The one-year-old federal government of the All Progressives Congress (APC) led by President Muhammadu Buhari is headed for failure. And its failure if it happens (and it is looking more like when it happens, that is, if it has not happened already) will be catastrophic because it will threaten the very foundation of the Nigerian nation. Many of us knew even in 2015 during the campaigns and the subsequent elections that the then opposition presidential candidate was not equipped intellectually, emotionally, psychologically and otherwise to govern an increasingly complex nation that we have become as a people. The Nigeria of today is a lot different from the Nigeria of 1983-85 when Buhari held sway as military head of state. The mode of government, democracy, is different from the then military rule. A few people amongst us kept harping on that fact in spite of the threateningly loud voices of the vast majority which was determined to muffle the voices of the sane minority.
Even with the benefit of hindsight it will still be difficult to blame the mob-majority of 2015 for its irrational behaviour in refusing, most times violently, to listen to the voices that were raising the danger in electing Buhari as president. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that was in government since the return of democracy in 1999 had woefully failed the people. There was no doubt about that. The President Goodluck Jonathan administration which got a pan-Nigeria mandate in the 2011 election had incredibly frittered away the massive goodwill of Nigerians in a space of just two years. It must be added that some of its failings were contrived and orchestrated by some of the people in power today. So for the mob-majority anybody and any political party but Jonathan and the PDP would do. So Buhari won the presidential contest in spite of the obvious danger in his win.
From the onset President Buhari set the tone for his regime. Two months after he swore by the Constitution of Nigeria to protect and to promote the interest of all Nigerians, the president said while visiting the United States of America (USA) that he would disregard his oath of office and oath of allegiance. He said he intended to be the president of those who voted massively for him. Buhari told an interviewer in America that he should not be expected to treat those who voted 5 percent for him as he would treat those who voted 97 per cent for him. Effectively the president, of his own volition, had divided the country and its peoples. At the point of the president’s initial and critical appointments including constituting his so-called kitchen cabinet he gave effect, in clear and unmistakable term, to his 97 per cent versus 5 percent philosophy of governance. He has not departed from that road which is now inevitably leading his regime to a crushing failure.
It is shocking, to say the least, that Buhari in spite of seeking the office of the president in three previous election cycles (2003, 2007, 2011), failed to prepare for the requirements and demands of that office. In the intervening period between 1985 when Gen. Buhari was sacked from office as military head of state and May 29, 2015 when he assumed office as a civilian president, there is no record in the public domain of any attempt at self improvement through public speeches, personal training programmes, giving keynote address at public functions, periodic interventions in burning national issues, occasionally offering opinion in public on the road the nation should take in the quest for development. On the few occasions the now president intervened they were on less ennobling subjects. There was the reported case of Buhari leading a team of Fulani leaders to confront and threaten the former governor of Oyo state, the late Lam Adesina over the matter of clashes between Yoruba farmers and Fulani herdsmen.
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