Over the weekend, supporters of former President Goodluck Jonathan came up with a funny idea while mocking the travails of SaharaReporters publisher, Omoyele Sowore, who is presently in the Department of State Services’ gulag for, among other attributed sins, insulting President Muhammadu Buhari. According to them, Sowore had it coming because his criticisms of Jonathan promoted disaffection that led to the latter’s electoral loss. They said, unlike the present administration, Jonathan did not hassle his critics because he was tolerant; a trait often mistook for weakness. You see, Nigeria has this cyclical hex that makes our yesterdays almost always look better than our todays, and we tend to look back at our imperfect past and pine for the “good old days.”
Unless the meaning of “tolerance” has changed, the Jonathan that I remember is one under whose watch media houses were harassed for publishing uncomplimentary stories about his administration’s fight against terrorism. During his presidency, there was a lot of violence. They also tried repressing the protests staged by both the Shi’ites and the #BringBackOurGirls movement. This “tolerant” President signed the brutal anti-homosexuality law, and there are documented cases of thousands of extrajudicial killings of those alleged to be Boko Haram members. Let us not get even started on the issue of corruption. Buhari is a misadventure, yes, but Jonathan was just as mediocre as his counterparts since 1999. It is pointless comparing them to select the preferable disaster. Each successor is typically worse because governance is accretive. Weak leaders do not just wreck things, they also create the ethical and institutional conditions that make it possible for their successors to fare worse. My prayer for Nigeria is that come 2023, may we not elect the psychopath that will make us look wistfully at Buhari’s somnambulistic years.
It is bunkum for Jonathan’s rehabilitators to claim he was the most insulted President. Apart from the impossibility of quantifiably assessing such claims, they forgot he came into power in the age of social media. That period germinated unprecedented opportunities for political leaders to bypass traditional media houses and speak directly to people. That was how Jonathan could launch his presidential campaign on Facebook. He was not alone. Barack Obama, too, was touted the first “social media president.” He used social media to level traditional hierarchies of power and establish new relationship modes with the governed class. It was an arrangement that forever changed politics and political science.
However, the familiarity soon bred contempt and those leaders found their karma on social media. Objections to every pronouncement were swift; every misstep met with hyper-critical scrutiny, and abuses of power were stridently denounced. This unsilenced majority had a weapon: they could form a critical mass very quickly and force the hand of a leader to capitulate to their demands.
Jonathan’s strategy for combatting the onslaught was to hire “attack dogs” to push back, but his handlers soon learned the wisdom of the Igbo proverb that says although one man can cook for a whole village, he will be overwhelmed if the entire village cooks for him in return. Each time they lashed out at the “collective children of anger,” the public lashed back without let. Jonathan, unfortunately, headed a haphazard government and lacked leadership charisma. The jokes and memes that circulated and ridiculed him wrote themselves.
Now, no matter how much Jonathan’s followers castigate everyone for his electoral loss – and they have blamed Obama, Wole Soyinka, Sowore, and just about anybody who exercised their right to free speech too freely – the 2015 loss was on him. He blew it. Throughout his tenure, he remained a tentative President. On issues that required decisiveness, if he was not hand-wringing, he was laid back or apologetic. Even his wife’s theatrics contributed to the impression that he was just a pushover; someone who was not in charge of even his personal life. Although fate had propelled him from his humble beginnings in Bayelsa and thrust him into the highest office in the land, he never lived up to the nobility thrust on him. It was not all that hard for those far more adept at the game of politicking to outflank him.
By the time Buhari was President, he was no longer stepping into the brave new world where the highest office in the land was a public spittoon for disaffected countrymen. His handlers had learned from the Jonathan example and came better prepared. You could tell from two things they did: one, they inaugurated a wide pool of media aides, larger than even his economic team. These aides came in varying of intelligence ready to take on the public with both “roforofo” fight and propaganda, whichever works. Two, they also launched the Buhari Media Centre, a collection of ravenous hounds headquartered on the Internet with the mandate to manage the Buhari personality cult. Those ones roam the digital spaces. They use their noses to detect disparagements of Buhari and then shred commenters with feral rage. These people muddle up issues, change the tenor of discussions, and insult anyone whose opinion does not serve Buhari’s ambition. If you witnessed how those e-hounds went after the actress, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, you would understand how seriously they take their mission to silence everyone using intimidation tactics. Let us also not forget how their government tried to repress free speech by coming up with a dubious legislative agenda that was supposed to fight “hate speech.”
But here is the interesting irony: while Jonathan was a weak President, Buhari is far weaker. Forget the façade of the tough ex-military guy who promised to turn the Nigerian night into the day if he was elected, Buhari is much more vulnerable than he projects. Unlike Jonathan that was relatively magnanimous with his critics because he was confident the Peoples Democratic Party was too formidable to be dislodged, Buhari lives with the fear of 1985 replaying itself. He fears being shorn of power again, and many things about him reflect this anxiety: the power play with his South-West associates, his reluctance to change the top military brass despite their repeated failures at fighting Boko Haram because he fears a coup, his nepotism, and the micromanagement of the presidency by a few powerbrokers. The fear of being usurped has made him paranoid, and that insecurity is driving his government crazy.
Buhari might look tough, but the various instances of abuses, bullying, and repression under his government are loud signs of his growing weakness. You only need to look at what they are charging Sowore with to see that these people have lost their grip. They said Sowore was sending false messages “for the purpose of causing insult, enmity, hatred and ill-will on the person of the President …” The person that wrote that should be writing a series for Awada Kerikeri (comedy galore).
The level of human rights abuses in this administration has been compared to that of the Sani Abacha era. Yes, and we also remember that Abacha grew more abusive as his mortal body degenerated, and he realised he was going to lose power.
Buhari is a weak President, and his political trajectory explains why he cannot help himself. First, fate cast him into oblivion in 1985, and then made him spend 12 years of his life chasing the presidency. By the time fate decided to humour him and make him President, he was far too spent. Although he himself confessed in 2015 that old age was going to limit his performance, his problem was not his advanced years. He realised that the Buhari image he sold us was irreconcilable with his capabilities. He had won the election before reality dawned on him that the gap that exists between what people expect and what he can achieve could never be bridged. He turned reclusive, avoiding Nigerians as much as he could. Despite hiding away in Aso Rock, he remains haunted by the fear of being ousted as an impotent ruler and kicked out of power again. That fear rules him, and he is so paranoid that he confronts insults with the full force of presidential rage.
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