There is a reason that President Muhammadu Buhari doesn’t speak to the media, and by extension to Nigerians, often. Every time he does, it’s like an out-of-control night soil man shambling through the market, tripping and spilling his sordid cargo everywhere; on the wares and the people and their shops, indiscriminately at that. Sometimes, maybe out of spite, he would dip his broom in the slop and just, well, flick his wrist in the direction of the children watching him, spreading the…shall we say, love, if you like. In the end, there will be a lot of resentment, bafflement and some cheer from some people who will enjoy such spectacles. Often the overwhelming sentiment is shock.
Apparently, this shock is mutual, both on the part of Nigerians and the part of the president who often seems baffled that Nigerians are not falling over themselves to praise his leadership and be grateful that he is president and that he has ‘rescued’ the country from Boko Haram. Nigerians are often upset that it would appear the president, one they had installed at great personal financial and emotional cost, has so much disdain for them.
The president’s latest interview in Hausa granted to Tambarin Hausa TV, apparently before he jetted off to London for yet another round of medical tourism, has left Nigerians mulling the Hausa word ‘sharholiya’ and trying to understand what it means in the context that the president deployed it against them during the interview.
I am no expert in Hausa translation but the closest contextual equivalent for the word in English I could think of is frivolity (a jamboree, a fiasco—sort of being reckless, with a party flavour. In the context in which he weaponised that word against his own citizens, implying that Nigerians prefer sharholiya to critical thinking and going to farm—because all of us must be farmers apparently, and if we don’t “the hunger in our stomach will show us shege.” More or less.
The basis of the president’s agriculture policy, which he repeated several times during this interview, sounds like a plan thought out by a carpenter. It entails shutting down the border, creating an artificial food scarcity that will compel Nigerians to farm what they will eat.
The results have been an increase in food production, which has ironically corresponded with food prices rising like soaked garri.
Somehow, the president fails to see the correlation between this and the failure of this non-policy. Perhaps he is unaware that prices are soaring.
Subsistence agriculture doesn’t improve any economy—at least not on the scale that would translate to any meaningful economic growth. It may provide subsistence for a short period, but it is not a sustainable economic plan. What Nigeria needs is mechanised agriculture and policies that will facilitate this. That is not what Nigeria is looking at though. Neither is it addressing the fact that large swathes of farmlands are inaccessible to farmers because the country is essentially going to the dogs. Dogs with guns who ravage villages, massacre farmers, tax them, and kidnap them while the government picks its teeth.
Despite the gentle and respectful prompting of his veteran interviewer, Halilu Ahmed Getso, who often took the time to rephrase and simplify his questions, the president was often going off tangent.
Several times he was asked about the concrete achievements of his government in the last seven years, and his response was to point to the profligacy of the previous government. He would talk about the oil prices, pre-2015, how it was $100 to a barrel and fell to $37 when he came into power and ask what was done with the money. And then somehow conveniently forget to address the question of what he has actually done since 2015.
He even challenged Getso to show him how his government failed and Getso raised the issue of the moribund promise to fight corruption, asked about the money recovered from looters and what happened to them and of course the failure to prosecute corrupt officials, including pardoning convicted ones. The president fumbled through a response about replacing a couple of judges but on the recovered loot, he said nothing. When probed again, he repeated the same puzzling answer about replacing judges and challenged Getso again to ask him about any wrongdoing that has gone unaddressed in his administration. Getso could have mentioned budget padding, unaccounted loot, pardoned convicted looters, like Jolly Nyame and Joshua Dariye, or conveniently forgotten ones like his crony Babachir Lawal. But Getso asked the question again with practical examples that will simplify the issue. Again the President stonewalled.
I suppose Getso realised there was no making headway there and decided to move on. It was in all honesty a painful interview to watch.
Not all of it is bad though. Like the part where he said…erhm…that part where he talked about…well…aha! There was that part where he talked about the need for Nigerians to hold their local governments and governors accountable for the services they should be providing. That is obviously of great significance and I completely concur.
Too often, Nigerians focus too much on the centre, on the president. But the closest government to Nigerians, who should provide primary healthcare and pipe-borne water are the local governments and the states. For the big things, the eye should be at the centre.
And that was what the president said. You should leave him and his ministers alone to do their jobs. This is all fine and good except perhaps this has been one of the most underperforming governments on all the good governance indices. You have non-performing ministers who have been in government for nearly eight years now with scarcely anything to show for it as if being in this government is being in a retirement home with little to no expectation of performance other than being loyal to the president and having the uncanny skill to read his body language.
Education is in shambles in Nigeria. There is chaos between labour and education in addressing university lecturers. Even people with track records of achievement, like Babatunde Fashola, have faded into insignificance in this government. The president has not given them the kick in the rump to get them going and seems to be angry at Nigerians for not having at it at his ministers.
Of course, he mentioned that Ahmad Idris, the Accountant General he appointed and retained beyond his term of office, is in detention for robbing the country blind, and appointees who failed would face the appropriate sanctions.
But then the question, which of his appointees have faced any sanction for failing or betraying the trust of the president? Not Babachir Lawal who was forced to resign because, well, his corruption indictment was a stain on the government that could not be ignored because pesky journalists won’t let the matter go.
I feel sorry for the pesky journalists wanting to score an interview with the president. He basically has three standard responses to every question that he would repeat several times over any interview. Ask him about plans to boost power supply and he will tell you about how Diezani looted the economy and how the UK, which he loves returning to now and then, refused to extradite her. Ask him about fighting corruption and he will tell you about how they liberated Borno local governments from Boko Haram—conveniently ignoring the fact that the rest of the country is a playground of bandits—and he will ask you to ask Governor Zulum to verify. Ask him about free and fair elections, about agriculture, about a corrupt minister or profligacy in his government and he will tell you about oil prices pre-2015 and ask you what they did with the money. And he would seem angry that as a Nigerian trying to sell bread to survive, you didn’t do anything about it. Duh, Nigerians did something. They voted out that government and voted you in to fix this mess.
Yet, in between these responses, there will always be a jab at Nigerians, for either being lazy or loving sharholiya or not demanding their rights, there is always going to be something to gaslight Nigerians, to make them feel deserving of whatever consequence of bad governance we are suffering. It is a sharholiya of sadocracy. It is a baffling thing to witness.
