Who is in charge here? By Mahmud Jega

Old time newspaper readers must have chuckled yesterday when several newspapers reported President Muhammadu Buhari as saying that he is in charge of his government and had not abandoned his constitutional powers to his nephew, Malam Mamman Daura. The president spoke to the online medium The Osasu Show. He said, “I don’t know where [those making the allegation] get their news from. I stood for the election. I visited every local government in Nigeria. I travelled by road, by air and so on and we had one of the most credible election. So whoever feels he has lost somehow is his own problem. I have no problem.”


In recent weeks and months, allegations were routinely made in political circles and the news media that the president was not in charge of his government; that a cabal of unelected persons has seized control and is calling the shots in the State House. The president’s wife Hajia Aisha sensationally added to the chorus when she alluded to the same cabal whose members, she said, do not even have voter’s registration cards. Names are not often mentioned in these allegations but the men widely believed to constitute this power cabal are Malam Mamman Daura and the president’s Chief of Staff Malam Abba Kyari. Sometimes Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir David Lawal is added to the mix.

In 1986, when French centre-right political parties triumphed in parliamentary elections and the new prime minister Jacques Chirac began a struggle for power with the Socialist President Francois Mitterrand [what the French called “cohabitation”], Time magazine did a lead story titled ‘Who is in charge here?’ As most of its readers knew, that phrase arose from an episode on March 30, 1981 when John Hinckley shot US President Ronald Reagan as he emerged from a hotel in Washington, DC. With Vice President George H.W. Bush in a plane to Hawaii and with the US government in some disarray, Secretary of State Alexander Haig stood up from an emergency Cabinet meeting and went to the press room to try to reassure his countrymen that things were under control. He infamously said, “I am in charge here…” That episode ridiculed General Haig for the rest of his life, in part because it was constitutionally wrong. Apart from the Vice President, the next officers in the US presidential line of succession are Speaker of the House of Representatives, President Pro Tempore of the Senate [in the US, the Vice President is the Senate President], followed by Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defence, Attorney General etc.

In Nigeria here, the men alleged to have usurped presidential power are nowhere in the constitutional line of succession. As a matter of fact, unlike the US, Nigeria has no line of presidential succession beyond the Vice President and Senate President. I will like to remind the National Assembly to enact a US-style Presidential Succession Act and elongate the list in the event that all three officials are lost in one cataclysmic event. Not only is the alleged Nigerian cabal not in the line of succession; the members also did not wait for presidential incapacitation but are alleged to have taken full charge when the elected president is fully on his feet.

President Buhari has now officially denied that anyone has seized power from him, and I personally believe him. Neither the SGF nor the Chief of Staff could possibly appoint anyone into any senior post unless Buhari gives the nod, whether in writing, on phone, by word of mouth, with a nod of the head or with the click of fingers. To that extent he is the one in charge. What cannot be ruled out however is that he listens disproportionately to some people before he gives his nod to appointments, policies, projects, sacks, dissolutions, reconstitutions, prosecutions, EFCC apprehensions, military operations, DSS stormings, foreign travels and draft speeches.

Personally if you ask me, I will say there is nothing wrong with that because a president must listen to some people. Even the world’s most overwhelming leaders such as Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler listened to some people, at least the ones that reinforced their instincts. Even world leaders with the greatest moral authority such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi and Pope John Paul II also listened to some people. The only questions are, who are the people you listen to as a leader, how much do you listen to them, and ultimately also what is the quality of governance arising from listening to them?

Two weeks ago when I wrote about the rumpus in the State House when both president and first lady made some gaffes, I said in passing that both Mamman Daura and Abba Kyari are men of high intellect. Many people sent text messages to me and questioned that. Well, let me elaborate a little. Both men schooled in the best British universities. Mamman Daura was editor of the New Nigerian at the height of its power and authority in 1969-74 and was a disciplined industrialist afterwards. Kyari headed a big bank and has written many scholarly treatises. Let me stop the testimony there and proceed to the most important question. If indeed these men [plus or minus the SGF] are the real drivers of action in the Buhari presidency, does the overall quality of politics and governance attest to their intellectual prowess?

That is where many Nigerians have doubts. Of course Nigerians are not being fair to the alleged cabalists because no one gives them credit for the smashing successes of the administration, notably in degrading Boko Haram; in the anti-corruption campaign that has at least brought mega treasury looting to a halt, however temporarily; and in bringing out 21 of the Chibok girls, a deed that must have involved very courageous intellectual groundwork. However, there are many strategic elements of Buhari’s rule that at this point have controversial utility and those are precisely the ones that people like to blame on the cabal, rightly or wrongly.

Let me list a dozen of them. Number one, slow and uncertain response to the economic crisis. Number two, reducing APC to the least relevant ruling party in Nigeria’s history. Number three, rapidly sidelining APC’s top leaders such as Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Rabiu Kwankwaso from the scheme of things, allegedly due to 2019 calculations. Number four, making appointments that enabled some sections of the country to allege marginalisation and Northern domination. Number five, pursuing a policy of displacing Tinubu as political leader of the South West when there is no one readily available to fill his shoes. Number six, having frigid relations with the National Assembly since June last year. Number seven, driving the Judiciary into the ranks of the presidency’s silent enemies. Number eight, making no strategic effort to turn feelings towards the president in the South East and South South regions from hostile at least to grudging respect. Number nine, allowing too much foreign travel in the president’s schedule until citizens complained. Number ten, spending too much time blaming the former regime for problems. Number eleven, doing little to take care of the president’s weak communication skills. And number twelve, allowing the tension in the president’s family to blow into the open.

Too much newspaper and social media space has been spent alleging that a cabal drives the Buhari regime and the president has vehemently denied it. My advice to those alleging cabalism is to change tack. Whether there is a cabal in charge or not, the thing to do now is to demand that the strategic miscalculations noticeable in the administration’s political and governance posture should be remedied as soon as possible.