Rock bottom as Next Level?

Out of the blue last Tuesday, the beleaguered Major General Muhammadu Buhari administration, which is desperate for funds but even more desperate for recognition, spirited one Nnamdi Kanu back into Nigeria.

Within hours, the so-called leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) was standing before a high court judge. Not since Goodluck Jonathan conceded the 2015 election and the winner was frothing over with joy and gratitude had there been such swiftness of purpose.

Two days later, Nigerian government forces also attacked the Ibadan home of Sunday Adeyemo, a “Yoruba Nation” activist, in the middle of the night, just days to a “Yoruba Nation” rally he had scheduled for Lagos. Professor Banji Akintoye, who leads the Ilana Omo Oodua group and was also a leader of the rally, announced that the attackers killed as many as seven persons in the residence. Reported to have numbered over 100, they also took away Mr. Adeyemo’s wife and several others.

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I do not know either Kanu or Adeyemo, who is better known as Igboho. I do not need to, nor do I need to like either of them, just I did not need to know Buhari personally to endorse his run for the presidency in 2011 and 2015.

As a Nigerian, I thought at the time that Buhari deserved the opportunity to run, and if he persuaded enough Nigerians about his cause, to win. He did, and he took the oath of office: to serve as President of Nigeria.

Kanu and Adeyemo are as entitled to operate within the same constitution as Buhari was in becoming president. Demanding separation from Nigeria is not illegal, but using federal authority to hurt, humiliate and destroy—particularly given how divisively Buhari has run the country—is hypocritical.

In 2015, Kanu was not a significant quantity in the Nigeria equation. It is Buhari’s fervent resort to highhandedness which moved him from a shrill and annoying voice on an unknown private radio station into the limelight.

It seems now like only a few hours ago that Buhari was throwing eight fingers into the air, signifying his thirst for four more years, as he sought re-election in 2018.

He and his APC party described such an additional term as “Next Level,” deploying images of ascent and advancement.

To begin with, it emerged that the “Next Level” logo that the Nigeria leader was tweeting had been plagiarized. Although that was not the first time. If anyone sought a warning as to where Nigeria headed if Buhari was re-elected, that might have been it.

Some of us needed no such warning. Not since the month following his assumption of the presidency had we been deceived about the cynical bent of his administration. Every month saw uglier returns, under-achievement, incompetence, indolence and outright malice.

It was increasingly clear from that June 2015 when an Abuja newspaper, publishing pictures, accused Buhari of corruption but he simply ignored it, that every additional day of the administration represented descent, not ascent.

Descent into hell, which would subsequently be framed as next-level ascent. I have chronicled this sad story, including questioning whether Buhari is man or mammal, in June 2015; APC’s revisionism, in July 2016; and the “fall of Buhari”, in February 2017.

But Buhari held both the knife and the yam, as would Nigerians say, and he cut himself that extra term in office. Despite that, I had observed in January 2018 that he lacked the mettle of a statesman, and in February 2020, decried APC’s swindle of the country.

The decay, deterioration and descent of Nigeria’s leadership, it was always clear, is deliberate. Nigerians are stunned that the Buhari administration makes no apologies for its failures. Worse still, it seems to revel in its inability to deliver on any promise or complete any significant task.

Nowhere is the Buhari administration as frightening as when it demonstrates its willingness to take care of itself and those whom it likes, except when it is lying about its character and seeking to punish those that it does not like.

Kanu’s arrest comes just weeks after Buhari dismissed IPOB on television as a “dot in a circle,” bragging that “even if they want to exit, they will have no access to anywhere.”

What is worse was that Buhari demonstrated such disdain that he swept every Igbo man and woman under the IPOB umbrella, citing “the way they are spread all over the country, having businesses and properties”, and that he would “organise the police and the military to pursue them.”

Pursue? He apparently pursued Kanu to the ends of the earth. Just as he believes he has struck terror into the heart of Igboho and everyone who challenges his authority, and as he did #ENDSARS protesters, but into none of the assorted menace for which he was elected into office.

The saddest bit is that we have seen all of it before: Buhari, armed with leadership but only able to see a hammer in his hands.

Announcing the 1985 coup which ended Buhari’s two years of identifying only nails in every direction, Brigadier Joshua Nimyel Dogonyaro said the Army could no longer stomach the ongoing misuse of power of Buhari’s government.

As if that speech was written for 2021, he identified “absence of cohesion…[lack of] unity of purpose….risk of continuous misdirection…”,

“Although it is true that a lot of problems were left behind by the last civilian government, the real reason, however, for the very slow pace of action is due to lack of unanimity of purpose among the ruling body; subsequently, the business of governance has gradually been subjected to ill-motivated power play considerations…

“The concept of collective leadership has been substituted by stubborn and illadvised unilateral actions, thereby destroying the principles upon which the government came to power. Any effort made to advise the leadership, met with stubborn resistance and was viewed as a challenge to authority or disloyalty.

“Thus, the scene was being set for systematic elimination of what, was termed oppositions. All the energies of the rulership were directed at this imaginary opposition rather than to effective leadership…

“…The nation’s meager resources are once again being wasted on unproductive ventures. Government has distanced itself from the people and the yearnings and aspirations of the people as constantly reflected in the media have been ignored…

“…Furthermore, the initial objectives and programmes of action which were meant to have been implemented since the ascension to power of the Buhari Administration in January 1984 have been betrayed and discarded. The present state of uncertainty and stagnation cannot be permitted to degenerate into suppression and retrogression…”

Sadly, Buhari’s inflexibility and inability to focus on service—character traits he suggested he had abandoned as a “converted democrat”—are worse 36 years later. He is no more capable of the concept of principle than he was nearly four decades ago.

And having alienated everyone, he returns to attack them: the youth, the press, dissidents and everyone who calls him by type, perhaps hoping to sentence the entire nation to fear and respect.

Maybe what was meant was the deepest level: sewage. If so, we are here.

This column welcomes rebuttals from interested government officials.