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Despite all claims to the contrary, all available evidence points to the fact that President Muhammadu Buhari has abandoned governance and is now desperately fixated on his ambition of returning as Nigeria’s president come 2019.
Consumed by this ambition, Buhari, who had promised in 2015 that he would do only one term of four years as Nigeria’s president, has continued to act like that man who chased rats while his house was on fire.
Amid the harvest of deaths across the north-central part of the country, particularly in Benue State where citizens are slaughtered in cold blood by suspected herdsmen virtually on daily basis, Buhari has, by his body language and actions, shown that he is not sufficiently perturbed, while at the same time working assiduously to realise his second-term bid.
Since January this year, it has been tales of one coordinated attack after another with high casualty rate, massive devastation of farmlands and displacement of the people in their thousands in the affected states amidst the helplessness of the security operatives sometimes accused of complicity.
Nearly 2,000 people have been killed since January and the epicentre of bloodbath has been Benue State, where the rampaging herdsmen have intensified their unrestrained killing spree.
In the early hours of Tuesday, April 25, the herdsmen attacked St. Ignatius Quasi Parish, Ukpor, Mbalom in Gwer West Local Government Area of the state, killing two priests, Rev. Frs Joseph Gor and Felix Tyolaha, and about 18 other worshippers.
Rev. Fr. Moses Iorapuu, director of communications, Diocese of Makurdi, said in a statement that the attacks were perpetrated by herdsmen who stormed the Mbalom community and killed the two priests during the morning Mass at the church.
Spilling of blood in Benue State is now assuming genocidal proportions. While Buhari and his spokesmen allegedly offer flimsy excuses and half-hearted responses, the killers have traversed the length and breadth of Benue like mad horses let loose on the hapless communities, leaving a trail of tears, blood and sorrow.
On April 16, 2018, while meeting British Prime Minister Theresa May in London on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), Buhari said he was more concerned about Nigeria’s security and economy issues than about the 2019 elections.
According to a statement by Femi Adesina, presidential spokesman, Buhari’s meeting with May focused on the three main agenda of his administration – security, economy and fight against corruption.
“We have elections next year, politicians are already preoccupied with the polls, but I am bothered more about security and the economy,” Adesina quoted Buhari to have said.
But every action that has followed since then has proved that the only thing occupying Mr. President’s mind currently is his re-election bid.
On April 17, barely 24 hours after Buhari told Prime Minister May that his mind was not on re-election, Festus Keyamo, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and APC stalwart, announced on Twitter his appointment as spokesman for the Buhari re-election campaign, making nonsense of Buhari’s claim in faraway London.
Nigerians were left wondering whether Buhari’s London meetings, as well his proposed meeting with US President Donald Trump on April 30, were not mere publicity stunts aimed to secure endorsements and confer legitimacy on the administration ahead of 2019.
Last Tuesday, while the people of Benue mourned the killing of two Catholic priests and about 18 parishioners at St. Ignatius Quasi Parish in Ukpor-Mbalom, Buhari was busy at the Presidential Villa, Abuja meeting with state governors elected on the platform of his party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), specifically to get the governors to support and work towards the emergence of Adams Oshiomhole, a former governor of Edo State, as the party’s next national chairman. Oshiomhole, it is believed, has the clout to mobilize massive support for Buhari in the 2019 presidential election.
Buhari was also in Bauchi State on Thursday ostensibly to commission some projects, but the true reason behind his visit was not lost on Nigerians as he turned the event into a campaign ground.
Buhari, who spoke in Hausa language, announced to Bauchi citizens that his decision to seek re-election in 2019 was predicated on his zeal to fight corruption, assuring his supporters that he was confident of winning because he is a clean man and not corrupt like other past Nigerian leaders.
“Most Nigerian treasury looters have more than 20 to 30 houses, yet some people in the country cannot afford even a single room to sleep in because poverty has eaten them up,” Buhari said. “I don’t have this type of mind to loot the treasury of Nigeria while people are suffering.”
He also vowed to “fish out looters and cheaters of the country, while all the funds recovered from them will be remitted into the national coffers”.
Earlier in January this year, even before Buhari made public his intention to seek re-election in 2019, Adebayo Shittu, minister of Communications, who had just then been appointed national chairman of the Board of Trustees of Muhammadu Buhari/Osinbajo Dynamic Support Group, told State House correspondents in Abuja that campaign for Buhari’s re-election had begun in earnest.
Shittu also announced that the South West Zonal Office of the Buhari/Osinbajo Campaign Organisation would be inaugurated on January 20.
“By the grace of God, we his (Buhari’s) ardent supporters who appreciate his worth on behalf of millions of Nigerians would urge him to re-contest. I know he has not made up his mind but I can say that some of us can assist him in making up his mind so that Nigeria can continue to enjoy stability and progress in our land,” Shittu had said.
While Nigerians do not begrudge Buhari his right to seek re-election in 2019, many say with the insecurity that is rife across the country, next year’s election should be least on the president’s priority list.
Some Nigerians who spoke to BDSUNDAY said that with the carnage going on across the country, it was most insensitive of Buhari, who rode on the back of mass support to emerge as president in 2015, to be more concerned about his re-election than with securing the lives and property of the citizens.
“The primary duty of every government should be the protection of lives and property of the citizens. The Buhari administration has failed in this regard, so why does the president want another term of office? If the current spate of killings continues unchecked, who will remain to vote for him in 2019?” Laide Lawal, a Lagos-based legal practitioner, queried.
Analysts say as salutary as Buhari’s promises in Bauchi may appear, they mean nothing to people of Benue, Nasarawa, Kogi, Plateau and Taraba States who are collectively facing existential threat to their lives following unbridled attempts by suspected Fulani herdsmen to wipe them out of existence.
Condemning Buhari’s lack of empathy for the pain and sorrows of Benue and other states where mass killings are going on, the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) mocked the president. The party said Buhari is suffering from self-deception to think he could win the 2019 presidential election in spite of his abysmal performance and widespread rejection by Nigerians.
“It is shocking that in the face of colossal failure of governance leading to hunger and starvation, ethnic division, bloodletting and killings in our land, Mr. President is more concerned about a selfish agenda of foisting himself on a people who have become despondent of his leadership,” Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP national publicity secretary, said in a statement on Friday.
“By his remark in Bauchi on Thursday, when he boastfully claimed that he will take power again in 2019, Mr. President has demonstrated an unimaginable disdain for Nigerians, showing that he cares less about the carnage in our nation under his watch, and he is only concerned with winning election. That, to say the least, is not a mark of statesmanship.
“This is a leader who came into office on the plank of promises of fighting insurgency and corruption as well as guaranteeing economic prosperity. Shockingly, Mr. President has not only failed on all fronts, his body language is aiding and abetting corruption, harassment and intimidation of citizens as well as instilling of siege mentality in our land.
“We therefore advise Mr. President and his dysfunctional All Progressives Congress (APC) to stop misleading themselves about the possibility of staying a day beyond May 29, 2019, as they can no longer deceive or coerce Nigerians to submission,” he said in the statement.
A top member of APC, who spoke to BDSUNDAY on condition of anonymity, said on Thursday that it was sometimes confusing and pathetic that the Buhari administration cannot come up with a plausible explanation or solution to the killings.
“Sometimes, they blame the killing on foreigners trained by Gadaffi; sometimes they tell us the killers are fellow citizens that should be accommodated, and again, when it suits them they tell us the killing is caused by anti-open grazing law. Buhari has to be more strategic in handling this matter, but I am afraid he is not doing that at the moment,” he said.
Katch Ononuju, a public affairs analyst, said in an interview with BDSUNDAY that Buhari should be held responsible for the killings as he is allegedly paving the way for his Fulani kinsmen from foreign lands to forcefully seize land belonging to the indigenous people of Nigeria.
“Buhari is allowing Fulani from Niger, from Mali to kill Nigerians and there is no way to explain it. Foreigners are being imported from outside the country and what do they do? They kill indigenous Nigerians in their land,” Ononuju said.
He stressed that Buhari’s alleged complicity in the herdsmen crisis has hindered the security agencies from acting to curb the dangerous activities of the herdsmen.
“As I am talking to you, the Miyetti Allah has completely intimidated both the police and the army because of Buhari’s body language. The Fulani herdsmen are violating the land laws of Nigeria. What is going on is total disrespect of the existing laws on property. You don’t go into somebody’s property without consent and when he complains you will kill him,” he said.
Majeed Dahiru, a security expert and newspaper columnist, averred that the ongoing killings appear unchecked because Buhari came to power allegedly to impose a Fulani ethnic supremacist agenda on Nigeria.
Dahiru warned that Nigeria could be set ablaze if the situation deteriorates, stressing that the indigenous people may be forced to pick up arms to defend themselves, which would lead to massive reprisals that could threaten the corporate existence of the country.
“Fulani who are indigenous to Nigeria seem to open the floodgates for foreign Fulani to come in and help them by killing fellow Nigerians who are land cultivators,” he said, adding that the problem has been compounded by the fact that some of the foreign Fulani have turned to kidnappers, cattle rustlers and other bandits ravaging fellow Nigerians.
He also admonished President Buhari to act fast, saying it would be in Buhari’s interest to protect the integrity of Nigeria by ensuring security for those under Fulani attacks.
Only in February, Catholic Archbishop Emeritus of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, had asked Buhari to focus more on the security challenges facing the country than preparing for the 2019 elections, saying security of lives and property was more important than getting re-elected.
Okogie criticised the Buhari government’s shoddy handling of especially the killings by herdsmen, saying it was “utterly unbecoming of statesmen to prioritize political calculations over the value of life and property”.
“At this point in time, the matter of security must be rightly addressed without sweeping any item under the carpet. It is by far more important than getting elected or re-elected in 2019. Since the Federal Government controls the security agencies, we Nigerians must insist that this government furnish us with credible answers to these and related questions: who and where are the criminals? Where are the people who kill Nigerians? Why have they not appeared in court? What are the Federal Government and its security agencies waiting for?” Okojie said.
CHUKS OLUIGBO & INNOCENT ODOH, Abuja
