 |
| Okey Ndibe |
Junaid Mohammed may be the closest thing Nigerians have
to a bipartisan gadfly, an equal opportunity traducer of the country’s
rulers. A legislator in the Second Republic, Junaid was a frequent thorn
on the side of former President Goodluck Jonathan. He once declared
that, even if Mr. Jonathan’s father were given the task of evaluating
his son’s presidency, the verdict would still come back as a failure.
Junaid was such an effective irritant that Ahmed Gulak, one of
Jonathan’s key political advisers, characterized him as a man afflicted
with “diarrhea of the mouth.”
I for one believe Junaid called it right on Jonathan. And that’s why
Nigerians would do well to pay attention to what the man is saying about
President Muhammadu Buhari.
Many of the most inveterate champions of Buhari the Candidate are now
willing to own that Buhari the President has been underwhelming on
every crucial index and nothing short of disastrous on many indices. The
word “change,” which Buhari parlayed into political fuel that propelled
him into office, has since become a joke, in many Nigerian quarters as
unappealing as a four-letter word.
Mr. Buhari’s vaunted credentials as a foe of corruption have been
dealt savage blows by his administration’s clear signal that not all
corrupt suspects are created equal. Less than two years into the current
presidency, the promised total war against the corrupt has morphed into
a war against opposition party henchmen as well as military generals
deemed close or sympathetic to former President Jonathan.
Double standards and hypocrisy have become the rules of the
anti-corruption game. Erstwhile PDP grubbers who had the instincts to
dash across the line to the APC aisle appear wholly sanctified, cleansed
of their stench of graft and now wafting the perfume of ethical
wholesomeness. And even those indicted for corruption must be bewildered
that different standards are applied to different people. In one
category are those, unnamed, who reportedly surrendered their loot to
the government. There are others, named in media reports, who reportedly
returned their lucre. And then there are those who are facing
prosecution, denied the option of refunding their loot.
As strategies go, the Buhari administration’s war against corruption
is a mess, riddled with contradictions. The only people fooled by the
government’s claim that it is operating a policy of zero-tolerance to
corruption are those who volunteer themselves to be fooled.
And that’s where Junaid’s jeremiads come to play. In an interview
last week with Punch, the man x-rayed President Buhari’s unimpressive
response to allegations that his top military officer, Tukur Buratai,
and Interior Minister, Dambazau, owned astonishingly pricey real estate
abroad. And Junaid made the right call when he concluded that President
Buhari has displayed “a disastrous sense of judgment.”
I allow that neither Buratai nor Dambazau has been found guilty of
corruption. But that’s besides the fact. The two men are high-level
members of the president’s team. It is incumbent on Buhari to assure
Nigerians that he takes corruption, even the appearance of the malady,
seriously. It’s a clear misstep when the government either ignores grave
allegations against its officials—or steps forward to make excuses for
the accused.
President Buhari cannot persist in doing this “corruption” business
as former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua, and Jonathan did
it, and yet expect to be hailed as a more serious, more focused warrior
against one of Nigeria’s most debilitating scourges. All these former
presidents had a penchant for ignoring major—and often
credible—allegations of corruption made against some of their aides.
Junaid was right to point out that Buhari should have asked Dambazau “to
step aside.” Nothing would stop the president from restoring Dambazau
to his post if the minister got cleared after a transparent
investigation. Instead, the president chose to toe the line of his
predecessors.
So: what’s new? For Junaid, little or nothing: “I will put it this
way, we have exchanged one thoroughly corrupt government for one that
pretends to be honest and is doing an honest job while in reality, it is
business as usual.”
On the much-discussed Buratai affair, Junaid raised pertinent
questions that—unless addressed—will continue to haunt the Buhari
administration. It may well be the case that the Chief of Army Staff is a
genius at saving every kobo that came his way. It’s also possible that
his wives are gurus of investment who earned the funds that enabled the
general to own two real estate properties in Dubai. Whatever the case,
President Buhari owes a duty to Nigerians to demonstrate, a., that he
won’t shield anybody from investigation and, b., that he is willing to
scrutinize his appointees’ finances whenever the need arises. In fact,
in the event that General Buratai has nothing to hide, the
administration would be doing him a disservice by letting linger the
impression that he fiddled with public funds.
Here’s part of what Junaid told The Punch about Buratai: “Nigerians
deserve an answer and the answer must come quick because Nigerians
cannot be taken for a ride by either Buhari or any army officer. The
days when Nigerian Army officers can tell lies and get away with it or
pretend to be messiahs in Nigeria is now gone. Every soldier must prove
himself to be clean before we take them to be clean. We do not take
anybody from Buhari to be clean simply because he says he is clean or
his public relations men who are paid to say so, say he is clean, that
day is gone and gone forever.”
I say, Amen to that!
I recently counseled President Buhari to look beyond his parochial
precincts in making appointments and designing policies. I made that
intervention after examining the man’s extremely lop-sided recourse to
ethnic and sectarian jingoism in appointments in the country’s security
sector. In his interview, Junaid was more unsparing, accusing the
president of running Nigeria as a more or less family operation, with an
unmatched and shocking degree of nepotism.
“Let me say straight away that whether one calls it a cabal or a
mafia or some kind of cult or whatever, there is a group of people who
are wielding power within the Presidency under Buhari. Whatever you say
it is, it is and a lot worse. First, the most influential person in the
Presidency today is one Mamman Daura whom, as you know, is a nephew of
the President. His father was Buhari’s elder brother. In addition,
Mamman Daura was the one who singlehandedly brought up Abba Kyari, the
current Chief of Staff to the President…Next, the Personal Assistant to
Buhari himself is the son of Mamman Daura, next is what they call SCOP,
State Chief of Protocol, and is also a son-in-law to Mamman Daura
because he is married to Mamman Daura’s daughter,” said Junaid. And he
went on, reeling name after name of critical political appointees and
stating their familial connection to the president.
If—and I put a big if here—if Junaid’s allegations are true (as I
write, there had been no refutation from the Presidency), then President
Buhari is guilty of the basest privatization of political power in
Nigeria’s history. His defenders may say there’s no explicit law against
such an act, but it would represent an egregious moral affront. In
fact, if the Junaidian jeremiads hold up, then President Buhari would
have reduced Nigeria—a complex, diverse and extremely troubled
organism—to the size of his family and circle of friends.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
PLEASE BE POLITE