OPINION Why Buhari’s poll victory matters

At last, Muhammadu Buhari, a retired military commander and a former Head of State, was sworn-in less than two weeks ago as an elected president of Nigeria and, with that, comes so much relief. That relief cannot be unconnected with the crisis of state across Africa. The typical African state has been so creatively destroyed, to pick words from David Harvey, the renowned Marxist Geographer of neo-liberalism. The African states, more than states in any other regions of the world, are too dishevelled from the direct and collateral impact of neo-liberalism since the 1980s that it helps if the typical Commander-in-Chief has security background, be it of military, Police, intelligence, paramilitary. This is not to say that people outside this circuit cannot understand basic security briefing but that it helps if the C-in-C has a heightened sense of the primacy of state survival at a time like this.

I want to believe that this is the reason, more than any other, why sundry interests and individuals found in Buhari the safe landing for Nigeria at this moment, irrespective of party, religious, ethnic, regional and personal considerations. Nigeria has been so close to the worst that could happen, not so much because Nigerians are so unhappy with each other but because exercise of state power became a function of luck. Goodluck is the name of the immediate past president but the reality of which is the possibility of bad luck. The conscious and unconscious dynamics of the luck syndrome in the management of state power was the source of permanent anxiety. We should, indeed, thank Almighty God that the Nigerian journey is in the hands of a trained statist. If an accident happens, it will only be because there is no cure for accidents, not because this driver could mistake the car brakes for the accelerator.

Now, why does this matter? It would matter to any Nigerian who has stepped outside the country, even as a messenger, and encountered the embarrassment occasioned by the Nigerian condition. People actually pity the Nigerian, without saying it. In August 2013, I had the misfortune of asking a professor of Energy Studies a question at a seminar in London. He dodged the question in the open session but found his way to my tea side later to whisper something to my ears and it was just unnerving. It is worse if, as some activist, you have been used to shouting imperialism at every terrible turn. Of course, imperialism is the leading force in the explanation of the African crisis. There is nothing to amend about that but, empirically, that claim is outlandish if it doesn’t carry certain qualifiers, particularly in relation to Nigeria.

This is, however, the moment in History when Africa has the greatest chance to situate itself. The process of reconfiguring global power relations provides the best opportunity since 1945 for Africa which even the independence in the 1960s did not provide. What Africa needs is a more nuanced reading of the dynamics that is unravelling. Although Nigeria has been nowhere in terms of providing the strategic thinking for this repositioning in the past few years, it still has one of the best contributions to the process courtesy of two things that one man, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, did as CBN Governor, two things that demonstrate a very clear understanding of the world unfolding before our eyes and what level of dignity or indignity awaits our children in it. Kano people might be enjoying his authority but it must be a matter of regret that he is not available to serve the Buhari regime officially. To make matters worse, one has not noticed Mahmud Tukur, Buhari’s Minister of Commerce then around him this time. Going by his newspaper advertorial on the June 12 crisis in early 1994, he is another person with a unique understanding of the relationship between the state and the economy. Although right wing in orientation, his variant of political economy is much sharper and preferable to that of many others touting models whose implications they either do not understand or they do not care to.

In this regard, it has been great to hear the president say the economy would be anchored on agriculture and mining. In the context of the global economy today, it would not be ridiculous were he to decide to concentrate all his presidential energy there. Given his emphasis on security, agriculture and mining provides him a much easier way in to doing that, whether understood as statecraft or emancipation. Again, the situation across the entire Africa now is such that a Buhari has no alternative to the option of ‘security as emancipation’. What national security can much of Africa talk about when a civil servant sitting in front of a computer somewhere in Nevada in the US can target anyone anywhere on the continent and, with the press of a button, decimate such a target, with or without the permission of the African sovereign? Although the ethical and legal processes involved in targeting in drone warfare is complicated, the point is that the United States has, in the words of Alex Callinicos, the radical British philosopher, arrogated to itself the right to chase whoever it declares as its own enemy anywhere in the world. But it is not anywhere in the world but borderlands such as Africa because drones cannot be used outside borderlands like Africa. By expert evidence, any serious national defence system will shoot a drone down, being so clumsy and slow. But how can a military that could not overwhelm Boko Haram shoot down drones delivering Hellfire missiles based on elaborate surveillance and powerful images?

Yet, drone warfare is just one dimension of how, in the context of globalisation, great powers have developed technologies to manage their own national security from the homeland, without losing a single soldier, spy or whatever sort of combatant. Very few, if any African country has these capabilities or can afford it or should waste its resources on them. Hence the imperative of the ‘security as emancipation’ option, an option which automatically privileges agriculture/mining, both on the short and long term, because it has the greatest guarantee of the fullest employment and, subsequently, income stability, savings, investment and boom. The popularity rating that will come for the regime from that scenario plus Nigeria’s population, market size and the associated prestige will be the country’s national security under Buhari and even long after Buhari would have done his bit and left. Professional security people might dismiss this analysis of national security as mere academic speculation or theory. That should not be the subject of any quarrel because, as they say, security is a thick signifier. Like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder.

Onoja can be reached atadagboonoja@gmail.com