THE NATIONAL SECURITY RISK CALLED BUHARI

The evolution of constitutional government in Nigeria was truncated by the intrusion of military dictatorship in Nigeria, only six years after formal independence, and three years after Nigeria passed the Act of the Republic, and assumed full sovereign power over its own affairs, and no longer subject to the head of the Commonwealth.

Before the advent of the military executive authority was not only checked by parliament, and by judges who interpreted the law often asserting the limits of executive power, the civil service establishment, the bastion of executive power, entry of which was by selection and merit after transparent civil service examinations conducted by the usually independent Civil Service Commission, provided the highly professional and technical direction for executive authority and civil function. Nigeria inherited one of the most sophisticated and highly professional civil services in the world, and there was very little incident or talk of corruption. Where it occurred, it was scandalous, and quickly corrected through internal review processes and sanctions. In time, Nigerians would have understood that constitutional authority was the basis of all authority. That the power of state did not reside in an individual or the office s/he occupies, but in the constitution. The rise of military dictators subverted constitutionalism and created the “cult of personalities.”

Under the gun, they forced civil servants to authorize fake contracts, change routine laws, upturn the various regulatory codes, appoint unqualified relatives or concubines to strategic jobs, cook books, rewrite codes, and they generally lived above the law, and in doing this created the ethos of lawlessness that has snowballed into metastatic corruption. Among those who truly embody this military destruction of the Nigerian state is the man we now have as a civilian President, Muhammadu Buhari

Evidence before us now, and Buhari’s minders cannot prove this to be false, show that Buhari had a half-baked preparation for public life. It was no fault of his that he’s alleged not to have completed his secondary education, but it appears Mr. Buhari allegedly perjured himself in swearing to an affidavit stating otherwise. This is a redflag for a man who postures as the anti-corruption messiah. With the late Umar Yar Ardua his classmate, he was among a group of Northern boys, all in the attempt to bridge the wide gap with the South, who were quickly recruited, and sent off to military Academy, starting with the newly formed Nigerian Military Training College in 1962, and then quickly rushed off to Mons, Aldershot. From all indications Buhari received only six months of military training at Mons, for a two year officer training program. The irony of this was that by the time those chaps who received full military training returned, commissioned as Second Lieutenants, the likes of Buhari, whom the authorities at these Military Academies repatriated to Nigeria earlier, had already being fully absorbed, and promoted to Captains without breaking a sweat. This was the beginning of corruption in Nigeria.

The system was corrupted by inserting fellows like Buhari to carry on as “officers and gentlemen.” Buhari was a beneficiary of the corruption of nepotism.  The nepotism that favored him, and the ethnicization of the Army as a result of these early policies created wide resentments, and was one of the remote causes of the first Nigerian military coup. It is thus an Olympic sized irony that Buhari rails against corruption. He does not have the moral wherewithal to accuse others of corruption. He was a great beneficiary of corruption, and he is today, the conductor of the orchestra of corruption in Nigeria. That is why very few Nigerians, except those ignorant of his past, take him seriously on this issue of corruption.

Nigerians know what should be done to end corruption, beyond deploying the badly conceived EFCC as rabid dogs: reform the Public system, re-establish merit, and rebuild the police system. Return constitutional government to the conduct of public affairs. But Buhari is not about to make public his financial worth and how much tax he pays, even though he forced the Code of Conduct Bureau to arraign and convict the Chief Justice under spurious charges for not declaring his worth; he is not about to re-institute merit in public appointments; his appointments are nepotistic; he has never accounted for Nigeria’s oil revenue even though he is minister of oil, and he is not about to publicly disclose how much of tax payers money is expended on his frequent health junkets to the UK. Above all, the president broke a cardinal constitutional requirement, one of a series of his many impeachable constitutional breaches, in not formally writing and seeking the authority of the National Assembly by letter to travel to the UK last week, and transferring power legally to his Vice-President.

The opaque nature of Buhari’s health situation and his failure to disclose the nature of his frequent trips to the UK makes this president a frightening national security risk. He is not accountable to the National Assembly. Whoever is in charge of the president’s life controls him. And Nigeria is clearly not in charge of the health of her president. How much has this president therefore compromised, or been forced to compromise Nigeria’s national interest for his life? An up and standing National Assembly should have investigated him in the national interest, but the NASS is too riddled by partisan and sectional interests to check the president, and contain him, and do their duty to Nigeria, before Nigeria spirals into irremediable conflict.

The signs are all there. Increasingly, as a result of the conduct of this president, Nigerians no longer feel that a nation of laws still exist called Nigeria. Let’s call a spade, a spade, people now say: under Buhari, Nigeria has finally ceased to exist as a nation. It exists only on paper, but not in spirit. Buhari is not the president of Nigeria. He is the president of Northern Nigeria. This house is about to crumble under him. The last democratic hope is the National Assembly which must act quickly, because a stitch in time… well, we know it saves nine. Otherwise, Buhari may enter into dubious history when the chickens come home to roost.

 - Obi Nwakanma