A love affair in this season of love

It seems increasingly likely that the Muhammadu Buhari administration, struggling daily as it does with little success to prevent the embarrassing spectacle of putting its foot in its mouth, would sooner than later drive Nigerians out of the love affair they giddily consummated eight months ago.

There must, of course, be a possibility that the feelings are genuine, the embrace is warm, the kiss very passionate and love would eventually conquer all. Love, after all, is like life, a journey and not a destination, a long process that renews itself with each challenge.

In the romance of Nigeria and Muhammadu Buhari, nonetheless, the latest fiasco over the national budget suggests not one of those occasional lapses in conduct, which a great love affair is sure to survive, but an exasperating shoddiness of character, hubris and poor attention span, the sort that takes the partner so much for granted as to make her wonder if the man she is in bed with now was the same whose words were songs to her ears and whom she fell in love with earlier.

Buhari means well, no doubt. Nigerians love him and, given where the nation had been prior to his coming, he was the knight in shining armour, the advances, and the embrace, of whom no one could have resisted.
It may be a bit of a stretch to say Nigerians are getting tired of his administration already. But there is nothing exaggerated in the fear that the lapses, in attention and rendition, are getting too many and the strains in that relationship are becoming more obvious by the day.

From the first day, Buhari seemed to make dithering a style but Nigerians, chastened by the profligate Goodluck Jonathan years and comforted by the personal discipline of Buhari and the promise of his prudent era, bore it with equanimity.

The exasperatingly long wait for a cabinet was, of course, not totally assuaged by the cast when it was finally unveiled. There were a few stars but even fewer surprises on the kind of scale a people who had waited for angels would have celebrated to the heavens. Indeed, the feeling was, if that was the ‘A’ team he spent months in assembling, the president had merely spoken a tome on his own short reach and limitations as a judge of character.

This was soon compounded by the assignment of portfolios to the ministers, with more than a few Nigerians believing some pegs had been placed in wrong holes while holes had been dug, not for placement but burial of some logs, in a classic waste of human capital.

Before then, the first set of appointments into the offices of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Chief of Staff to the President, heads of the Customs and Immigration Services, against the background of an earlier appointment of armed services chiefs, generated so much heat in the polity over perceived lop-sidedness. In fact, many Nigerians said then that Buhari, so totally adored by all Nigerians, needlessly held himself out as a man who did not really know too many persons or too many parts of his own country to the extent that he lived in his own little world and saw things only through a very narrow prism.

While much of the complaints then read like the cries of ethnic apologists, an objective assessment certainly handed critics enough evidence of imbalance and justification for their calls for attunement to the sensitivities of the constituent units of Nigeria in ways that build respect and foster unity.

Buhari and his government, with so much goodwill in the man’s account, of course, rode out those complaints without much hitch.

There is no doubt that the reservoir of good will is still enormous. But it should not be drained away with the valve of indiscretions in words and deeds.

President Muhammadu Buhari deserves respect for his forthrightness, integrity and sincerity of purpose, but valour is nothing without discretion, and righteousness unaccompanied by wisdom may come to shame.

Even though he has stood out boldly to say he would not change from speaking his mind, the truth is that his words have not been too carefully chosen in talking about his country and compatriots. As if that is not enough, he often chooses the worst podium, the foreign media, to speak those truths in ways he can never claim he hears other leaders speak of their own countries. And this is how he has created a contemptible mischief factory in which even things he did not say or mean get ascribed to him, such as the bit about Nigerians and criminality when he spoke to the press in England the other day.

The President must have returned to Abuja after his five-day break if not angry certainly incredulous at the kind of mischief many of his compatriots can muster. Apart from that attempt at making him fit into the mould of Nigeria’s greatest enemy or ‘de-marketer,’ the short vacation itself was almost made an event by political opponents who could not understand why a 73-year-old would take such a sudden break from work. But, if we may ask those who, for reasons best known to them, cannot rid their dark minds and fertile imaginations swirling with skulls and cross-bones, of the image of a vegetative or dying President, is there any man to whom immortality is ascribed?

Meanwhile, the noise over what he supposedly said but didn’t actually say about Nigerians in the British press should teach the President’s men some lessons. Going abroad to make fundamental statements, positive or negative ones, about the country would not enhance Buhari’s image of forthrightness, discipline, honesty or integrity any more than his ability to fix the problems at home.

Fixing Nigeria is the job for which he has been hired. Doing it is what would cement the bond between him and Nigerians and that is what would burnish the nation’s image abroad.

There is just too much to be done for any merry-go-round! The economy is in tatters. The tribe of the deprived swells by the day and the poverty is grinding. Morale is low and on its wings is plummeting faith in the so-called leaders in power. With the exception of, maybe, one: Muhammadu Buhari.

From him, Nigerians expect hell to turn to heaven and night into day. That is the burden he carries, which he cannot share with anyone else. And the earlier he lives up to that realisation, the better for all.

As I once said, however, unlike what politicians and their hirelings opposed to our President would want us to believe, this presidency is only eight months old and Buhari’s performance so far does not lend his reign to the composition of a dirge in anticipation of its entombment in inertia.

Of course, very troubling are the seeming failure so far to show a clear direction on the economy, especially on fiscal policies, even as the national currency slides perilously; too many foreign trips without a discernible foreign policy or an articulate foreign affairs minister; domestic actions on a hunch, without context and with little data.

But all must appreciate that Nigeria’s descent into the current nadir was mindlessly plotted and it is a depth out of which the nation cannot easily crawl. The way out has to be meticulously plotted and executed.
President Buhari must, however, let his words and deeds command a greater faith in his capacity for the job he has signed on to than they do now. He should engage the Nigerian people vigorously in the conversations about their problems or challenges. Americans, ever so good at such, have a good phrase for it: the President must take his case to the people!

When Buhari asks such questions as: “Against which currency should I devalue the Naira? The Dutch Guilder, the German DeutschMark or the French Francs?” Decades after those currencies were jettisoned and European countries adopted a common one called Euro, only the Nigerian people with whom he is engaged and who trust him would understand what he means.

Many others would see him as frozen in a bygone era, a man not abreast of and not up to the task of the new times.

When a leader is not abreast of the task of the times and is disengaged from his people, a wedge can get driven between lovers and an otherwise amorous embrace can become a brawling match. That is when the exchange of sacred vows can become a violent exchange of blows.