When in December 1983 Muhammadu Buhari took over as Nigeria’s Head of State in a military coup that ended the four- year rule of Shehu Shagari, his regime signalled a return to the authoritarian dictates of military politics after a hiatus of just four years. The no-nonsense rule that Buhari and his stern deputy, Tunde Idiagbon, established was supposedly modelled on the equally no-nonsense regime of Murtala Mohammed that had been terminated nearly a decade before.While the Mohammed regime ended on a bloody note one February morning in 1976, the Buhari/Idiagbon junta had a better but no less fateful expiration after 20 enervating months. It was one of the most dreaded regimes that Nigeria would know up to that time. But it nevertheless came to grief and its nemesis was the August 27, 1985 coupists, led by Ibrahim Babangida. Buhari, virtually retired for the day, was at prayers when Babangida’s messengers came knocking.
He asked to be allowed to finish his prayers, telling his unwanted visitors they needed no more than a bullet (should it become necessary to give the entire episode a ghastly turn) to complete their dreadful mission. He was thereafter led away and he would not again be heard from in public for three years, period during which only close family members could see him. He was not even allowed to pay his last respects to his mother who died while he was in detention.
After the time in detention, Buhari returned apparently with a great sense of injury. He kept away from the press for a long while. His icy distance and, perhaps, contempt for the press would gradually thaw over the years. Following this, he sought (or was sought) to give his own side of the story between him and those who shoved him out of office.
He granted one or two widely reported press interviews, including the one with TheNews in which he famously talked about a ‘fifth columnist’, the mole in his regime whose mortal blow eventually brought that government to its knees. With his semi-reclusive lifestyle, before and after this interview, Buhari both cut and presented the picture of a wronged man who desired an opportunity to show Nigerians his true person.
The putsch that led to his ouster, in my reading of his thoughts, gave him no room to show Nigerians the real person behind the stern exterior. This probably was the catalyst for his urge, which over the years became a determination (some might say obsession) to return to public life. It was probably at the root of his decision to enter the race to become Nigeria’s president. Three times he sought this office before his latest attempt, and three times he was rebuffed at the polls.
His determination would pay off at the fourth attempt which turned the tide in his favour, thanks to the strategic alliance between his party and the Action Congress of Nigeria. Looking at Buhari today and the tortuous route he took to arrive at his present position, one cannot but conclude that he is a man on a mission, one who thinks he has an unfinished business awaiting his attention. This is the best way to explain his consistency in offering himself to Nigerians for service.
The Buhari of 2015 is a more altered individual that is set to govern an even more altered space than he presided over as a military ruler until 1985. He seems a more mature and dignified individual who views everything with the detached air of one who has learned from experience. His attitude bespeaks that of somebody who has ‘seen it all’, and only now sits back in bemused silence watching and waiting to see how things would turn out.
His return to power at this point of near total chaos and social anomie might have been God-ordained. He landed after the visitation of locusts, a profligate and reprobate cohort of rulers whose excesses can only be erased by the principled modesty of the newly-inaugurated president and his deputy. Buhari came from an era when military personnel still had some sense of the value of proportion and were yet to cross the red line of rectitude that thrusts the succeeding generation of rulers into the epicentre of corruption.
It cannot be expected that Buhari would be allowed the level of modesty that he may desire both on account of his age and the expectations of Nigerians in these very austere times. But how hugely does his simple image aboard an aircrcaft or at 10 Downing Street contrasts with that of even the hangers-on of ministers, their aides and other VIPs of a recently bygone dispensation.
This expression of modesty is not and cannot be a PR stunt by a former head of state, a 73-year-old who had once been a military leader- at a time when such leaders had total and unquestioned control of their domain. Their every word, including the very mundane and banal, had the immediate effect of law. What then would he want to achieve now by pretending to be modest? False modesty, therefore, cannot be the object of Buhari in travelling light and generally maintaining an austere outlook.
His must be a genuine attempt at reorienting Nigerians from the emptily ostentatious ways of our recent past. Nigerians need the vitamins of honest, dedicated leaders to stir them in the desired direction of attitudinal change. Nigerians would need more than the personal modesty of one man to stem the tide of unemployment or the ravages of insecurity. They would need more than mere sloganeering to put food on their tables or provide electricity round the clock.
Indeed, they would need more than the promises of a leader who proclaims his connectedness to everyone and no one group in particular. But without the gravitas of personal example, as set especially by their leaders, Nigerians would remain caught in a time warp, bound to their wasteful past. This is the reason we all must support Buhari’s subtle acceptance of the equality of all Nigerians and his vote for change from a wasteful past to a future of modest and, hopefully, honest leadership. Travel well, Buhari!
