Jonathan and the Buhari burden

Is it time for President Goodluck Jonathan to bare his fangs against Gen. Muhammadu Buhari? OLALEKAN ADETAYO examines the feud between the duo which might be a long-drawn battle

One of the steps always taken by people who desire to do well in any position (political offices inclusive) is to keep in touch with their predecessors and tap from their wealth of experience. Such steps are aimed at learning from the successes and failures of such predecessors in order to avoid some pitfalls.

The position of the President is not an exception in this regard. Apart from the various advisory bodies, incumbent Presidents sometimes rely on their predecessors for advice on issues of national importance.

Interestingly, the nation’s constitution also recognises the importance of tapping into the experience of former presidents with its provision for the Nigeria Council of State as an organ of government. The council’s functions include advising the executive on policy making.

The Council of State consists of the incumbent President, who is the Chairman; Vice President, who is the Deputy Chairman; all former Presidents of the federation and all former Heads of the Government of the Federation; all former Chief Justices of Nigeria; President of the Senate; Speaker of the House of Representatives, all state governors and the Attorney-General of the Federation. Such is the importance attached to the wealth of experience of former Nigerian leaders.

 It will therefore naturally be a thing of concern for a sitting president to have one of those who he should ordinarily rely on for advice and support to be his number one public critic.

This is the scenario currently playing out between President Goodluck Jonathan and one of his predecessors, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd).

The Daura, Katsina State-born general was the Head of State between December 31, 1983 and August 27, 1985. Since the return of democracy to Nigeria, Buhari has attempted to become a civilian president three times (in 2003, 2007 and 2011) without success.

In 2003, Buhari contested the presidential election as the candidate of All Nigeria Peoples Party.  The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in that election, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Buhari was defeated with a margin of more than 11 million votes. He contested the result of the election up to the Supreme Court but lost. Till today, Buhari still holds the belief that he won that election but that he was short-changed by the Independent National Electoral Commission and the courts.

Buhari, as a candidate of the ANPP also contested the 2007 election which was won by his kinsman, late President Umar Yar’Adua of the PDP. In the election, Buhari polled 18 per cent of the votes cast against Yar’Adua’s 70 per cent. Like what happened during the previous election, the general rejected the result and again contested it to the Supreme Court but lost.

Yar’Adua’s admission that the election that brought him to office was largely flawed and a promise to carry out electoral reform, seemed to have confirmed Buhari’s fears that such polls since 2003 were anything but democratic.

In March 2010, Buhari left the ANPP for the Congress for Progressive Change, which he founded, with which he contested the 2011 presidency Jonathan won that election. Buhari polled 12,214,853 votes, coming second behind Jonathan of the PDP who polled 22,495,187 votes. He repeated the same ritual of approaching the courts and again lost.

Having lost three presidential elections in a row, Buhari became understandably critical of government.

Such criticism reached its crescendo last Monday, when Buhari reportedly threatened that there would be bloodbath in 2015 if its general elections do not reflect the will of the people. He thundered:  “God willing, by 2015, something will happen. They either conduct a free and fair election or they go a very disgraceful way. If what happened in 2011 (alleged rigging) should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood,” Buhari reportedly told the party members who paid him a courtesy visit in Kaduna last Monday.

He also blasted the Federal Government under Jonathan’s leadership as the real Boko Haram (Boko Haram is the Islamic sect that has claimed responsibility for most of the bombings in the North).

Not ready to allow him have a field day unchallenged, the presidency and the ruling PDP in separate reactions fired back at the general, describing him as a frustrated serial election loser and a sectional leader. While the presidency said the statement by Buhari was “saddening,” the PDP said it portrayed the ex-Head of State as a “blood-thirsty person who lacked democratic credentials.”

The presidency, in a statement by presidential spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati, said it found it very sad that an elder statesman who once presided over the whole of Nigeria could reduce himself to a regional leader who spoke for only a part of the country.

National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Olisa Metuh,  also said, “It is unfortunate that at this time of grave security challenge while Nigerians are burying their dead and counting their losses, Buhari, who wants to rule them, is further inflaming the orgy of violence. What a bloodthirsty leader in Buhari! If the retired general was suffering from combat withdrawal syndrome, then the Federal Government should allow him to lead the ECOWAS military contingent to Mali or Guinea Bissau to enable him have an opportunity to exorcise the bloodletting demons apparently haunting him.”

Metuh touched a sensitive area when he said that Nigeria has yet to recover from the huge losses it suffered due to such “reckless and provocative remarks” by Buhari before the 2011 general elections which led to a spate of bloody post-election violence across six states of the federation.

In making that assertion, Metuh apparently relied on the report of the Dr. Sheikh Lemu-led Federal Government Investigation Panel on the 2011 Election Violence and Civil Disturbances which was set up by Jonathan to probe the post-election violence recorded in some parts of the North.

While presenting the report to the President in October 2011, Lemu said the panel identified provocative utterances by many individuals and widespread charge by prominent politicians including Buhari to the electorate to guard their votes as possible cause of the post-election crisis.

Lemu said such charge by politicians appeared to have been misconstrued by many voters to include recourse to violence, which they did.

He however attempted to give Buhari a soft landing when he added that it was discovered during a long interactive session between the former Head of State  and a five-member delegation of the panel on September 14, 2011 that the CPC candidate himself was a victim of the violence as his property were reportedly destroyed.

Not a few Nigerians believe that Buhari’s latest outburst could also spark off another round of violence.

The Senator representing Oyo South, Senator Femi Lanlehin, urged the two gladiators in the face-off to sheathe their swords in the interest of the nation.

 He said, “We are in precarious times; there is insecurity everywhere. Anything that will aggravate the situation should be avoided. If Buhari had said what he was reported to have said, the President too should have ignored him.”

Also, a politician, Chief Olu Akerele, described the face-off between Buhari and Jonathan as unnecessary. The former Personal Assistant to late Chief MKO Abiola said it was unfortunate that people including the government were misinterpreting what Buhari said.

He said, “Is the FG and the PDP planning to rig in 2015? Why are they panicking, if they are not? They should even praise the retired general for speaking the truth. What he said was conditional: rig and get into trouble. The President should not divert attention from numerous problems confronting the nation which he has not been able to solve. To me, Buhari is not the reason why he has not been able to fix power, provide security, tar roads, provide jobs and other problems bedevilling the country.  Let him face governance and stop chasing shadows.”

The current rift between the two however, appears to be a long-drawn one as Buhari who has been backed by the Action Congress of Nigeria and Northern governors against the presidency, has alleged that Jonathan plans to arrest him.

A government source however, dismissed the idea of “doing anything with the army general will suggest a clampdown on opposition,” he said.