What really would be the legacy that President Muhammadu Buhari would want to live behind? Many writers have been wasting their time asking such inane questions since Mr. President won his first presidential election. I do not think that Buhari is bothered about such things. Legacy? What legacy? Before asking such questions, it should not be out of place to check if the man Buhari is bothered about how the public opinion judges him.
From what I have seen of the man, public opinion means nothing to him. Or, how many people have written and spoken against the way his government has become a cluster of family and friends. He has just finished the first year of his second term, and he has not bothered to prove his critics wrong. No; he has remained unfazed in the way his appointments have been made. This is especially so in the way he has made up his national security agency heads; the top brass of the military, the Police, and security agencies, in fact the military and para-military agencies.
Unfortunately, it did not stop there, but his filially connected close appointees and non-government appointees but who pull powerful and consequential strings in the corridors of power, not only abound, but recently, caused a national scandal when a shot, yes, a gunshot, rang out in the hallowed grounds of the Aso Rock Presidential Vila.
What really could have been going on there to the extent that it reached the level of firing a gunshot? Well, action has been said to have been taken on that score and thus dozens of security agents previously posted to the Villa, may have been redeployed. But has that addressed the matter of non-security Aso Rock types whose frosty relationships cause the hoopla in the first place? No, is the answer! It has been swept under the carpet, but it may resurface again, unfortunately.
Apart from the makeup of the apex of the national security agencies, their poor performances, especially in taming the varied sources of insurgency in the country, has been under unrelenting condemnation for years. That national security has fallen to its lowest ebb is not the issue here, at least, no one will creditably blame Buhari for the insurrections. He could not have caused the Boko Haram insurgency and the group’s murderous campaign began ever before Buhari emerged President. But in what way has he tackled it?
It is amazing what great difference the pronouncements of Northerners have made in the President Buhari administration. For years, Southern Youths, various Southern Nigerian bodies and organisations and even Southern monarchs and religious leaders have shouted themselves hoarse denouncing the insecurity that has blanketed the southern part of the country. The President simply turned a deaf ear to their cries. Even before the cries of the Southerners rent the air, such cries have been bellowing from the Middle Belt. Somehow, Nigerians other than Middle-Belters largely pretended they did not hear that cry until Lt. General T. Y. Danjuma asked his Junkun people to defend themselves the best way they could because they had been abandoned.
Terrible denunciations were all that Danjuma reaped. He was denounced. He was abused. He was maligned. He was smeared. But he had breached the dam and so the flood gates opened. Talks about how states could, instead of lying prostrate for insurgents to trample on their backs, build outfits that would complement the efforts of the Nigeria Police Force, and give their people a modicum of defence against criminals, began to be taken seriously. Today, Amotekun has a meaning in Nigeria, though its roar has not been heard and its bite has not wounded anyone. But it is there. It can only grow stronger and its example will be copied by others.
Here, there and everywhere, talks about a certain kind of insurgency, that of the herdsmen, gained momentum over the years as the excesses of the herdsmen kept multiplying. But the government acted as though it never heard such complains. Instead of checking the herdsmen’s extravagances, pillaging, immoderations and robbery with violence and large-scale murder, the government came up with pro-herdsmen’s postulations such as cattle routes, cattle colonies and RUGA whereby land would be provided by communities or states to enable some cattle owners carry on with their totally private businesses of nothing but animal husbandry.
Then within the week, there was a convergence of cries as various Northern groups and personalities wailed about the state of insecurity in the nation. Leading the group was The Sultan of Sokoto and President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar. He said: “Buhari, others should have sleepless nights over insecurity” as the Daily Trust newspaper titled its story.
Credit: https://www.independent.ng
