Unlike other presidents who distanced themselves from their unflattering appellations, Buhari is owning his. Recently, during an interactive session in Washington, he spoke about this perception of his government saying he was indeed “Baba Go Slow” but will be “slow and steady.” It is interesting that Buhari borrows from popular culture to make a case for the pace of his administration but I am afraid he still fails to address the core of people’s fears being expressed through the nickname.
The problem is not simply that his administration requires an intravenous injection of adrenalin but largely that there is little about him that convinces one that he has a definitive grasp of the nation’s problems and has fashioned requisite action plan to confront them. These days, it is not uncommon for his sycophants and devotees to refer to “Buhari’s body language” as having solved this and that problem. What astounds a more critical observer is that Buhari’s words themselves, when he speaks extempore, do not match the potency ascribed to his body. How does a man’s body language contrast his own voice?
Also in Washington, when Buhari was asked what his solution to the lingering problem of Niger Delta was all about, he rambled about “election results” and “political realities” of how those who gave him 97 per cent would not enjoy the same benefits as those who gave him five per cent, yet he would be a father to all. What I found most worrying about that incoherent response was that he still did not touch the issue of Niger Delta especially considering the subsisting amnesty programme ends in a few months. Does that mean he has no plans for Niger Delta or he has not even given the issues any thought at all?
These days, we are blitzed with non-evidentiary stories of corruption – as if that is a novel phenomenon in Nigeria. Oh, the money that accrued from the sale of one million (or 250,000, which one?) barrels of stolen oil was deposited in individual accounts and the United States is “helping” us to retrieve it etc. On fuel subsidy controversy, Buhari has contradicted himself between electioneering to present time such that one rightfully worries he has sold out to the corrupt oil cabal he promised he would fight.
Buhari won an election riding on the horse of anti-corruption fight but now in office, his much-touted reputation has been overcome by sheer talk, aided by talkers-in-chief like the Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, who reported a gossip he picked in the US about a nameless minister who stole a staggering $6bn. Up till now, Buhari has yet to unveil his comprehensive and long term plans towards fighting corruption through structural realignment of vandalised institutions. To arrest people and prosecute them are easy. The real imagination begins when he develops sound ideas that will make acts of corruption more impossible for thieving public office holders.
On Boko Haram, Buhari’s slow and steady approach is costing the nation piles of growing dead bodies. Recently, his office claimed only weapons obtained from the US can defeat Boko Haram. This makes no sense. The US may be the leader in military weaponry but Russia is not too far behind and the enemy in our case is not too sophisticated either. On the economy, the naira is sliding rapidly and there is little indication he is urgently pursuing programmes that will revamp the nation’s tottering economy. When people call him Baba Go-Slow, they allude to the enervating and frustrating problems of Nigerian traffic congestions where cars move ever so slowly while robbing the nation of productive man-hours.
Since Buhari and his people are used to resorting to literature to explain their pace, one can only enjoin them to look beyond the obvious lessons to read the spirit of the text.
ABIMBOLA ADELAKUN
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