PROFESSOR of Law and former Minister for Education, Benjamin Nwabueze, has attempted a deconstruction of President Muhammadu Buhari in the public space, concluding that the president is neither “a liberator nor national hero” as many Nigerians are being made to believe.

In his write-up published in this edition of The Guardian, the revered elder statesman, public commentator and Professor of Law said there are so many pieces of misinformation about the Buhari persona, especially as it concerns the president’s handling of state matters.

According to Nwabueze, a prominent socio-political activist, who described Buhari’s much-touted war against corruption as only a “make-believe,” the resentment of Nigerians against graft that was at its peak during the Goodluck Jonathan administration may have got the retired general his new office but a lot more should be done “to change from the muddle-headed make-believe to an unremittingly severe and concrete action against the hydra-headed monster that now threatens us with economic ruination, but not with death.”

Although t he argued that corruption is not Nigeria’s number one enemy but only one of the various ills plaguing the country, he doubted the sincerity of the President to tackle graft and find solutions to the other problems confronting the nation.

He stressed further that the leader that Nigerians need at this point in the nation’s history “has to be one able to mobilise the nation for a social and ethical revolution to regenerate the society and rid it of the moral decadence into which it has sunk, as manifested in the incidence of armed robbery, kidnapping, cultism among the youth, examination malpractices, certificate racketeering, general decay in our educational system, money laundering and insecurity.”

In answering the question “Does President Buhari possess the qualities and credentials for such leadership?” Nwabueze said the President is far from qualifying for such a position.

According to him, “The factors that weigh against him include mainly his Islamisation/Northernisation agenda, as manifested, for example, in his mandatory directive that Islamic books be made available in all secondary schools; and his pledge, in a speech at Ahmadu Bello University Zaria on May 2, 2015 to an exclusively Moslem gathering, to continue Sir Ahmadu Bello’s programme of fostering the idea of One Northern Nigeria, not One Nigeria.

“They include also his antecedents as former army commander and head of the military government, which incline him to personal, authoritarian rule; the vengeful tendencies in his disposition; his inadequate educational qualification, which disables him from understanding fully, perhaps only superficially, the complex ideas and issues involved in governing Nigeria; and his dictatorial disregard of the democratic principle enshrined in our Constitution which requires him to treat all citizens equally and not to discriminate against those of them who did not vote for him in the March 2015 presidential election.”

He concluded however that President Buhari “may “change” and that “in the hope of such change, he deserves our support to help him change.”