Now that Buhari is back...

Ithink I can welcome myself back to this column by borrowing from Buhari’s broadcast of Monday, August 21 2017, where he said “it is nice to be back home”. This column has been absent the past three weeks, so without meaning to be presumptuous by comparing myself with Buhari or mere column writing with the arduous task of running a country, I can also say, “it is nice to be back”.

Well, since I began writing the ‘Thursday Column’ for Daily Trust about seven years ago, it has failed to appear every week only on two occasions - once when a friend, borrowed it to pay homage to our mutual friend Dr Arthur Nwankwo on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The other occasion was when there was a mix-up, and the article I sent was not received on time.

After seven years of the same weekly routine, I felt I needed a break. The routine is that by every Tuesday I must have found a topic to write on and begin preliminary research on that topic. The entire Wednesday is usually devoted to further research on the chosen topic, writing and re-writing several drafts. I needed a break from this routine to also consider whether I wanted to continue with this routine or move to something else. Here I am, still unable to figure out whether this has become an addiction or a passion. Back to President Buhari. President Buhari returned to the country on Saturday August 19 2017, after being away from the country on medical leave for over 100 days. It is nice to welcome him back. I watched his broadcast of Monday August 21 2017 live and had the privilege to discuss that broadcast with Professor Pate of the Mass Communications Dept, Bayero University, for NTA’s Good Morning Nigeria. What can we make of the broadcast? Like everything else, people’s assessment of the broadcast often depends on where they stand on the political divide. There are however a few incontrovertible takeaways: the President is not on life support or brain dead and his faculties are still intact. But the brevity of the broadcast - about three minutes - also indicates he is still recuperating and will need some time to do that.

There were some reconciliatory gestures in the broadcast I found welcoming:

“I am very grateful to God and to all Nigerians for their prayers. I am pleased to be back on home soil among my brothers and sisters.”

“Every Nigerian has the right to live and pursue his business anywhere in Nigeria without let or hindrance. I believe the very vast majority of Nigerians share this view.”

“This is not to deny that there are legitimate concerns. Every group has a grievance. But the beauty and attraction of a federation is that it allows different groups to air their grievances and work out a mode of co-existence.”

“Finally, dear Nigerians, our collective interest now is to eschew petty differences and come together to face common challenges of economic security, political evolution and integration as well as lasting peace among all Nigerians.”

There are however assertions in the broadcast that are contestable. These include:

“Nigeria’s unity is settled and not negotiable.” I have problems with assertions like this. The truth is that unity, like any marriage, is constantly being negotiated and negotiated. For instance the various constitutions the country has had - starting from the Clifford Constitution of 1922 to the 1999 constitution (as amended) - are products of negotiations and compromises to solidify the unity among the constituent parts of the federation. The same is also true of the various revenue allocation formulas the country has experimented with over the years, including the current 13 per cent assigned to the principle of derivation. To argue therefore that Nigeria’s “unity is settled and non-negotiable” is to ossify realities in time and place. Even if that assertion was meant to express a rejection of anything that will threaten the corporate existence of the country, I will still find the expression objectionable. Though such expressions are often meant to convey one’s patriotic sentiments, the truth is that they can also lead to the glamorization of separatist agitations.

I like the part of the broadcast where Buhari said: “In 2003 after I joined partisan politics, the late Chief Emeka Ojukwu came and stayed as my guest in my hometown Daura. Over two days we discussed in great depth till late into the night and analysed the problems of Nigeria.” This is a powerful allegory telling agitators for Biafra: ‘look, your hero and I were friends. Before his death, he had already moved on. If I am the friend of your hero, why do you see me as an enemy?’

I believe Buhari should go beyond this allegory to correct some wrong assumptions about the Biafra agitation, which I believe goaded, him into using approaches that rather than contain the agitations, helped to inflame them. I believe that Buhari bought into the wrong assumption that the agitations were targeted at him because Jonathan lost the last election. Honestly this line of reasoning is just bunkum and ahistorical. It was the same dummy sold to former President Jonathan that Boko Haram was sponsored by Northern political elites to undermine his government.

The truth is that agitations for Biafra started in 1999 when Ralph Uwazuruike formed the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). His group quickly gained ‘popularity’ among some Igbos, especially those in the Diaspora. He was constantly in- and out- of detention, including a two year detention in 2005. In 2006, Governor Peter Obi ordered a ‘shoot- at-sight’ order against MASSOB activists who were often fingered in disturbances in the commercial city of Onitsha. By the time Jonathan won the 2011 election, there were about 1000 MASSOB activists in detention, including Uwazuruike himself. Jonathan ordered their release - leading to a lull in their activities. But very quickly MASSOB factionalized as some of the separatists accused Uwazuruike of ‘selling out’. That was how groups like Biafra Zionist Movement, which was formed in November 2012 and led by Benjamin Onwuka, came to public notice. On June 7 2014 BZM members attempted to seize the radio and television stations of the Enugu State Broadcasting Service to announce the secession of Biafra. Onwuka was charged with treason and was only released from detention in February this year. Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous Peoples of Biafra was formed in either 2012 or 2013 and the Radio Biafra was actually formed by Chudi Uwazuruike.

Rather than believing that agitations for Biafra were meant to undermine the Buhari government, we should be posing the question of why the agitation assumed a different character under Buhari.

The other part of the President’s speech that I have reservations about was where he said: “The National Assembly and the National Council of State are the legitimate and appropriate bodies for national discourse.” The President seemed to be referring to those who are advocating for the ‘restructuring’ of the country. Though I am sceptical about the current agitations for restructuring (see my article ‘Restructuring is just another empty buzz word’ in the Daily Trust July 27 2017), I don’t think it is wise to dismiss the agitations in the manner the President did during the broadcast.

For the President to refer the agitators to the National Assembly - which had just rejected devolution of power to the states - a unifying theme among the agitatorsguarantees that the agitation will continue. I don’t think it would have hurt if the President had conceded that he would look into the demands of the restructuring advocates. He can even promise to set up a committee to ‘look into the demands’. Politicians sometimes set up Committees to allow aggrieved people to ventilate their grievances or to buy time. The clamour for restructuring - which is a euphemism for the old demand for ‘Sovereign National Conference’ has evolved and is now a unifying mantra among the Southern faction of the political elite in their competition with their Northern counterparts over the rules governing access to political power and the distribution of privileges at the centre.

It is also not always the case that the “National Assembly and the National Council of State are the legitimate and appropriate bodies for national discourse.” This is why many mature democracies bypass their legislatures and go for referendums on certain critical issues of national importance.

Finally as Buhari returns, we will be on the watch out to find out who are the ‘hyenas and jackals’, whom the President’s wife Aisha, promised would be chased out of her husband’s kingdom. We will also be looking out for which of the contending centres of power gets the President’s ears and which ones will lose out. We will equally be looking out on whether the President’s force of personality will stabilize the polity or whether his style will further polarize the country.