Buhari is right; Bakare is wrong

I confess that I have been a distant admirer of Pastor Tunde Bakare since he made his first major political outing as Muhammed Buhari’s running mate in the 2011 presidential elections. I knew something of his activism on the human rights front. I thought his choice as the number two man would be good for the country because we needed an activist in Aso Rock to constantly needle his principal to remind him that the poor are not exactly waiting for their rewards in heaven. He did not go far because the electorate gave them the thumbs down. It was not their time.

I had expected Bakare to return with Buhari in 2015. But the party moguls shunted him aside. In 2012, he led protests against the mounting expenses on fuel subsidy, an opaque system that suddenly became and remains the cash cow for the sons and daughters of the movers and shakers of our nation. The sit-in protests shook the Jonathan admiration but it did not end the corruption in the system or the embarrassment of a major oil-producing country importing its domestic fuel needs.

Bakare must be aware, of course, being a pastor, that we are living with this huge irony of spending more money on fuel subsidy now than then; yet the Buhari administration came into office and announced that the days of fuel subsidy had ended. We cannot count on Bakare anymore because his marching days are over. He would not engage in protest marches any more to save that most beloved of God’s creatures – the common man. Our collective loss.

Given this little that I know about the fiery pastor who spares no one – sinners and the sinless alike – from his thunderous excoriation from the pulpit every week, I was shocked to hear him put up an argument on Buhari’s successor in 2023 that he ought to know, with the gift of the holy spirit, that clearly contradicts what he stands for in our national politics. It is easy for the discerning to see that the pastor has allowed himself some indulgence in the dreadful and usually self-serving art of volte face. Makes me uncomfortable. If I were a marcher, I would march against Bakare.

What Bakare advocated in his State of the Nation address on January 5 was that President Buhari should not leave his successor to chance. He said the president should start grooming him now and pass the baton to him when the time comes. Meaning, that his successor should owe more to Buhari’s right to impose him and less on the people’s right to choose their president. He said: “Anyone in government that does not concern himself about succession is destroying his own legacy because the person coming after you can just mess up everything.”

Bakare was responding to Buhari’s statement that he had no intention of grooming anyone to succeed him. He said, and quite rightly, “Succession is very funny because if I did find anybody, I will create more problems for him or her. Let those who want to be president try as much as I did.”

This is the right attitude for a president who believes in a political system that thrives on a level playing field, in which the poor are given the same rights and opportunities as the rich to offer themselves in the service of their nation in elective political offices. And leave the decision to the people. We must applaud the president for his stance. This would make a huge difference in our leadership recruitment process. Buhari chose not to walk the path charted by President Obasanjo who imposed his successor and his deputy on the PDP as of right.

What Bakare is advocating, however he clothes it, is retrogressive. It is the same argument used to rationalise the third term agenda for Obasanjo. It was used too to turn Babangida’s transition to civil rule programme to what it became. And, certainly, Bakare could not be ignorant of the fact that Paul Biya of the Cameroons, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea and Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo Brazzaville hold the record that impresses no one as the longest serving African presidents because they must remain in office for life to protect their legacies.

No president is there primarily to protect the legacies of his predecessor in office. Each man must carve a niche for himself. Old policies give way to new policies often for reasons that are more self-serving than public-serving. But cookies do not crumble any other way. A legacy is not a collective undertaking.

I thought the pastor was aware that imposition has been the bane of our progressively stunted political progress and the messy problem with our elections. To begin with, imposition is anathema to free choice inherent in the letter and spirit of democracy. Take the conduct of party primaries. Party primaries are meant to give party members a chance to have a say who represents their parties in the contest for elective offices. We borrowed it from the US during Babangida’s transition to civil rule programme.

Today, the party primaries are a shameful sham. The big men who believe they own the parties simply impose candidates on the people and the parties. It is a take-it-or-leave it affair. Those who refuse to take it join other political parties. Need I point out that this is the main source of instability in the political parties such that no political party can count on the loyalty of its members? They have all been turned into opportunists, forced to forage for opportunities wherever they could be found. The point is that if the electoral process is flawed, the integrity of the election questions itself.

This too was how the godfathers emerged in the early years of our return to civil rule. The crises that arose between them and their godsons did some serious damage to democracy at the state level. It would appear that we have managed to sail out of those choppy waters now because the godsons managed to move out of the shadows of their godfather who wanted to continue to rule by proxy. Pastor Bakare wants to set us back because if Buhari has the right to choose his successor, the state governors too would continue to exercise the same right and we are bound to have a succession of mediocres as state governors.

Perhaps, we should not be too hard on Bakare. It seems to me that he is offering himself to Buhari as his rightful successor. He has, indeed, said that he would succeed the president. I am sure he has received the green light from above. He should be the right choice because in choosing him, Buhari would not “hand over the baton of government and governance to thieves and perverts, to corrupt and power-drunk individuals, but those who are true patriots, who will serve like our founding fathers served.”

As my good friend, Joe, from Warri would say, “you see am?”