Between Buhari’s age and performance

OLUSOLA FABIYI writes on the claim by President Muhammadu Buhari that age may limit his performance in office

In a period spanning 12 years, President Muhammadu Buhari traversed the length and breadth of Nigeria, campaigning for votes and telling Nigerians why he should be saddled with the onerous responsibility of leading the country. On three consecutive occasions when he contested the position of the President, he was rejected by Nigerian voters — going by the outcomes of the election results. It appears that a majority of the voters did not believe in his capacity to lead the nation. But Buhari disagreed with the results returned by the Independent National Electoral Commission in the three presidential elections as he headed to different tribunals to argue his petitions. His efforts at having the tribunals uphold his petition never materialised. And the man, Buhari wept, when he considered the unmitigated decline and challenges threatening the future of his fatherland.

Winners, they say, never quit and quitters never win. Buhari proved this age-long saying right when he, for the fourth time, threw his hat into the ring again.

Past president Goodluck Jonathan’s poor leadership gave vent to the clamour by Nigerians for a new lease of life in the country’s administration. Indeed, the Jonathan-led government literally paved the way for Buhari’s emergence as Nigerians grew more and more worried about the ceaseless killings in the North-East and the economy-crippling fuel crisis. The inability of the Jonathan administration to check incessant power outage coupled with the alarming unemployment index and frightening crime rate increased the popularity of Buhari, whose major selling points were his anti-corruption stance and his promise to battle insecurity.

By late 2014, it was clear where the pendulum of victory would swing in the presidential election as Nigerians were ready to vote out the former President and his political party, the Peoples Democratic Party, whose leadership had boasted that it would rule for 60 uninterrupted years.

Hate campaigns employed by the then ruling party to disparage Buhari did not dissuade voters from their goal, which is to get rid of Jonathan and the PDP. Even when the former Head of State was accused of not having a secondary school certificate, his supporters said they were ready to accept him even if he presented a mere electricity bill as certificate. That was the level of the frustration Nigerians witnessed under the then President, who paraded a PhD.

Since his assumption of office on May 29, the two-time lucky former soldier had been assuring his supporters and Nigerians in general that he will not disappoint them. He said he would fight corruption, ensure security, provide food for school pupils, encourage young farmers, provide four million new homes, pay N5,000 per month to the oldest and the weakest and create 740,000 jobs for young school leavers.

President Buhari also vowed to provide regular power supply by 2019, give Nigerians “super-highway modern rail and commercial airports, provide industrial and technology estates with free internet and electricity,” among others.

It is, however, instructive to note that there were concerns about the ability of the retired solider to rule. Among those who expressed this apprehension were the Governor of Ekiti State, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, and the wife of the former President, Mrs. Patience Jonathan. Both of them insisted that Buhari was too old to rule while Patience Jonathan even added that “people when they become old may not reason well and their brain may even be dead.”

The leaders of the All Progressives Congress, which fielded Buhari as its presidential candidate thundered back, saying that it was not true that the Daura-born major general was too old to rule. Specifically, a former Governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, said leaders who liberated their countries were not young. He had said, “Leaders who ruled their countries and liberated them ruled at old age. Nelson Mandela ruled South Africa at over 70 years. The man who liberated the United States of America ruled the country at over 70 years, so, if we are presenting Buhari, a 72 year-old man to liberate us in Nigeria, it is not a sin.” The electorate believed him.

It was, however, astonishing when the President admitted last week that his age would limit his performance. Buhari, who was a military governor at 33 and Head of State at the age of 40, said he would have loved to be President at a younger age. He will be 73 on December 17, 2015. The President spoke with Nigerian residents in South Africa on Monday after taking part in the 25th Assembly of Heads of State and Governments of the African Union in Johannesburg. He said, “I wish I became Head of State when I was a governor, just a few years as a young man. Now at 72, there is a limit to what I can do.” Despite his advancement in age, however, Buhari gave an assurance that his administration would make a difference, adding that what brought him to his current position was his love for the country.

The acceptance of whether he would do well because of his age caught the attention of a pressure group within the PDP, known as The PDP Media Watchdog. The group called for the resignation of the President. It described the APC and Buhari as a gang of hypocrites and liars. The group, through a statement signed by its leader, Tunde Lawal, said that the admittance of age hindrance by the President vindicated the PDP. Lawal said his party had raised the alarm that the President was not going to perform maximally due to the age factor. “The PDP is again vindicated by this confession from President Buhari. Nigerians will recall that during the presidential campaigns, the PDP and other well-meaning Nigerians complained over the choice of sponsoring Buhari as the presidential candidate of the APC and the effect it will have on the country when it comes to managing the affairs of a multi-dimensional nation like Nigeria, but the APC and its leaders said that age is just a number.”

The APC, however, reacted angrily to the position taken by the self-styled watchdog as it described the assessment as a product of poor thinking and deliberate mischief. The National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said if the authors of the statement had understood simple English and taken the pains to engage in deep contextual thinking, they would not have rushed to the press to ask the President to resign. He said, “What President Buhari was saying, which was lost on those who issued that jejune statement, is that only his love and passion for the country could have made him, at his age, to come out of retirement to seek the office of President, over 30 years after he presided over the affairs of the country.” Mohammed said that for 16 years, Nigerians gave the PDP the benefit of the doubt to move the country forward, but instead, the party put Nigeria in an auto reverse gear, speeding towards the precipice – a move which was only averted when Nigerians showed the PDP the red card.

Mohammed added that this was what necessitated Buhari to continuously seek the country’s highest political office, so as to help pull the country away from the precipice unto the path of socio-economic discovery. “Nothing else matters, not for him the excitement of an office he previously held and the quest for personal accomplishment,” the party’s spokesperson added. Mohammed said that if the country had been well managed, President Buhari would not at 72 be crisscrossing the whole world, seeking solutions to Nigeria’s problems.

Asking the APC to tread with caution, the PDP, however, told the ruling party to stop making a mockery of governance with premature celebration of imaginary achievements “except if the intention is to set up President Buhari for national and international ridicule.”

The party said it was embarrassing that the APC and the aides of the President decided to inundate Nigerians with propaganda and tissues of lies instead of assisting the President who was inaugurated three weeks ago to settle down, form a government and deliver on his campaign promises.

It wondered why it was difficult for the APC-led Federal Government to fill the positions of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and the Chief of Staff to the President. 

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, said the nation and democrats the world over were thoroughly embarrassed by the alleged lists of achievements made public by the party.

He said this action had further exposed the APC’s lack of capacity and direction as well as its inability to draw a line between propaganda by an opposition party and dissemination of credible information as a party in government.

Metuh said, “How can a serious government start claiming achievements and make bogus claims on the fight against terrorism when the effort is apparently losing steam as insurgents who had already been pushed to the verge of surrender in Sambisa by the Goodluck Jonathan administration are now surging back into the country under the APC-led government? How can a serious government claim achievements and attempt to explain away the untidy fact that after three weeks, it has not been able to organise itself to take basics steps by making conventional appointments such as those of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Chief of Staff to the President and advisers in key sectors of the economy?”

Metuh said that the APC should not by any means attempt to use its flimsy list of achievements to divert attention from its numerous campaign promises.

Within the short period of the ruling party in power, Mohammed insisted that the APC had, through President Buhari, succeeded in returning Nigeria to the comity of nations such that world leaders are now so eager to engage the President on how to assist the country in key areas, including security and the fight against corruption.

In a reassuring tone, however, the President said that he is like an old wine which gets better with age. Besides, he said that though at 72, he could not be called a youth, but that “he has in quantum the wisdom, patience, temperance and forbearance that age brings.” 

Explaining that he was the one that sought the office of the President, Buhari stressed that he will not disappoint Nigerians.

He admonished Nigerians not to be discouraged by the hard times, saying that the country was on the path of greatness. “My election is a proof that Nigerians know what they want once they make up their minds. You can give them the money, some refused to take it, some took it and said it is our money and they did exactly what they wanted to do,” Buhari added.