Why Buhari’s plane can’t fly but drive By Tunde Odesola

The imagery of the ‘amukun’ is popular among the Yoruba. ‘Amukun’ is the Yoruba adjective for the knock-kneed. Knock-kneed is the turenchi for the pidgin expression, K-leg. K-leg is K-leg; an abnormal curve of the legs that causes the knees to touch while the feet are apart.

I’ll recreate the ‘amukun’ imagery. One day, the ‘amukun’ set out on a journey down the hilly path to the marketplace. On that sweltering afternoon, the ‘amukun’ had 36 crates of doomed eggs placed on his head. The crates tilted at an obtuse angle, likelier to crash down than to be straightened up and earn cash for the ‘amukun’ upon sale.

 Traders and passersby saw the ‘amukun’ and his labour to save the eggs. They saw the rivulets of sweat trickling down his beard and sensed hot air puffing down his nostrils. They took pity on him and offered encouraging words. A passerby said, “Ah! ‘Amukun’, your load is tilted.” ‘Amukun’ shuffled an awkward footwork and replied, “Yes, my load is titled, but do not think the tilt is caused by my placing it dangerously, no; look down at my legs, that’s the cause of the slant you see upstairs.”

 Corruption was the K-leg that eventually killed Nigeria’s national carrier, Nigeria Airways, in 2003, 32 years after commencing operations. The Muhammadu Buhari administration gave the hope of resuscitating it two years ago. But the hope died in the bowel of ideation. Last week, however, a state-of-the-earth plane was introduced to Nigerians at a gathering featuring a lawgiver in Abuja. The unique plane doesn’t fly in the air and it’s not flown by a pilot. It’s a land plane that can be pushed by muscled ‘agberos’ on the roads of Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano; wherever its rickety engines refuse to cough to life. The technicalities of the plane’s quality failed to rise above the bar but dropped from the hand-picked bench into the dunghill of Federal Character and Quota System. The Nigerian plane can only drive on land and not fly in the air because of the age-long nepotism that has seen a lesser endowed region of the country, in terms of quality manpower, dominate the better endowed southern region. This phenomenon, made most pronounced under the administration of President Buhari, has northerners flooding the cockpit, awkwardly controlling almost all the levers of leadership while the plane refuses to lift up in the air. With the quality of people appointed by the Buhari administration as crew members since 2015, the Nigerian plane can, at best, drive on land while technicalities becloud the spirit and substance of law from the highest quarters.

This isn’t so with the country’s football. The Super Eagles’ 23-man team list to the just-concluded African Cup of Nations in Egypt comprised 13 players of South-East extraction. They were Francis Uzoho, Ikechukwu Ezenwa, Mikel Obi, Wilfred Ndidi, John Ogu; Chidozie Awaziem, Kenneth Omeruo, Moses Simon, Henry Onyekuru, Alex Iwobi; Samuel Kalu, Paul Onuachu and Samuel Chukwueze. From the South-South came five players namely: Daniel Akpeyi, Oghenekaro Etebo, William Troost-Ekong, Victor Osihmen and Odion Ighalo. The North supplied three players in the persons of Ahmed Musa, Abdullahi Shehu and Jamilu Collins while the South-West had Leon Balogun and Ola Aina.

 All through the AFCON competition, Nigerians were united in their support for the Eagles. In the over 190 million Nigerian population, there was no eyebrow raised as to the ethnic origins of the players because it was generally believed that the players were largely selected on current form. Nigerians saw the Super Eagles as theirs. They saw in the team, their own fears, hopes and imperfections. That was why amid the crushing penury, hunger, gloom and insecurity sweeping across the land, Nigerian masses saved up their widows’ mite, and went to viewing centres on match days to cheer their darling team.

 After serving as military head of state for almost two years, and civilian president for four years, Buhari is expected to know that Nigeria is sitting on a time bomb occasioned by the alarming insecurity, wanton killings and government-encouraged ethnic violence besetting the country. The 76-year-old Army general is expected to know that time is of the essence in dealing with Nigeria’s self-inflicted plagues. When it took him six months to inaugurate his first term cabinet, Nigerians called him ‘Baba Go-Slow” even as a former governor said he was brain-dead. On his Second Coming, however, Buhari promised to surprise Nigerians by the speed with which he would tackle national issues. The herdsman from Daura village in Katsina has yet to inaugurate his cabinet, nearly two months after his inauguration as President for a second term. The snail speed of his first term is giving way to a much more dangerous chameleon speed because when the snail is not moving, it can be clearly seen and urged on, but the chameleon can fade into the atmosphere unseen, turning Baba Go-Slow to Baba Full-Stop.

If you’ve been in the saddle for four years and got re-elected for a second consecutive term, failure to inaugurate your cabinet like the South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, did about a week after inauguration, shows that either the crown is too big for the head or the head is too big for the crown. Buhari’s failure to announce his ministers after almost two months of being in charge oozes laziness, unpreparedness, incompetence, insensitivity and irresponsibility. It goes to nail the point that the political architecture that flung Buhari on the nation’s presidential seat gives no room for the best brains in the land to fairly contest and win elections. Unlike the Super Eagles team which was, to an extent, a cross-section of some tested legs in the land, Buhari’s delayed ministerial list is currently meandering through primitive tribal labyrinth and will, as usual, sprout incompetent kinsmen to head most critical sectors.

The lopsidedness in Nigeria’s distribution of resources, positions and opportunities in favour of the North didn’t start on the last market day. It was long incubated in the hatchery of a Federal Character policy which comes alive only when distributing the oil wealth and tax profits generated from South, but goes dead when sharing political and administrative positions and opportunities among the regions. Don’t get me wrong, please; I’m neither in support of ethnic domination nor rotational power sharing as I believe that the best in the land should always lead. At a point in time, Ogun State produced some of the best brains in the South-West in Wole Soyinka, MKO Abiola, the Anikulapo-Kuti family members, Tai Solarin, among others. Today, Osun State clearly leads in journalism and religious leadership, producing most of the brightest stars in these areas. But the nepotistic body language of the Buhari administration lends support to the impunity and cold-bloodedness trailing herdsmen killings nationwide.

Like the wobbly legs of the ‘amukun’, the North’s lopsided domination was embedded by the British in the very foundation of the nation at independence. It was the same undermining wave of nepotism that upheld tribe, military background and selfish considerations, tossing the North’s choice of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo on the nation in 1999. In 2007, the self-adulating Obasanjo administration bequeathed another North-anointed president, Umaru Yar’Adua, succeeded by a South-South president, Goodluck Jonathan, who distilled stealing from corruption.

 On Saturday, the Senate gave Buhari till Friday to submit his ministerial list, saying it would go on a two-month recess from Friday just as the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry warned that delay in forming a cabinet wasn’t good for the nation’s economy.

Predictably, there would be nothing to cheer in the delayed ministerial list when it eventually comes out as nepotism, rather than patriotism, would inform the choice of the ministers and the country’s plane will remain grounded in the next four years as the ‘amukun’s’ crates of eggs come crashing down.