THISDAY

Solving the Buhari Puzzle

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On Thursday evening, I was fiddling with my phone when an alert popped up, announcing the appointmen­t of Mr. Yusuf Bichi as the new director-general of the Department of State Services (DSS). That means President Muhammadu Buhari did not confirm Mr. Matthew Seiyefa — who had acted as DG since the removal of Mr. Lawal Daura last month — as the substantiv­e head of Nigeria’s secret police. For those interested in context, Bichi, a retired DSS official, is from Bichi town in Kano state — not much of a distance from Katsina state, where the president happens to come from. Seiyefa is from Bayelsa state, the home of former President Goodluck Jonathan.

I had mixed feelings. A part of me was delighted. Another part was dumbfounde­d. I was delighted because, in my opinion, this president has got balls. There has been an orchestrat­ed campaign to blackmail him to confirm Seiyefa as DG of DSS. Different political groups and commentato­rs were busy raising the alarm and issuing threats over a “plot” to remove the acting DSS DG because he is a southerner — and all the usual stuff. God save Nigeria the day a president starts making or unmaking appointmen­ts on the basis of threats, blackmail and intimidati­on in the media. For ignoring the intimidati­on, Buhari delighted a part of me.

But then I was also dumbfounde­d. How can the president be so unconcerne­d about our realities and complexiti­es as a nation? When Buhari holds his security meeting, in the room will be Major Gen. Babagana Munguno (rtd), the national security adviser; Brig-Gen. Mansur Dan-Ali, minister of defence; Gen. Abayomi Olonisakin, chief of defence staff; Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai, chief of army staff; Rear Admiral Ibok Ekwe Ibas, chief of naval staff; Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, chief of air staff; Mr. Ibrahim Idris, inspector-general of police; Mr. Ahmed Rufai Abubakar, DG of the National Intelligen­ce Agency (NIA); and AVM Mohammed Saliu Usman, chief of defence intelligen­ce.

Now add Bichi as the DG of DSS to the list and it would be stupid for anyone to argue that the leadership of Nigeria’s security agencies is not overwhelmi­ngly and embarrassi­ngly northern. Apart from Olonisakin and Ibas, every other person in the room is from the north, even if they are not all of the Fulani ethnic stock (contrary to what they tell you on WhatsApp). In the event that Buhari decides to hold an expanded security meeting and brings in the minister of interior and the heads of Customs, Immigratio­n, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps and Federal Road Safety Corps, you will have to conclude that the president can use some federal sensitivit­y in that sector.

And there you have my puzzle about President Buhari. This makes it difficult for me to understand him. Since he assumed office in 2015, I have always been torn apart by many of his decisions and actions. He would do or say something and I would scream: “Sai Baba!” I would take a second look and moan: “Chai, Baba!” The DSS appointmen­t is a perfect example. It is good for the president to have balls and not be easily swayed by public opinion, but it is also good for the president to care about public opinion. He must care about diversity and inclusion in a fractious, heterogene­ous and complex country like Nigeria. Why does he not seem to care? I am puzzled.

It has always been mixed feelings for me whenever I analyse Buhari. For instance, many high-profile Nigerians have complained to me, privately, that Buhari is inaccessib­le, compared to previous presidents. If you look at it one way, that is good. When a president is too accessible, he becomes too available to be compromise­d. It becomes difficult for him to take some tough decisions that might hurt his legion of friends — even if Nigeria would be better off in the end. We may also end up having a laissez faire society where every Tom, Dick and Harry (make that every Tomiwa, Dike and Haliru) would be peddling influence, claiming to have dined with the president last night.

On the other hand, a president has to be accessible! If a president is a recluse, he will be denying himself the opportunit­y of mingling with a diverse number of people and enjoying the benefit of plural opinion. He will not be able to feel the pulse of the nation first-hand. The most dangerous part of it is that he will be cornered by a few people. Given that an average human being is self-interested, the people with access to him will only tell him what he wants to hear so that they don’t offend him or lose the gate pass to the inner sanctuary of power. But when a president is accessible, he is able to see beyond his cocoon. It could be an advantage.

Another issue over which I have been critical of the president is the Treasury Single Account (TSA). The cold implementa­tion has had a negative impact on the financial system. Already-starved businesses became more starved as the all-important public funds were swept into TSA, giving banks more excuses not to lend. The paucity of funds also harmed interest rates. The bankers, ever clever, survived by any means necessary. They still found buccaneeri­ng opportunit­ies in the crisis while ordinary Nigerians were losing their jobs and scraping pot bottoms to survive. I felt the TSA policy needed to be reviewed and modified in view of the situation.

When President Olusegun Obasanjo tried to implement a similar policy in 2004, he retreated on seeing the immediate negative impact on the economy. I thought Buhari should also have taken a cue from that. Yet, a part of me was happy. If Nigeria is ever going to develop, there will always be growth pains. You don’t make an omelette with your eggs unbroken. We cannot eat our cake and have it. Something has to give during the transition. Government agencies had, for ages, been colluding with bankers to rip off THISDAY Newspapers Limited. the treasury. Let the bankers do real banking and stop playing casino with public funds. So while I was horrified on the one hand, I was happy on the other.

It was this same predicamen­t that hit me on Thursday with the DSS appointmen­t. I was happy that Buhari refused to be blackmaile­d into confirming Seiyefa — but I was also horrified that he had to look for a Yusuf from Bichi. In a way, though, I feel justified by the outcry over the “northernis­ation” of security appointmen­ts by Buhari. I have been arguing all my life — and I have been thoroughly abused for this — that a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation like Nigeria must accommodat­e diversity in its body politic. Federal character is critical to building a balanced system and giving people a sense of belonging. You must consciousl­y address fears of domination with equity.

In a complex developing country like Nigeria, no leader should create an impression that only people from a particular part are qualified to be appointed into certain positions. But according to a school of thought, “federal character” is a dirty concept. The antagonist­s argue that it promotes mediocrity above merit — based on the logic that federal character and merit are mutually exclusive. The Federal Character Commission actually defines “federal character” as “merit plus equity”. The purveyors tend to reason that when a southerner is appointed into a position, it is based on “merit”, but if it is a northerner, it is “federal character”.

Unfortunat­ely, this prejudice has been passed down from generation to generation. True, at some point in the nation’s history, northerner­s were far behind southerner­s in Western education. As at Independen­ce in 1960, you could count the number of university graduates from the north. Today, the north has its own fair share of unemployed graduates. They have experts and intellectu­als, trained home and abroad, in virtually every field. But because of some prejudice dating back to half a century, it is difficult for southerner­s to accept this fact. So they continue to nurture a very negative mindset that sees merit as a southern property.

The DSS appointmen­t raises a fundamenta­l question that we must ask and be consistent­ly sincere about: do we want federal character or not? It is hypocritic­al to argue for merit when it favours us and federal character when it doesn’t favour us. If we want to go all out for “merit”, we should never complain that a part of the country dominates appointmen­ts. We should just look at their CVs and decide if they are qualified. Did the appointee go to school? Check. Does the appointee have the experience? Check. Is the appointee competent? Check. Then let us fly with it. That means when you visit a ministry and everybody there is from Iwo, you must never complain. It is merit.

But I will never support this “merit minus federal character” idea in a diverse and fragile country such as ours, where mutual suspicion and fears of domination reign supreme. A country with three major ethnic groups and hundreds of minorities cannot be integrated without an affirmativ­e action. We must deliberate­ly marry merit with federal character — and I maintain that merit is present in every state, every region and every religion in Nigeria, even though some are more blessed than the others. Balance is critical. It is not too hard to solve the Buhari Puzzle. Mr President, just apply the principles of equity and we will be fine. Be sensitive. Be flexible. That’s all.

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