fourth person in Nigeria to be cast in such a mould. And that is why any discussion about him evokes so much passion and bad blood from both sides. In a sentence, Buhari always polarises Nigerians.
On a lighter note, it is surprising that almost 30 years after his regime as a military head of state, Buhari has not done anything tangible to improve his accent, so that it would be easy for non-Northerners to understand him when he speaks. Someone would say this is not important, but it is. It is one thing to have a local flair in your spoken English, it is another thing not to be understood by your compatriots (not foreigners) when you speak, because of your accent. The problem is not Buhari’s Northern accent. On the contrary, the Northern accent is among the sweetest in English when polished. My best broadcaster in the 80s and early 90s was the late Zakari Mohammed of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria. I felt excited every time I heard his voice on radio. The Central Bank Governor, Mallam Lamido Sanusi Lamido, has also trained his voice to be clear and sweet. A distinct and powerful voice compels the listeners to pay attention and even love the speaker. When the then Senator Barack Obama began campaigning to rule the United States around 2007, he had nothing concrete to offer but his compelling voice. But a heavily accented voice makes people lose interest, become unfriendly and unsympathetic as well as make them view the speaker from the ethnic prism.
There is no doubt that Buhari is a good man. I voted for him in the 2007 election even when my kinsman Odumegwu-Ojukwu was a candidate. Even though he said in 2011 that he would not contest again, I think it is not a crime for a man to change his mind if new realities present themselves. But if the budding All Progressives Congress’ merger will work, and if the APC hopes to win the 2015 election, it must look beyond Buhari and choose from its array of stars, which include Governor Babatunde Fashola, Senator Chris Ngige, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and others. Buhari can give moral support to any of the chosen candidates from the sidelines. But if the party decides to field Buhari in 2015, it will present the PDP another golden opportunity to “tear” Buhari to shreds with a vicious smear campaign that will resonate with many voters. And in the event that Buhari wins, his die-hard haters could do anything possible to make his presidency distracted from governance.
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