Buhari is slow and steady but is he smart? -By Abimbola Adelakun

The President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari

Nigerian presidents, since 1999, have been given one appellation or the other that conveys public feelings about them, their style of governance and also a shorthand description of their leadership. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was given “Baba” a rather (over)respectful nickname for an older leader that summarises the paternalism of leader-led relationships in Nigeria. To the late Umaru Yar’Adua’s “Baba-ism” was attached a satire – “Baba Go-Slow” – which, as his government wheels developed multiple flat tyres, became “Baba Stand Still” or “Baba Roadblock.”

Dr. Goodluck Jonathan lacked a fatherly mien and was soon labelled “clueless”, a stamp that haunted his government. If Yar’Adua received some reprieve because of the manner of his death and the events of history that followed, Jonathan inherited the pile and Nigerians heaped it on him. He was lampooned, not merely for the leisurely manner he approached governance, but for letting government drift. He was no “Baba” figure, but with a PhD, he was a symbol of futility of accumulated certificates as against the sound knowledge required to confront Nigeria’s myriad of problems.

With the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria has returned full scale to “Baba-ism.” The cynical appellation gifted Yar’Adua has been resurrected and stamped on Buhari. Interestingly, Buhari’s “Baba” designation preceded his Presidency. During electioneering, his followers made the “Sai Baba!” hail a campaign promise in itself – this man will lead the nation with fatherly benevolence. Four months after winning the election and two months as President, he has been re-crowned “Baba Go-slow.” Even more amusing is the creativity with which some Nigerians accented his new title – Sai Baba Go-Slow!

His media aides and concerned Nigerians have tried to counter this naming by making a case with rhetoric similar to what was deployed to defend Yar’Adua’s administrative lethargy. Now, we are told that Buhari has to be slow because the scale of rot is so deep he needs to clean “the Augean stables” with “scrupulous and painstaking planning.” His supporters tell us to “have patience” because the President is building a structure that will redeem the years the cankerworms ate and such an elaborate vision requires a thoughtful approach to governance.

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.

In the fable of “The Hare and the Tortoise” where the phrase “slow but steady” came from, the story is about the triumph of intelligence over brute strength. The hare, the fastest in the animal community, competed with slow and sluggish tortoise in a marathon race. The hare, high on its natural ability, thought the race would serve the singular purpose of mocking the tortoise. Wily tortoise knew it was no match for the hare but devised a cunning strategy to emerge victorious over the hare. The moral of the story was not merely about a slower creature outrunning a faster one but that to be smart, to be inventive, to be calculating, to be shrewd and display an astute understanding of context and situation was far more important.

Buhari should know that being slow and steady is analogue. In this digital age, one needs to be smart as well.