Of all our past leaders, Muhammadu Buhari, by his anti-imperialist and pro-Nigerian policies during his short stay in power between 1984 and 1985 was perhaps the most pro-Nigerian.  The author of ‘Nigerians have no other place they can call their own’ was regarded as an honourable man ‘who cannot be unfair’ (Maitama Sule). The only ware Buhari had to sell in the run up to the 2015 election was his righteousness which he carried around like Saint Christopher’s badge of honour.

Buhari had played his politics well by rejecting IMF loan to prevent the destruction of our budding industries with the flooding of our market with foreign manufactured goods and challenging Nigerians to produce their own wheat or starve.  Nigerians produced not only what they would eat but more than enough wheat that storage facilities became a challenge.  Within the period, our refineries worked with Nigerian exporting refined petroleum products to earn foreign exchange while domestic consumption of PMS was secured through swapping of crude oil with Brazil.

It was widely believed that Babangida’s palace coup was masterminded by CIA in response to Buhari’s anti-imperialist crusade. This was to earn him the sympathy of Yoruba voters in 2015 despite jailing their leaders for between 100-300 years for taxing contractors to raise money to build universities in Edo, Ondo, Ogun and Lagos while treating Shagari who presided over massive corruption that led to the collapse of the economy and his NPN/NPP governors that took foreign loans to marry new wives and set up private banks with kid gloves.

Unfortunately, Buhari, by his mishandling of our crisis of nation-building during his two-term presidency marred by incompetence, cronyism and delegation by abdication, deprived himself of an opportunity to become a statesman.

His first test of integrity after acquiring power was his apparent sympathy for herdsmen terrorists rated by Global Terrorism Index as the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world, coming after Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab. As if to confirm the fears of those who alleged his government had been hijacked by ethnic irredentists even before its inauguration, Alhaji Sale Bayeri issued a threat claiming that “the Boko Haram insurgency would be a child’s play if herdsmen and farmers’ conflicts are not resolved in a way that is acceptable to all sides”, while pointing out that what would appease the rampaging herdsmen was contained in a 70-page letter he had sent to President Buhari before his inauguration. Their demand was for an unhindered grazing access in areas he identified as ‘trouble spots’ spread across 75 local government areas across 21 states including “Oye Local Government in the northern part of Ekiti, Shaki in Oyo State, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Rivers, Delta, Edo, Bauchi, Gombe, Yola”. To support their claim that “Benue anti-grazing law cannot work”, mindless massacre of 72 people was carried out in the night. Buhari ignored warnings by Nigerian stakeholders including Wole Soyinka who advised the Fulani insurgents should not be treated with kid gloves, until the whole of the middle belt states was overrun.

Buhari’s management of the oil sector which accounts for over 80% of foreign earnings was no less disappointing.  Nigerians had hoped he would improve on his record as oil minister in 1977 and as Head of State in 1984. Curiously, none of Nigerian four refineries worked while his party’s promised modular, for eight years remained a promise.  And while the nation could not meet its OPEC quota of crude oil export due to massive crude oil theft, over N700 billion was being stolen daily under the fuel subsidy scam.

And despite Oronsaye recommendation, Buhari retained the instrument through which politicians and oil marketers commit this crime. For instance, the PPPRA, an outfit with a staff strength of 249, supervised by an unwieldy 22-man strong board, gobbling scandalously whopping salaries and allowances of N57.9 billion per annum, whose mandate include ending long queues at filling stations by making petroleum products  available at reasonable prices”, was retained even when its functions only duplicated those of Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, (PPMC) set up in 1988 to “profitably and efficiently market refined petroleum products and also maintain uninterrupted movement of refined petroleum products from the local refineries.”

Buhari’s management of the economy was no less disastrous. Perhaps scared by IMF that accused him of being stubborn, he went on a borrowing binge with Nigeria debt rising to $40b currently being serviced by about 95% of our national earnings. We can add to that the illegal printing of N23trillion through ways and means by CBN and one-year advance collection of crude oil sales revenue.

Nigerians had expected a probe of how Babangida’s Technical Committee on Privatization and Commercialization’s (TCPC) disposed of the following national assets: Assurance Bank, African Petroleum, Unipetrol, National Oil and Chemical Co. Plc, West African Portland Cement, Ashaka Cement, Northern Nigeria Cement, Nigeria Cement company, FESTAC 1977 Hotel, Nigerdock, Niger Insurance, Nigeria Re-insurance, Savannah Sugar, National Trucks Manufacturing, Electricity Meter Company, Zaria, Hamdala Hotel and Federal Palace hotel among many others. They had expected the same on the following national assets sold by Obasanjo’s 1999 Public Enterprises Privatization and Commercialization Act: Delta Steel Company valued at $1.5 billion but sold for $30m; NICON Insurance worth N6billion but allegedly bought with fake MoU and fake cheques, Ajaokuta Steel Company valued at $1.5 billion but sold for $30 million, ALSCON valued at $3.2b but sold for $130m, Nigeria Re-Insurance Corp. worth N50b but sold for N1.5b (see Adamu Adamu: “BPE: Behind Closed doors”(Daily Trust, August 12, 2011). There was also Abuja Sheraton Hotel and Towers built at a whopping $300m in 1986 but sold for a paltry $34m” and “Sofitel Hotel (NICON Luxury Hotels) built with a German loan of $139m in 1990 later sold off for $50m. (The Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Probe (This Day, April 23 2008).

Buhari whose campaign promises included restructuring was to feign ignorance as to its meaning after the election. He was however schooled by the following Nigerian stakeholders who first reminded him that our “1954 structure, negotiated by our founding fathers ‘to promote the unity of Nigeria and protect the interest of diverse elements that make up the country’ was destroyed by our military adventurers.

For Atiku, restructuring means ‘less centralized, less suffocating and less dictatorial’ central government to satisfy agitation by some restive groups for self-actualization. For Alhaji Balarabe Musa, the former governor of Kaduna State, it is ‘a return to regional arrangement, where each region can create states, they can cater for, would certainly reduce injustice and inequality among the people’. For Emeka Anyaoku, the former Commonwealth Secretary, it is ‘a return to the regional structure practiced in the First Republic, with the country’s six regions forming the federating units. For Wole Soyinka it means “the basis of our association needed to be renegotiated if we are to prevent a disastrous disintegration”.

But Buhari would rather listen to Ango Abdullahi, the spokesman for Northern Elders Forum, who after tracing it to post-independence power rivalry between the Igbo and the Hausa Fulani, advised him to refer it the National Assembly, a product of injustice, by design and by composition” whose control by northern majority has made any change, including ordinary local policing impossible. And of course, Buhari’s  other trusted confidant is elder-statesman Tanko Yakassai who blamed the Yoruba for supporting self-actualization struggle by restive groups like the Tivs, Beroms, Katafs  of the Middle Belt and the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers states of the Southeast since 1953.

• Buhari loves Nigeria but loves his fellow Fulani ethnic irredentists more.