Epilogue – 2019 and Beyond: Myth and Counter-Myth; Plot and Plotlessness
Buhari stands for the presidential elections of 2019; he does not stand for the presidential elections of 2019. Either way, the spell has been decisively broken and the Buhari myth or legend is completely in ruins. Nobody, absolutely nobody thinks anymore that Buhari is the messiah Nigerians have been waiting for; nobody, absolutely nobody thinks any longer that Buhari is God’s answer to the plague of corruption in our country; nobody, absolutely nobody thinks anymore that Buhari is a fair-minded ruler who will do justice to all Nigerians regardless of their ethnicity, religion, region and social status. The myth, the legend has been completely shattered and things are no longer anything remotely close to what Nigerians and the world felt and thought about Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. Thus, the Buhari script of history and politics is very different in its Epilogue than the script in any of its earlier segments: the prologue, the first, second and third acts. And there are different versions of this Epilogue that is itself so different from the other parts of the Buhari script of the future.
In one version of this Epilogue, the real person that has emerged from the ruins of the shattered Buhari myth has liberated himself from the emotional and psychological burdens of the myth. It is no small thing to no longer have a heroic, larger-than-life reputation and profile but Buhari has reconciled himself to the change with grace and wit. His little-known sense of humour is now known by all and sundry. He retires to his farm in Daura and enjoys his last years basking in the love and the solicitude of dotting children and grandchildren. He is at peace with himself and the world. He receives few visitors and seldom travels out of the country, but the most consistent and devoted of his supporters and followers still sing his praises to Nigeria and the world and Buhari finds this consoling and comforting. To these supporters and followers, he is still “Sai Buhari!”. And thanks to the much better health that he now enjoys beyond the battles with the recurrent and debilitating ill-health crises of the eighth decade of his life, he is now less gaunt-looking, less morose-looking, even though he is frailer in general appearance and demeanor. Politics? No, now he has no time or stomach for politics at all.
Another version of this Epilogue exists. In it, though the shattered Buhari myth is still in tatters, unbelievably and unfortunately the man that has emerged from the ruins still labours under the unreal, phantasmal burdens of the myth. He is unmoved by how Nigerians and the world now think and feel about him: the bitter disappointment; the widespread fear and even foreboding that his rule may set Nigerians further apart than they have ever been; the worry, the anxiety, the angst that the modern world is leaving the majority of Nigerians behind. Unmoved by such widespread thoughts and feelings of dread, Buhari himself and his supporters and followers in general live in a world of their own, very much like Trump and his diehard followers and supporters in America. Like Trump and the hordes of his most fanatical admirers in America, Buhari and his supporters are in profound denial about the devastating aspects of his rule as an elected, civilian ruler: the ever-widening circles of poverty, joblessness, insecurity and suffering; the billions, even trillions of naira still being looted; the waste and squandermania still perpetrated unabated; the number of youths, women and children that remain economically disadvantaged and socially marginalized. The few scattered achievements are blown out of proportion and proposed as the dominant reality: an increase in the internal production of rice; the Boko Haram insurgency pushed back into its earlier preference for “hit-and-run” tactics, now seemingly unable to conquer, hold and control large swathes of territory; the arrest and prosecution of looters, most of them from previous administrations and opposition political parties. These are all touted as the “dividends” of Buhari and the APC’s “change” mantra for which Nigerian and the world ought to celebrate Buhari while nearly everything else in thje country is unraveling. Partial and misleading statistics, figures and data are trotted out by Buhari’s spin doctors and image-makers to convince Nigerians and the world that what they are seeing is not what they are seeing, that truth is not truth but facts that everyone and anyone can manufacture out of thin air. In this Trumpian or Buharian make-believe world, the Buhari script of history and politics departs totally from Nigeria as it really is for the vast majority of its peoples.
An even more frightening version of this Epilogue exists, compatriots. Here it is. The presidential elections of 2019 prove deadlocked, inconclusive. APC has imploded, a process that began before the elections; the different factions of the PDP are in total disarray; the smaller ruling class parties seem to have disappeared into the night of history; only the Kowa Party and the National Conscience Party are talking and making sense, though they do not have any electoral legitimacy to give them political salience and moral authority. The Left is weak, divided and politically irrelevant, though a few isolated voices are speaking coherently and passionately out of it and for it. The crisis is so deep and wide that it seems impossible to form a Government of National Unity (GNU) for which there are calls from all quarters of the political class. Law and order have completely broken down in many parts of the country and rampaging, marauding militias and gangs are having a field day virtually everywhere in the country. On only two previous occasions had the country’s political order been so close to total breakdown: the crises of the early to mid-1960s that ultimately led to the civil war of 1967-70 and the meltdown that led to the GNU headed by Ernest Shonekan after Babangida’s cancellation of the electoral victory of M.K.O. Abiola in June 12, 1993. But this crisis of 2019 is deeper and wider than either of these previous instances: Buhari’s personal situation is like the endgame “last stand” of Robert Mugabe (2017) and Jacob Zuma (2018) combined; the country’s general condition is close to that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo of the Kabila (father and son) years.
Concluding reflections
Let me remind you, compatriots, that since an epilogue is like a postscript that comes after all the actual and/or effective contents of a life or an experience have been reported, narrated or dramatized, none of the versions of the Epilogue outlined in this essay has happened or need ever happen. Buhari’s term in office has not ended and things are still fluid as we move toward 2019. In other words, the Epilogue that I have outlined here is an imagined one; it has no compelling or inevitable plot. Indeed, we can say that it is necessarily plotless. As a matter of fact, in all likelihood, none of the versions of the Epilogue outlined in this piece will happen as detailed; the greater probability is that we will get combinations of parts of these versions, together with parts of other versions that we cannot even imagine at the present time. Time has not run out on us, on our country and its teeming disenfranchised and marginalized communities, groups and individuals. We can still avoid any or all of the frightening visions of the future that the rule of Muhammadu Buhari and the APC in particular and the entire political class in general has unleashed on our country. I would like to bring my reflections in this series to a close – but not a closure – on this matter of an open, plotless future.
Muhammadu Buhari, as a major protagonist in the drama of Nigeria and its post-independence rulers, is the ultimate if unwitting victim of plotlessness. Let me break this rather abstract observation into an easily understood proposition. Thus, I suggest that plotlessness implies an absence of control, an absence of certainty and of guarantees: if things can go wrong, they will probably go wrong. On the other hand, you might expect that things are going to end badly; they unexpectedly turn out well in the end. That’s plotlessness for you.
The first coming of Buhari, 1983-85, was dogged by plotlessness, the ultimate expression of which was the coup that abruptly and unceremoniously ended his dictatorship. In the foolish belief that he could impose his own will, his own “plot” on history and politics, Buhari went so far as to promulgate a decree against truth that more less made this declaration: even if what you publish against my regime is true, you cannot and must not publish it if it will bring disrepute to me and my regime. It is one thing to think and act foolishly; it is another thing to think that others will also think and act foolishly because you have decreed that they should so think and act. That, I submit, is the folly and the tragicomedy of Buhari’s rule, both as a military dictator and an elected, civilian ruler.
Truth and plotlessness have also dogged the second coming of Buhari: Maina, Babachir Lawal, Ayodele Oke and now Usman Yusuf. Add to this list the repeated herdsmen massacres of farmers and their communities. The great majority of Nigerians, North and South, are not with Buhari and his version of “truth” in these and other cases. Here is the ultimate effect of this division between himself and most Nigerians on the matter of truth that Buhari cannot seem to get: he will not change his mind or his action(s); and he will not explain things to anybody. That decree against truth of his first coming still has a profound, unbreakable grip on the president. Meanwhile, all the rationalizations, all the half-truths about Buhari’s incorruptibility, his competence and willfulness are being relentlessly stripped of their power to persuade or to cajole. No man or woman can forever set himself or herself against truth and hope to get away with it. That’s a fallacy, a Buharian fallacy.
I call it a Buharian fallacy but recognize that it is “Buharian” only because the current president is the ultimate avatar of this political and moral malaise that almost without exception afflicts virtually all our heads of states and a good number of our state chief executives, past and present. And in this respect and only in this respect, Buhari is more “honest” than all our other rulers: he does not pretend, he does not dissemble, he does not hypocritically preach about “truth”. When and if he is exposed, he does not apologize and he does not change. He also does not accept responsibility for the consequences of his stolid indifference to truth. Those who still cling to the Buhari myth and blame the “cabal” for all the extraordinary acts and expressions insensitivity, callousness and power-drunkenness that we have seen in the second coming of Buhari take note: Buhari is the one with the power, the one that must bear the responsibility.
Where do the Left, the progressives, the true patriots, the popular masses and those who fight on their side stand in all of this? Must we/they just place our/their hopes on plotlessness? No! Plot has never gone out and will never go out of the picture, the narrative, the drama. Plot here implies planning, working and struggling for justice, fairness, equal opportunities – and truth. But this is the subject of another piece or another series.
Biodun Jeyifo
bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
