MUHAMMADU Buhari, president of Nigeria since 2015, will leave office on Monday, May 29, after eight disastrous years. The late Chief Bola Ige famously coined the phrase, “good riddance to bad rubbish”. That, truth be told, is the best way to describe the exit of Buhari, his presidency and his government from power.

For the past eight years of Buhari’s administration have been an unmitigated failure; a monumental waste of time, of resources, and of the hopes and aspirations of a nation and a people.

True stewardship is leaving a place better than one found it. But Buhari is leaving Nigeria far worse than he found it in 2015.

On any metric, Nigeria sunk deeper into an abyss under Buhari. Without a doubt, he’s the worst civilian leader Nigeria has, so far, had! No previous civilian president showed such aloofness, such indifference, such arrogance and such utter lack of competence and vision in governing Nigeria. None!

Before becoming president in 2015, Buhari had been a military head of state. But he was so calamitous that his colleagues removed him from power within 20 months. Yet, he enjoyed the privileges of a former head of state: the highest national honour, GCFR, permanent membership of the Council of State, numerous financial and other material benefits, and the prestige of being treated as an “institution”. So, what else did Buhari want? Why did he want to inflict himself on Nigeria as president, despite his irredeemable leadership flaws and acute intellectual weakness?

A comparison with General Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s other military-cum-civilian leader, is opposite. When General Obasanjo left office as military head of state in 1979, he threw himself into policy analysis, founded the Africa Leadership Forum, a policy think-tank, engaged in international diplomacy, read and wrote. Obasanjo didn’t plan to be president. Serendipitously, he became president in 1999. With his experience and exposure, he hit the ground running, embarked on radical institution-building, negotiated and secured debt relief for Nigeria. Obasanjo had flaws, but inept or ineffectual government wasn’t one of them!

By contrast, after his failed military regime, Buhari’s consuming passion was to become a civilian president. But he did nothing to improve himself intellectually; nothing to develop a vision of governance, a vision for Nigeria. Indeed, according to the late Junaid Mohammed, an ally-turned-critic, Buhari “never read a book in his adult life”. Yet, such an intellectually lazy person wanted desperately to be Nigeria’s president.

So desperate, in fact, he entered into a Faustian pact to achieve the selfish, inordinate ambition. Buhari ran for president three times and failed! After the third attempt, he wept on national television. Bola Tinubu’s immortal words: “I told him, ‘Don’t cry. You will contest and win.’” But Tinubu had his price. If he helped Buhari to become president, Buhari would, once in power, help him to become president. Both traded the presidency of Nigeria between each other on the altar of personal ambitions!

In 1984, Buhari jailed Tinubu’s ally, Bisi Akande, for 42 years for “unlawful enrichment of his party”. If 2015 were1984, Buhari would have jailed Tinubu for hundreds of years for far worse: state capture, unexplained and inexplicable wealth. But, no, 2015 was not 1984. In the intervening years, Buhari had become a politician and desperately wanted to be president. His famed no-nonsense anti-graft zeal, as a military ruler, had gone, and he was willing to make “a pact with the Devil” and sell his soul. That’s how he became president!

But if someone was so desperate to be president and willing to compromise his values and fraternise with those he would have jailed for corruption in another dispensation, he must be pursuing power for power’s sake. And truth is, power was an end in itself for Buhari. Otherwise, why was there no fidelity between what he promised when seeking power in 2015 and what he did after gaining power?

Take the seemingly mundane: trappings of power. Buhari had a reputation for asceticism and frugality with money, but, as president, became utterly profligate, spending like a drunken sailor, including on wasteful overseas trips. Buhari vowed to sell off some presidential jets but bought more and spent billions annually to maintain them. Buhari said his wife won’t be called First Lady, yet created the Office of First Lady and lavishly resourced it.

Recently, Buhari gloated: “I got all I wanted.” Of course, he did: for himself, his family, his cronies, and his party. But what about Nigeria? What about majority of Nigerians? With N77trn or $42bn debt, 22 per cent inflation and just 1.4 per cent growth, Nigeria is economically worse under Buhari. With 63,111 killed since 2015, 133 million multidimensionally poor and nearly 60 per cent youth unemployment, Nigerians are socio-economically worse. Indeed, under Buhari, Nigeria became the “poverty capital of the world”. Yet, despite his abysmal failure, Buhari craved praise-singing, basked in dishonest adulation.

Last week, two books were launched to honour Buhari. One, by Anthony Goldman, one-time Africa Editor of Financial Times, is titled State of Repair: How Muhammadu Buhari tried to change Nigeria for good.

The author couldn’t bring himself to say Buhari “changed Nigeria”, but “tried to”, which is even false. But if Buhari hired a former Africa Editor of the FT to burnish his image, what does the newspaper’s current Africa Editor think of him? In a scathing article titled: “What is Nigeria’s Government for?”, David Pilling pilloried Buhari “on whose somnolent watch Nigeria has sleep- walked closer to disaster.”

Well, not for Abu Ibrahim, a former senator, who wrote the second book, a hagiography, titled: The legacy of Muhammadu Buhari. But what “legacy”? Buhari promised to tackle insecurity, fix the economy and “give corruption a bloody nose”. He failed woefully. His government bungled a currency redesign and conducted a sham presidential election. So, what legacy? What about infrastructure, some ask? But only the economically illiterate will hail infrastructure funded entirely with debts, still payable decades after the roads, rails, ports, etc., have become decrepit, with over 95 per cent debt service to revenue ratio.

So, as Buhari exits power on Monday, he leaves behind a far less secure, stable, united and prosperous country. That’s the legacy of his presidency, of eight wasted years. Good riddance, indeed!

The sublime and evergreen words of Williams Shakespeare “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts; a justification therefrom alludes to a man who truly, justly, consciously and genuinely in his time has played a million and one parts as a distinct Nigerian lawyer, renowned political figure who is a symbol of Nationalism. A distinctive personality, global asset in public leadership, both within and beyond the shores of this great country. A man of distinct wisdom, inquired and sought by several governments, as an official appointee and otherwise for the contribution of his esteemed quota to the development of the country, since the days of General Yakubu Gowon up till today, an unrelenting fighter and comprehensively a builder of not just men but structures as well the founder of Edwin Clark University.

Papa’s life aptly illustrates a charge made by Williams Shakespeare that ‘Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them’.

The existence of this rare gem and living legend radiates greatness that’s truly, largely and chiefly exists in his DNA, not only since birth, but as evident in his accomplishments.

This would further be appreciated looking through his enviable pedigree and intimidating profile of this man of valor who was once a Commissioner for Education, Finance and Establishment in the old Bendel State in the 70s, Federal Minister for Information and National Orientation during the civil war till 1975, when General Gowon’s regime was terminated. Also, as a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 1983, and today, indisputable leader of the Ijaw Nation among others.

Knowing and having a rare privilege of being closely associated with His Eminence, Senator, Chief, Sir, Dr, Edwin Kiagbodo Clark for about a score of years has not only aided in grooming me, but has laid within me an imprint of this great personality in my career as a Legal Practitioner, as some of his enormous principles and unquenchable thirsts and foresights till date still guide in some of my approaches to becoming greater daily.

Sire, on this day, of your 96th birthday anniversary, I join the conglomerate of your children, associates and the world at large to celebrate you, the man of the moment, the voice to the voiceless, the peace in the turbulent storm, the quantum of social justice and the definition of a worthy patriot.

PIn accordance to the words of the holy Bible in Psalm 90:12 “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom”. I pray that your wisdom will never diminish as you age, that the Almighty who has kept you this far will further preserve you with long life, good health, continuous joy and all-round blessings in accordance to your heart desires.

Happy Birthday, G-O-G-O-R-O-G-O, may your light continue to shine!

Dated Thursday, 25th May, 2923

Signed
Dr Kayode Ajulo, FCIArb. UK

CASTLE OF LAW,
21, Amazon Street,
Maitama District, Abuja-Nigeria
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The thought alone of travelling from Lagos to Ibadan using the Expressway is nightmarish. As you get to Oworonsoki the sensing of what may lie ahead hits you, and this develops into fears as you surmount the Ojota flyover. Then comes the sight of long stretches of vehicles on both sides of the road from the old Toll Gate—heavy-duty vehicles: fuel tankers, trailers and tippers; cars of all shades and of all kinds; different models and varied sizes. The Otedola/Berger axis gives palpitations. By the time you approach the Isheri Bridge and overlooking OPIC Estate to the left, it is the face of ugliness and national shame. By the time you get into the thick of the traffic jam, the legs are already aching. When it gets to this stage, totally entrapped, you surrender and say to yourself, and loud enough to the hearing of the driver: We are in it; we have no choice. Tempers rise to your left and to your right, and there is hissing; there is foul language. It is confusion galore. And typical of Nigerians, everywhere is road. Orderliness is alien to our lexicon. A neighbour of mine, a retired school principal, almost lost one of his legs on the road. He and his wife were returning from Ibadan last year. They had sat for two hours in the traffic after the now famous Long Bridge. The man got down from their vehicle to stretch his legs. He said to the driver: “You catch up with me in front; I want to stretch my legs.” He followed a footpath. Unsuspecting that any vehicle would want to use the rough patch, he walked confidently. Alas, a commercial mini-bus we call ‘Danfo’ came stealthily behind him, no blasting of horn, nothing, pushed him down and ran over his left foot!

The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was commissioned by General Olusegun Obasanjo in 1978, built by the Murtala Mohammed-Obasanjo Military Administration. A dual carriageway, it stretches from Apapa Port running through Liverpool Street, Oshodi, Oworonsoki off to the old Toll Gate and from there to Ibadan. By the time Obasanjo staged his second coming 21 years after, that is 1999, parts of the road had started to give way. By 2006 and 2007, he developed thoughts of fixing the road through the novel public –private partnership. When Umaru Yar’Adua came into the saddle in 2007, he took over from there. Yar’Adua’s plan was to manifest properly in 2009. Thus, 31 years after the commissioning, the civilian Administration of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua commenced moves to reconstruct the damaged road through the public-private arrangement. The expressway is 127.6 kilometres long, that is 79.3 miles. The concession bid was won by Bi-Courtney Highway Services Limited. The content of the 25-year concessionary agreement signed by the Federal Government in 2009 was Build, Operate, and Transfer. When after four years the signing of the agreement and the project could not take off, Yar’Adua’s successor, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan revoked the concession arrangement. He gave the project on contract to Julius Berger and Reynolds Construction Company (RCC) Limited in 2013 for a sum of N167 billion, equivalent to $838, 986,290 million US Dollars. Dr. Wale Babalakin as company chairman and the concessionaire was expected to source for his own funds and recoup his investment by mounting toll gates on the expressway upon completion of the reconstructuring.

Julius Berger was given the Lagos end to handle while RCC was given the Ibadan end to handle. President Jonathan promised that the work would be delivered within 48 months. Jonathan, too, did not get the contractors to deliver. The project was inherited by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. Since then he has been struggling with it, announcing delivery dates three times. He is leaving on Monday with promises made three times and three times, promises not kept. He is passing the baton to Bola Ahmed Tinubu from that date.

For 14 years, Nigerians have had to endure pains daily in untold harrowing gridlocks on the expressway that has also claimed several lives, and there is not yet light at the end of the long dark tunnel. Following are complaints uploaded and mailed to me from a platform being run by some of the people who live in areas abutting the expressway:

*I just enter office now oo… (16: 53pm) from 6.18am wey I comot house..jbn God dey o. Na so my hubby spent over 7hrs on Monday. People wey still dey road, una go land safely oo.

*“Are JBN not tired of partitioning? In short, if a genuine, effective and efficient constructing six lanes from Benin Republic to Ghana, they would have finished by now but JBN wants to incapacitate Nigerians before completion of less than four kilometre road. God will help us, but we need to shout if possible or else,the gridlock will consume road users.”

*The truth is that they care less about the wellbeing of the masses. Lives have lost in the course of this so-called road rehabilitation and the government has decided to turn a deaf ear to the cry of the people,”

*For me, I’m not happy with JB lackadaisical attitude. After about 1hour 30mins spent between Kara to Otedola. I saw LASMA officials using leg to remove blockages on Otedola Bridge around 8.30am. I think JB can do better than this.

*Three hours from Magboro and still counting. Now at Kara Bridge. If you have little or nothing urgent to do in Lagos just rest today and save your life from stress.

*Yes, the traffic from Long Bridge to Berger is thick…

*E pass thick ooo.

*Traffic starts from second Red Roof inward Lagos.

*There is a multiple accident involving a tanker truck and about five/seven cars.

*Good afternoon, JBN is working at New Garage outward Lagos; they are demarcating the road. Hmmmm, they are just compounding our stress, or have they opened any other area out of the previous demarcations?

*OPIC end of Lagos Expressway inward Lagos is experiencing heavy traffic due to diversion point at new garage as at 6.56am.

*A country full of lawlessness everywhere. Those that make the laws are seen at the fore front of breaking it. May God continue to keep us safe.

*The carnage on this their (our?) road is indescribable. Must it be this administration to commission the road? Are you commissioning the road for the living or the dead? If the tempo being used ab initio, by now we would have forgotten about the untold sufferings inflicted on us. Y are we like this as a people?”

Last year, the Federal Government announced yet another deadline for the completion of the reconstruction works on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Fielding questions on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily on the way out of the perennial gridlock, the Director, Federal Highway — South-West Zone, Federal Ministry of Works, Mr. Adedamola Kuti, said: “We are working very hard to meet the December 2022 deadline for the completion of works on the road.
He added: “On the Lagos end, which is Section 1 from the old Toll Gate, around the secretariat down towards Kara, as we speak, a section up to Otedola Bridge will be completed and opened in the next few days. The OPIC Area that is just 1.3km will also be completed. On the stretch, altogether is 6.1km.

“When you go towards Section 2, we have just about 20kilometres on both sides. We are working very hard to make sure the work is completed on time, by December this year.”

Twice after Kuti’s assurances, the deadline was shifted to January and then to April 30. April ending has come and gone. This is May already running to an end. Rains have begun and meteorological service officials have alerted the nation that rains this year will be more than last year’s. The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is the busiest in Africa with 250, 000 vehicles plying the road daily. It connects the East, the North, the North-Central, South-South and South-West with Lagos, the economic hub not only of Nigeria but of West Africa as a whole. By the time Buhari vacates office on Monday, the reconstruction of Lagos-Ibadan Expressway would have passed through the hands of four Presidents. And it has taken 14 years to rebuild a road of 127.6 kilometres! What further evidence is there to prove to the world that we as Nigerians are indeed a unique people? Where there is no shame, there can be no embarrassment!

THE CREATION QUESTION
I have run what now amounts to a two-part series on how Creation came into existence. I must state that I only gave hints, leaving out the details to anyone serious about knowledge of life and existence to dig out by himself. Seek, we are admonished, and ye shall find. It is a Law of Creation that he who seeks finds. This column, as has been stated a few times, is to awaken souls to seek higher knowledge; to seek what is high and noble; to ask the most important questions of our lives: Who am I? Where does my path lead me when I depart earthly life? Treating the issue of Creation, I did not, for example, mention the roles of the Four Conscious Animals at the Throne of the Most High God in creating nor did I mention at all the Queen of Heaven Whose name is Elizabeth who is eternal nor Parsifal, a unique Name that students of Literature may claim familiarity with when they recall the Parsifal legend – -in the sublimity of His unapproachable Throne. What do we men know? The vastness of Realms and Planes in Creation which vastness is incomprehensible and, indeed, inconceivable to man! Didn’t the Lord say “In my Father’s House are many mansions”? But the modern man unable to comprehend the revelation has, in some instances, changed the word ‘mansions’ to ‘rooms’ thereby distorting the essence of the pronouncement. How can there be mansions in a house? The modern man must have said to himself. Whereas, the House the Lord refers to is Creation and the mansions, Realms and Realms in Creation that is His Father’s Work. In the Realms are also planes of existence, again so unbelievably vast. The Lord Who is Perfection can never be wrong; it is man that can be and is always wrong and obstinate! We must bow our spirits in worshipful adoration of the Lord and Creator, in adoration of His Holy Name for the Grace of His Love and Mercy.

Even the most ardent supporter of the President, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) must be happy to see him pack his nuisance and return to Daura (or Niger, wherever) come Monday. If there is a regime in this world on which the sun cannot set fast enough, it is Buhari’s. He rode into the presidency in 2015 with his babariga pockets filled with tokens of goodwill and high expectations of renewal. Eight years later, he had bankrupted everything with his sadism and indolence. He came into power in a blaze of glory but his departure will be accompanied with deep sighs of “good riddance.” One good thing about his sociopathic nature is that he will not even be moved to care how much he has let down everyone who once took him seriously.

As much as the buck stops at his table, he could not have been the kind of failure he was without his enablers. They are many, but the most vociferous of these minions was his media team. For a collective that never advanced an original thought or devised any meaningful strategy of public engagement, they had a larger-than-life reach. From buffering Buhari from reasonable public opinion to obfuscating serious issues, they enabled his apathetic stance while the nation faltered under his watch. If they had summoned their will to a higher moral resolve, perhaps Buhari would not be leaving so much wreckage and carnage behind.

If there was something that quickly defined the Goebbelsian ethos of the Buhari regime at its inception, it was the number of media aides recruited. For a man who would not even appoint his federal ministers, he was rather quick to inaugurate a whole nest of media howlers. Close to hand, he had people like Femi Adesina, Garba Shehu, Bashir Ahmed, Tolu Ogunlesi, and Lauretta Onochie. Some of them were accomplished professionals before they took up the job of image laundering for the presidency, but you can hardly look back at key moments during their term and cite instances when they had a shining moment of professional management of public relations and communication. By May 29, when the sun sets on their time, they would all have been indistinguishably diminished by the multi-dimensional failings of the government they served.

At the back end, the administration also maintained a troll farm. There, they had tucked the rabble-rousers, whose job was to loiter around the highways and byways of the internet, defending Buhari against every reasonability and generally darkening counsel with words without knowledge. Partly due to the redundancy of these associates and perhaps too, because of the lack of any apparent strategic thought that went into planning the information management aspect of the Buhari presidency, what the bloated media team ended up delivering was eight years of cacophonous public communication. On his own, Buhari is sure to fail at any leadership role. With the choir he appointed, his shortcomings got more loudly amplified.

To be fair, media managers in the new media age face a peculiar dilemma in managing public relations and communication. Now that virtually anyone for whom the odds align can sidestep the traditional media gatekeepers and reach an indeterminate public directly, responding to the public can be vertiginous. Media aides to non-performing politicians like Buhari have it far worse—for good reasons. They must confront and control public perceptions and sentiments that can be so powerful they trump objective reality. Also, considering how more easily information can be released into the public sphere to stir mischief these days, media aides to politicians find themselves working in a permanent crisis zone where they are putting out either series of small fires or a conflagration (or both at the same time). Continuously being in a self-defence mode can do things to one’s cerebral capacities, and the frequent misspeaks and missteps that typified these aides’ jobs since 2015 is proof that the aides’ wit became addled over the years of managing Buhari’s crisis-prone government. The highest they achieved was a raucous and rancorous engagement with Nigerians whom—judging from their frequent putdowns—they passionately despise.

Yes, one must admit that being a media aide to a Nigerian politician is unenviable responsibility. We live in a polity where poverty is endemic, political promises are aplenty, and people confront their leaders with a sense of urgency that can be incompatible with the slow-paced nature of democratic deliberations. You cannot blame people jaded by the persistent failures of leadership for wanting quick-fire solutions. Sadly, the cohort of mostly myopic leaders that Nigeria is plagued with can hardly envision solutions to what bedevils us. Consequently, our interactions with them cannot but be defined by antagonisms, bitter exchanges, and mutual frustrations. That is why media aides to politicians turned their social media handles into workstations where they engage the public in crass and classless exchange of clap backs and other claptrap.

When leaders have nothing to show as solid achievements, their media aides must justify their existence by becoming one-trick ponies whose expertise begins and ends with fighting random people online. Aides managing a truant boss like Buhari have had it really hard. They spent the eight years inventing stories, deflecting questions bordering on accountability to the public, punching down at political opponents and their supporters, pandering to their current paymasters while putting up a grand show for prospective ones, and generally maintaining a facade of government functionality. While it must have been exhausting work for them, many of those activities are ultimately useless because neither their approach nor the substance of their communication advanced the course of democracy (or even our national values).

Our relationship with our leaders has ontologically been acrimonious, and they lack the political savviness to redefine it meaningfully. Our leaders probably cannot function without antagonising Nigerians, and their public relations managers too cannot act outside that frame. The conception of their professional responsibility is locked into that debilitating cycle such that they can hardly imagine public interaction without slap downs and punch downs. Even if they discern that the irascibility some people display online is borne of frustration with a polity where nothing ever happens, they still cannot demonstrate empathy. They must necessarily antagonise their fellow citizens. Once behind the high walls of Aso Rock, they can no longer afford to see humans whose survival is threatened by the cluelessness of their employers and who have every reason—and right—to make demands on the government. All they see are pesky irritants who will not let them eat in peace. Their revert is duplicity, deceit, and the shallow-mindedness that suffuses every part of their communication.

Looking at the spin they put out during those times Buhari was hospitalised outside of the country, you saw people in whom there is no truth. You assess how they dragged the presidency on social media like a rag cloth, and you see professional misfits. You consider the childishness of those who classified a section of Nigerians that refuses to drool before them into “wailers,” and what you see are small-minded bigots in high places. When you recall how these people poorly responded to the serious issues of insecurity that imperilled many Nigerian lives, you see people drained of their humanity. When you evaluate their double-fanged responses to the problems of corruption and its consequent denudation of the Nigerian value system, you see a bunch of frauds who add a lack of reflexivity to their hypocrisy. When your measure their dismissive attitude toward the economic hardship that Nigerians suffered under the watch of their inhumane principal, you see people shorn of their capacity to be reasonable humans.

On Monday, they will exit their respective offices (save for those lucky to be reabsorbed by the incoming administration). We will not miss them. Goodbye to their játijàti!