Who is Buhari going for? by Yinka Olaito

Essence of great leadership is service. Outstanding leader holds the collective mandate of the entire society in trust. Effective leaders strive to balance the needs of everyone as fast as time permits. Great leaders know they are racing against time and time waits for no one. The faster they can go and the larger the imprint of their footprints on the sand of time within their allotted space, the better for them and their legacy.


Any time leaders forget they do not have the luxury of time they whine and behave as if time is limitless. Leaders in the above scenario do not take control and invest time wisely on things which really count. In no way does this mean such leaders are not engaged in activities. It is just that their impacts are not clearly defined. By May 2018, Buhari’s administration will be three years old. This means almost one thousand two hundred days will be gone for good or bad. Out of these days, one eighty days were wasted trying to select a team.

We can give excuse things were not in their very good shapes when he came in. Not many people will take that into memory. People will say he was fully aware of these when he was campaigning. Then, when he was campaigning, he said he would turn things around within one year. He promised he would fight corruption headlong and made Nigeria’s economy work better. His party promised they would resolve power, security and petroleum palava within one year. He and his team knew then these were sources of pain.

In the past two years and nine months, we have heard different songs with disquieted tunes coming from him and his team. Such tune like ‘we did not know the previous administration had done so much damage etc.’ This kind of tune is sounding like a ping pong ball in our ears. We do know governing Nigeria, especially if a leader wants to fight corruption, is not going to be an easy task. President Buhari ‘ s experience as a Military leader in 1983 should have given him a clue. Despite the fact he wanted to create order in a system that was a ruin of its original nature, the system vomited him under false pretence. One of such was he was not doing things with human face.

1983 was a time when our sophistication in corruption engineering had not grown wind like we have now. In 1983, people still had a good sense of what a good name mean. The society’s sense of shame was still wobbling between 35 and 50%. Unlike today, good name and sense of shame had been thrown into the trash bin. Our judiciary and education sectors in 1983 might not be perfect but they were better than what we have now.

The division and rancour amongst the ethnic groups in 1983 was an open wound for a nation like ours but their strength had not been blown beyond proportion like we have in our hands in 2015 when President Buhari was aiming to come back to power. In 1983, there was no Boko Haram but we had its relative in ‘Maitasini’ or whatever they were called then.

With this background knowledge, one hope President Buhari would have sharpened his governance wisdom. More so, given the fact he had made attempts to gain power thrice and failed. With the failures, one expects President Buhari should have used the opportunity of failures to perfect his strategy. This wisdom gained should have been used by him to swing into action as soon as he was sworn In. One expects speed from him if he really understood time is of an essence. One would have thought he would have worked so hard like someone who is without a hope of second term.

Anyway let us come back to the question this article is asking. I listened to a track in one of the late Hugh Masekela ‘ s songs titled ‘send me’, which became popular again over the weekend after the new South Africa President, Cyril Ramaphosa, included it in his maiden State of the nation’s address. Part of the lyrics say “I wanna be there for the alcoholic,I wanna be there for drug addict, I wanna be there for victims of violence and abuse, send me”.

On this basis I asked our President ‘who are you going, there for?’ Or in the younger generation’s parlance ‘ who are you routing for?’ I quite understand war against Boko Haram has been decimated, only that in the process of this, many civilians have suffered untold abuses. Mr. President sir, can you truthfully say you have been there for this people? Fulani’s herdsmen had killed many people and the level of violence unleash on ordinary Nigerians had reached a proportion that is unimaginable sir. Have you been there for them or have you gone for them? Last week sir, a nineteen-year-old boy in Florida killed 17 students in a high school, the President was there.

With the fight against corruption, you have tried. Sir, can I find out if you are aware strange snakes are eating huge sum of money in Joint Admission and Matriculation Board’s purse. Many Nigerians are still dying because of bad road network sir. Nigerian people have sent you to address this headlong. How far have you gone? Nigeria National Petroleum Corporations are still bleeding, we have sent you to at least make effort in ensuring this corporations’ bleeding blood clot. If the bleeding blood clots, we can then all work on healing the wound.

Rumours are everywhere money stolen by noted thieves collected and repatriated from abroad are strategically finding their way out of the national purse. Is that true sir? Our hospitals are still looking like route to the morgue. I must acknowledge, there is a significant improvement in electricity supply but people also know your efforts in internally generated revenues had yielded good fruits.

The voices of thousands of unpaid workers at the states’ level are going higher to their gods every day. The good book says do not delay in paying wages of labourers due to them. Mr. President, it is good you go for them now. If this delay in wage payment continues, the few faithful amongst them may begin to stylishly deep their hands in the state’s purse by crook. That is if some have not started to do this already?