The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Between Buhari and Atiku

    THE fireworks over who won or lost the February 2019 presidential election is just beginning in earnest. Dissatisfied with the outcome of the election as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), former vice president Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has petitioned the election tribunal to overturn the election of President Muhammadu Buhari. Alhaji Atiku claims that his party is in possession of authentic results indicating that INEC was wrong to have declared the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate victorious. But quoting a provision of the Nigerian constitution, the All Progressives Congress (APC), in its response, is arguing before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal that the PDP did not have a presidential candidate in the February 2019 presidential election because Alhaji Atiku was actually born in Cameroon, and is a naturalised Nigerian. The APC argues that the constitutional requirement for a presidential contest is that the candidate must be a Nigerian by birth, not by naturalisation.

    Apart from suggesting that the authentic result of the presidential poll is different from the one announced by INEC, the PDP and its candidate are also arguing that President Buhari does not possess the minimum educational requirement to run for president. They challenge the APC candidate to produce his WAEC result, the original of which the president had once suggested was in the custody of the Nigerian Army, but can no longer be found. President Buhari has since produced a certified copy from WAEC indicating the number of papers he sat for and how many he passed. It is hard to see these recriminations amounting to a major jurisprudential conundrum. Nigerian courts may have suffered a terrible intellectual and infrastructural decline in recent decades, and no one appears certain that justice can still be served regardless of how brilliantly counsels formulate their arguments, but sorting out the chaff from the grain in the Alhaji Atiku petition may not be as complicated as the welter of materials being presented before the courts suggest.

    What is likely to be the major bone of contention may be the traditional issues of votes cast and other electoral irregularities, particularly the matter relating to which results are authentic and which are fake. Alhaji Atiku claims to have procured the authentic results from the INEC computer server; the APC and INEC suggest that because the results were not transmitted electronically, they could thus not be in any server. The courts will try to make sense of these thorny issues. The extent of their success in charting the right path through these complicated legal processes in the age of computers and internet will depend on whether the courts have judicial experts who can adjudicate on the new area of electronic evidence. Information suggests that neither the presidential election tribunal nor the Supreme Court has such experts, not even one. The Nigerian justice system has become so antiquated that it is a miracle anyone still gets justice at all.

    Sadly, apart from the natural obstacles the courts must confront, such as poor infrastructure, poor funding, and anti-intellectual, incompetent and corrupt judges, they are unable to also convince the public that their decisions are fair, competent and independent. For decades, the independence of the judiciary had being corroded by meddlesome governments and politicised judges, with the justice system entirely skewed and rendered prejudiced and openly disdainful of truth. The situation is made worse by the unprecedented assault orchestrated by the Buhari presidency against the judiciary in the name of sanitising the third arm of government. In words and in deeds, and by carefully orchestrated attacks on some judicial officers, not to say the prejudiced elevation of judges in some parts of the country in recent years, the Buhari presidency and some state governments have managed to intimidate judges and rendered them incoherent and timid. It is not clear whether many Nigerians still think Nigerian courts are capable of delivering justice, especially in cases involving the government.

    The recent sack — for that is what the shenanigans surrounding his retirement amounted to — of the former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) and the elevation of the next in line in obedience to a bewildering tribunal order rather than the constitutionally laid down procedure appeared to be the final nail in the coffin of an independent judiciary. Can they, therefore, be expected to give judgements that anger the government or contradict the presidency’s position? The chances are slim. The courts are finally inoculated against justice and against global best practices. So, no matter how painstakingly the courts handle the Atiku petition, there will always be doubts in the minds of the PDP and their supporters whether justice had been served. After all, when President Buhari lost elections many times, and went from court to court to seek redress, he never thought the courts were capable of giving justice. And he said so repeatedly. After tampering with the judiciary, as he now seems to have done, can his opponents say they have got justice when judgements go against them?

    On second thought, it is good that Alhaji Atiku is in court to seek what he believes to be justice. The courts will have the chance, beyond rumours and suppositions, to prove that they are still independent and remain as effective and relevant as they used to be. There are not many Nigerians who can swear by them; nor is it certain that there are even many judges who can swear by their colleagues. But in a matter of months, it will be clear in what state of mental and spiritual health the judiciary has placed itself.

  • Zamfara, banditry and Nigeria

    NIGERIAN leaders may be reluctant to agree that the country is really at war. The fact, however, is that the turmoil all over the country is an indication of a low-intensity war that does not conduce to sustained or substantial development. The turbulence in Zamfara, which the government and the media have nicknamed banditry, suggests that no part of the country will be spared the debilitating consequences of poverty and poor leadership. How has the country approached the Zamfara quagmire that is unsettling the Northwest of Nigeria? The answer may be gleaned from how the country has approached the Boko Haram insurgency that has disrupted life and economic activities in the Northeast. The government has grudgingly acknowledged that poverty is a factor in the revolts, but by emphasising law enforcement and military pacification of the restive areas, it is suggesting that the socio-economic underpinnings of the crises are not quite as crucial in restoring peace as scaling up the military response.

    After more than 17 years of insurgency in the Northeast, the epicentre of the Boko Haram revolt has still not witnessed the restoration of peace and development. Indeed, scarce resources, when they can be eked out of unrealistic budgetary allocations, are devoted principally to the rebuilding of devastated communities and the rehabilitation of internally displaced persons. Yet, the country has had a poor record of rebuilding devastated areas, rehabilitating affected persons, and restoring peace, not to talk of addressing the root causes of the problem.

    The Northeast template is, sadly, being uncritically replicated to tackle the budding Northwest crisis. But the template will bring only temporary relief. What is clearly amiss is not so much the problem of poverty or dwindling resources and their consequences, but the extreme poverty of leadership and the stubborn determination of leaders for escapism. Until the government addresses the root causes of these problems, they will merely be tilting at windmills. The country’s political structure is too weak and archaic to bear the weight of the people. That structure must be addressed, or the country will be in danger of imploding.

  • The Zamfara conundrum

    AS is usual of the federal government, especially when it is confronted by complex and interwoven existential problems, it prefers to pass the buck. It passed the buck when criminal herdsmen began their murderous rampage through the Nigerian countryside years ago. When it faced reverses in its counterinsurgency operations in the Northeast, the government suggested that the opposition was politicising national security. Now, faced by the daunting problem of banditry in the Northwest, the government is blaming political and traditional elites. Those who collude with bandits, it warned, would be brought to book no matter how highly placed they are.

    The Northwest bandit problem is the latest existential crisis facing the country. But rather than seek a deeper understanding of the crazy phenomenon, face the country and explain the dynamics and dimension of the crisis, and announce what it planned to do to knock the crisis into a cocked hat, the government talks only of sledgehammer measures and the collusion it suspects are orchestrated by certain persons in those afflicted localities. The government conveniently sidesteps the more salient issue of why it allowed the problem to fester from its little beginnings less than a decade ago. The truth is that the government is too distracted, and it has allowed the problem to become a monster. It should own up, then study the problem if it can, and find a lasting solution beyond pussyfooting and recriminations.

  • Igbo and unending struggle for presidency

    IN their angry response to the statement by some well-known northerners that the presidency could not be reserved for anyone or zone in 2023, let alone the Southeast, Igbo politicians and opinion moulders vented their spleen on northerners advocating that heresy. The advocates insist that in 2023, aspirants from the North would feel free to run for the presidency, and would be determined to win. They did not quite define the North they had in mind, and were even more silent on whether it was fair or equitable to present a candidate for the top position so soon after someone from that region had presumably spent eight years in office. The northern advocates were President of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF), Yerima Shettima, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, and the northern gadfly and former federal lawmaker, Dr. Junaid Mohammed. They were all adamant that the presidency would remain in the North.

    The Igbo reactions to the presumptuous position of the northern advocates are divided into two almost mutually exclusive perspectives of the 2023 presidential contest. It does not matter which Igbo man is on what side, or how well-known they are. One side chafes at the arrogance of the northern advocates, presuming them to be either representatives of the North or voicing what may yet become the dominant position of that region. There is, however, nothing concrete to suggest that any of the three northern advocates for an open 2023 presidential contest is speaking for the North or representing the dominant regional position, regardless of their political status.

    Mr Lawal seeks some rehabilitation for his wounded pride, having become one of the earliest casualties of the Buhari presidency’s amorphous war against corruption. Mallam Shettima rattles ethnic sabre more than he rattles logic and patriotism. And Dr Junaid, as acerbic as ever, pontificates on every subject with the ardour of an intellectual ventriloquist. He knows nearly enough of everything, and his views, at least to him, are both unassailable and in large measure binding. Despite the limitations of the northern advocates, Igbo responders view the inchoate northern position as provocative and insensitive. As far as the Igbo leaders are concerned, nearly all the geopolitical zones of the country have had a shot at the presidency since the return to civil rule in 1979. Since then, they growled, no Igbo had been given the chance to be president. And since the presidency is expected to rotate between the North and the South, and the Southwest as an arm of the South had taken their chance in 1999-2007, it should be the turn of the Igbo in 2023.

    The Igbo must, however, find ways of overcoming, at two levels, the unconstitutionality of the rotation principle. At one level, the rotation principle is merely an expedient and crude measure to institute inclusiveness in Nigerian politics. There is even no consensus on the subject. At the second level, rotation is a political expediency of the political parties, particularly the leading parties. Though political parties subscribe to an informal zoning arrangement, it is not even a constitutional issue for them. They prefer to see which way the cat jumps before they commit themselves. And, more alarmingly, though the two leading parties cast furtive glances at each other’s manoeuvres, there is nothing binding them to an implacable rotation formula. Both parties will always watch the weather or commit to stargazing in order to determine how to angle their rotation, if necessary.

    If the Igbo are to make headway in 2023, they will have to first locate the right party in which to pursue their agenda. Then they must find a brilliant and acceptable politician whose affinity for his ethnic group, like ex-president Olsuegun Obasanjo’s, is truly and insufferably tenuous. Then, because of the dynamics of their population and land mass, they must recognise and respect all the nuances of promoting his candidature deftly. These will be herculean tasks, tasks not made easy by the ethnic suspicion and bigotry that still afflict the country — two vices the idiosyncratic Igbo will labour strenuously to combat and dispel.

    But there is a second option contemplated by the Igbo, and it seems even more realistic and transcendental. Rather than wait for what they describe as a chimerical rotational turn, some Igbo have suggested that no one should join issues with the northern advocates of 2023 presidency because that election is not as important as finding a way to restructure the country to induce permanence and bring closure to Nigeria’s fissiparous politics. According to them, without restructuring the country such that each region or zone develops at its own pace and to the satisfaction of its people, a president of Igbo extraction will be circumscribed by the same appalling limitations that undermined the presidencies of Chief Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. It is hard to fault them. Chief Obasanjo pretended to be his own man as president, but in reality, he was unable to exercise the powers and administrative freedoms he would have loved as president. Dr Jonathan was even more hamstrung. Not only did he bend over backwards to accommodate regions he felt could undermine his presidency, he allowed policy distortions to pockmark his leadership because he was always tap dancing before powerful interests.

    It is of course not the responsibility of the Igbo to determine what the country should choose between rotation and restructuring. That duty is a national one. But whatever option is taken will have colossal impact on Igbo political aspiration, particularly in view of the alienation they have been controversially subjected to under the Buhari presidency. To choose rotation, however, is a temporary remedy. The fundamental problems afflicting the country are a direct consequence of the misshapen structure of the country. Until that structure is reset, nothing lasting or productive can be built on it.

  • The CAN-NCEF disagreement

    BARELY two days after the Rev. Samson Ayokunle-led Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) visited President Muhammadu Buhari over his re-election, the National Christian Elders Forum (NCEF) took exception to the visit and condemned the secularisation of the apex Christian body. The CAN visit took place on March 29, 2019, while the NCEF’s biting response followed on April 1, 2019. The visit has, sadly, provoked an animated cut and thrust between the two Christian associations, with CAN arguing that the visit was in line with the dictates of the Christian faith that enjoins respect for those in authority, and the NCEF suggesting that the visit was congratulatory and an endorsement of a government complicit in the persecution of Christians. The two positions may remain irreconcilable for some time to come.

    It is obvious that the visit is not as popular as CAN leaders would have wanted. The leaders also probably suspected that the visit would be controversial, especially as the Catholic Church arm of the apex Christian body excused itself, according to some reports, from the visit. In fact, NCEF questions the doctrinal integrity of CAN leaders whom they accused of being indifferent to the plight of Christians under the Buhari presidency. But is NCEF itself truly representative of Nigerian Christians, at least as significantly as it tries to portray? It is hard to gauge.

    Perhaps if CAN leaders had presented a powerful and urgent address to the president denouncing official connivance at the killing of Christians in some parts of the country, NCEF might have been pacified. During their visit, CAN however, advised the president to run an inclusive government in all ramifications, including in the appointment of his security team. They also put in a word for the rescue of Leah Sharibu, the Dapchi Christian schoolgirl who has obviously been forgotten in Boko Haram captivity. But overall, what probably irked NCEF was the timing of the visit, which they said was sub judice, and the tame presentation of the CAN leaders, which by modern CAN standards seemed to lack oomph.

    The noisy exchange between the two Christian bodies, apart from being uncompromising and trenchant, have been unedifying of the church in Nigeria. Rev Ayokunle and his team may want to downplay the significance of the opposition constituted by NCEF, and the growing internal schism even within CAN itself, but if he does not find a way of bridging the divide between the two groups, and perhaps between it and other censorious groups that may still emerge sometime in the near future, irreparable damage may be done to the image of the body of Christ they both claim to represent.

    An assessment of the exchange between CAN and NCEF indicates that the misunderstanding between the two appears anchored on their disposition towards the plight of Christians in Nigeria than on their political or secular differences. NCEF, from its statement denouncing the CAN visit, seems more keenly aware of the sufferings of Christians, particularly in the northern part of the country, while the apex Christian organisation on the other hand claims to be more doctrinal. It is hard to see reconciliation between the two positions anytime soon. Closely leashed to this major difference is the fact that the Rev. Ayokunle-led CAN appears to be less militant than his predecessor’s, the Ayo Oritsejafor-led CAN. Nostalgia may, therefore, be playing a role in the disagreement, with both parties occupying choice sections of the moral and doctrinal high ground and training their secular guns at each other’s position.

    The church, through CAN and NCEF, may have to rediscover the effective methods by which they advanced their faith in the past millenniums, particularly under hostile regimes, neither by hostility towards adversarial governments, as seems justified and even sensible, nor by appeasement or superfluous friendship, as seems doctrinally sensible. Christians over the centuries have been torn between what tactics to employ in the advancement of their faith and the protection of their members. Neither CAN nor NCEF can escape censure in the current impasse. Though their misunderstanding appears unseemly, it is more a call for them to re-examine their faith and discover where their strength lies. In addition, they will also have to find ways of transcending their disagreements, along the classic leitmotifs of their faith, in order not to empower the opposition and make their members vulnerable to agnostic jokes and derision.

  • The demolition of Abuja orphanage

    ON March 26, 2019, the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCDA) demolished a Kubwa-based orphanage run by the Divine Wounds of Jesus Christ Church. Some 150 orphans were rendered homeless. The authorities claimed the orphanage had no land documents and had violated development control requirements. It is possible the FCDA was right, though sometimes the government can be needlessly heavy-handed.

    But where the FCDA was evidently and pigheadedly wrong was their refusal to take cognisance of the plight of the orphans who were exposed to the elements. After the demolition, the FCDA disclosed that it would find a solution to the homelessness they had caused. Said an official of the FCDA, Muktar Galadima: “In the beginning, we had sympathy and a kind heart for the children and we are looking for a way forward for the children, on how to cushion their hardships by relocating them so that they do not feel that they are rejected by the society. That is why the most important thing at this moment is the welfare of those children, which we are working seriously on. We want to provide succour for them, by getting them a temporary accommodation, even if it is for one year, so that our children will have a safe place to stay. This is because this government has a human face. We hope to do that as soon as possible.”

    This is incredible sophistry. A far better option for a government that claimed to be empathetic would have been to find that temporary accommodation for the children before carrying out the demolition. Would a few days delay have undermined the government’s purpose?

  • Police and the NSCDC officer’s death

    ON the surface, the order by the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, that a comprehensive investigation be carried out on the alleged murder of a Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) officer, Ogar Jumbo, should be applauded. But in fact it should not. Mr Jombo, an assistant superintendent, was allegedly clubbed to death by two police traffic wardens for a routine traffic offence. His wife and children were said to have witnessed the killing. But the police had claimed that the NSCDC officer slumped during interrogation, without saying why a traffic offence needed interrogation.

    Until investigations, which will include an autopsy, are concluded, no one can say categorically whether Mr Jombo was murdered by the police or not. But neither the government nor the police authorities had ever satisfactorily answered why a statutory law enforcement institution like the police constantly would need to be prodded or ordered to do their job. It should be routine. It is embarrassing to sustain a culture in which victims and other aggrieved persons petition the IGP to compel his subordinates to do their job. Even when there is a cover-up, higher authorities should not need to be coaxed to trigger remedial actions.

    Not many past IGPs have left a lasting impact on the police. If Mr Adamu is to leave a legacy, let him reform and restructure the police to enable them routinely do what is necessary at all times, discharging their constitutional mandates in such a way as to restore pride to an institution that has become the butt of jokes around the world. The country is tired of the display of mediocrity and inefficiency. The police should also be tired of the same lack of diligence and initiative in their establishment, especially the appalling cover-ups that seem to consistently foster the culture of bad policing. It is time the police restored pride in their service.

  • Squeezing APC out of Imo State

    AFTER the change of baton on May 29, 2019, Imo State is unlikely to remember with any amount of fondness that the All Progressives Congress (APC) once dominated the state’s political space for eight years. The outgoing governor, the self-willed and immodest Rochas Okorocha, contributed substantially to this sorry situation. It is not just because his preferred candidate, Uche Nwosu of the Action Alliance (AA), lost the governorship election, or because the APC at the state and national levels resisted his attempt to foist dynastic rule upon a people so ardently republican, or yet because he and the rump APC he so casually abandoned to its fate in the heat of the primaries split the so-called progressives vote. Yes, all these factors played some role in handing victory to the Peoples Democratic Party’s Emeka Ihedioha. But more significantly, the APC may be forgotten because it was unable to grab a toehold in the State House of Assembly, a small patch that might have afforded the party the opportunity to rebuild.

    Now, thanks to Mr Okorocha’s imprudent politics and imperious carriage, the entire Southeast can no longer boast of the substantial presence of the APC, not to talk of the party occupying any of the zone’s five Government Houses. Mr Okorocha may continue to claim victory in the senatorial election he fought very recklessly to win, but there is nothing to suggest that even if the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) gets round to issuing him a certificate of return, which they have so far withheld, he could retain that seat for much longer on account of the irregularities both INEC officials and his opponent in that race are determined to bring before the courts. Mr Okorocha is glib; he will hope to talk himself out of the sticky jam his poll win has brought him.

    Out of the 27 seats in the Imo House of Assembly, the PDP, who are winners of the governorship poll, took a sizeable 13. The AA, which ferried Mr Nwosu piggyback into defeat, corralled some eight seats; and the sentimental darling of the Southeast, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), snatched six seats. The APC’s governorship candidate, Hope Uzodinma, could not help his party to win any seat, indicating how perilously the APC had fallen out of favour. Whether this disfavour was caused by Mr Okorocha’s reproachable style, or sometimes uncouthness, or his disloyalty to the party on whose pedestal he fought for his senate seat and claimed to have won, is not entirely clear at the moment.

    Mr Okorocha of course refuses to claim responsibility for the APC’s obliteration. Instead, he blames the APC’s national executives, particularly the party’s chairman, Mr Adams Oshiomhole, whom he accused of being tyrannical and meddlesome. The APC chairman naturally denies responsibility, alleging that the governor’s style and methods are chiefly to blame for the catastrophe. What is, however, clear is that Mr Okorocha unwisely burnt his bridges, practiced scorched-earth politics, and exposed his party to the electoral inclemency and trouncing it justifiably received at the hands of its enemies in the state, many of whom disdained, and still disdain, the party as a pariah in the region. However, no one should absolve the party at the national level of a share in the blame. Their inability to deftly manage the obstreperousness of the Imo governor, and their quarrelsome and incautious approach to conflict resolution, not to talk of the intransigence of Mr Oshiomhole himself, virtually doomed all reconciliation efforts and doomed the party itself.

    Can the APC rebuild in that hostile political environment? It is doubtful. The party is not really loved, and has never pretended, especially under the suzerainty of President Muhammadu Buhari, to play inclusive politics. For the next four years, the president will probably merely gesture at the region, and will not feel under any obligation to embark on any rapprochement. Mr Okorocha himself has exhausted all the goodwill he got when he first practiced his sorcery on the state and mesmerised the booboisie with his inimitable bombast. In short, the APC in Imo State, and perhaps in the entire Southeast, will be an orphan. Except the party at the national level can once again summon its ruthless streak to cajole one of the zone’s governors to defect to the APC through the hostile and oppressive deployment of state security resources, including using the secret service, there may be no hope of life for the party in the zone in the foreseeable future.

  • Ekiti’s campaign against rapists

    LAST Monday, the Ekiti State Justice commissioner and attorney general, Wale Fapohunda, rolled out a new list of measures designed to curb rape and child molestation in the state. With the Child’s Rights Act, 2003 not doing too well in Nigeria, considering that only some 15 states have domesticated it, it is not surprising that rape and child molestation crimes have neither received the kind of attention they should get nor have they been fought with the kind of assiduity demanded by the severity of the crime against the female gender. The Ekiti initiative is, therefore, a welcome intervention. Rape is brutal and demeaning; against children it is horrendous. If Ekiti can manage to successfully implement the new measures it has just spelt out, and there is no reason it should not, it will serve as an example to other states and encourage them to take the campaign more seriously than they have ever done.

    Rape and child molestation are underreported, and statistics of abuse in Nigeria unreliable. But in general, there is an understanding that the crime has become ubiquitous, especially with the expanded horizons of the Internet and other visual aid facilitators of sex crimes. Mr Fapohunda indicated the brutality of the crimes and listed the steps the state needed to take to rein them in. He was worried that despite Ekiti’s high number of convictions of sex offenders, the crime had not really abated. Extraordinary measures would need to be implemented to tackle the crimes, he concluded. Said he: “As part of the efforts to tackle rapists and child abusers in Ekiti State, the government will henceforth conduct compulsory psychiatric test and publish the names and photographs of offenders on the website of the Ministry of Justice. The names of such offenders will also be announced on the state owned radio and television, while the monarch of the town the offender hails from will be alerted and their details obtained.” These measures are long overdue.

    If the campaign is not undermined by sloppy prosecution, corrupt investigation, or even the red tape that afflicts and paralyses efficient public service and the judiciary, the state is expected to soon make a dent on the crimes of rape and child molestation, and in the coming years perhaps start to regain lost moral grounds. Ekiti showed the way in how to rein in the atrocities of herdsmen who, under the guise of grazing cattle, engaged in pillage and robbery. The state’s initial success encouraged a few other states to take the herdsmen’s criminal bull by the horns. Other states should not wait for Ekiti’s campaign against sex crimes to yield fruit before planning their own comprehensive assaults; they should be alarmed by the disturbingly high incidence of sex crimes to launch their own initiatives.

    One of the reasons for rising incidence of sex crimes is the tameness of the law against rape and child molestation. Offenders are treated with levity, and victims themselves are either not reporting the crime or are understandably reluctant to be stigmatised. Stiffening bail conditions should be an integral part of the new campaign to tackle the crimes. Assuming that investigations will not be sabotaged by law enforcement complicity and cultural hang-ups, it is sensible, as Ekiti has proposed, to publish the names and photographs of sex offenders in an elaborate naming and shaming strategy. It is time the society became rigorously intolerant of sex crimes. Offenders could not traumatise the lives of victims and hope to be treated with levity and the embarrassing casualness that has marked the fight against rape thus far.

  • NUJ and Buhari’s second term

    FOR the umpteenth time, President Muhammadu Buhari has promised Nigerians improvement and positive change in his second term. It is expected that the improvement will be evident when juxtaposed with his first term. During their visit to Aso VIlla last week, the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) challenged the president to raise the level of his achievements considerably. Promising to do just that, the president appreciated the role journalists play in nation building and, as expected, listed some of his achievements in security, economy and the war against corruption. His visitors acknowledged his efforts but wanted him to do much more in tackling intolerance and redressing lopsided appointments.

    But the problem with President Buhari’s promises is not that he makes promises and deliberately and malevolently breaks them, but that his conception of the promises are sometimes fundamentally different from the rest of the country’s, and his standards of measurement or interpretation of success takes on worrisome variance. Does the president, for instance, believe his appointments are lopsided? In his first term, he spent a better part of it arguing that no lopsidedness existed in his appointments. As proof of his unimpeachable methods, he advised his critics to look at his cabinet where the constitution enjoins him to engage some balance. He does not see his one-sided security appointments, which critics often point at, and which the constitution does not make mandatory, as an example of imbalance.

    Does the president consider his government as subverting the rule of law? Not at all. He thinks the rule of law is a luxury that Nigeria’s tenuous national security cannot afford, as he has repeatedly argued. He seems to imagine both himself and his government as the lawgiver that transcends or at worst personifies the law. Asked shortly after he was re-elected how his second term would look like, he said it would be marked with taking tough decisions. The country was left to guess what kind of tough decisions he was referring to: tough actions against his opponents or critics, or tough in terms of the measures past leaders had been afraid to take? And does his appreciation of the role of journalists imply that he would inspire protective measures and enact laws that safeguard the profession of journalism? No one knows; and the president is not elaborating.

    If he is to make any impact, however — and he has a limited time to do that — he will indeed have to take extraordinary measures that underscore the positive change he talks glibly about. If the meaning of positive change is clear to him, he will need to make those desired changes quickly and steadily and hope that he can secure his legacy for all time.