Buhari was the Northern epitome of success in exploiting the socio-political and religious fissures and divisions in Nigeria. He was the archetypical Northern Nigerian male of Fulani extraction in colonial Nigeria with the good fortune of Western education. He graduated into the military bureaucracy of the newly independent Nigeria that was in desperate search of national balance through the encouragement of the Northern youth that was hampered by a highly conservative traditional institution and society from being a part of the emergent Nigerian bureaucratic and leadership structure. A big room was therefore created for the few that dared to join to blossom and move rapidly up the ladder. Buhari was a prime beneficiary.
Buhari continued to climb that ethno-religious ladder, first to becoming military Head of State, through a series of ethnically inspired coups and the equally ethnically inspired civil war, and then to becoming a two-term elected President of Nigeria. Naturally, it was difficult for Buhari to outgrow what made him. He remained on familiar ground. With his reticence, shyness and reclusion – traits that would have been a minus for getting ahead in any competitive environment – Buhari carved an image of conservatism, religious piety, personal discipline and ethno-religious irredentism that turned him into some sort of cult hero for Northern youths who were starved of credible leaders that they believed exemplified their traditional values after the military leadership from the North led by Babangida and Abacha became completely discredited by their own fundamental weaknesses and Obasanjo, a Christian from the South, became the new face of credible Nigerian democratic leadership.
In 2015, Buhari rode on that hunger of the North to be elected President of Nigeria aided by a Jonathan that was insensitive to the strength of the hunger (and therefore unwisely resisted it) and politicians that saw their opportunity in it. He was re-elected in 2019 despite his widely acclaimed near disastrous performance largely on the same ethno-religious sentiment that it remained the turn of the North and it was better for all, North and South Christian and Muslim, that Buhari used up the constitutionally permitted two terms instead of having another Northerner, like Atiku, that could potentially keep a Northern presidency for a combined three terms.
That was how the village boy whose parents dreamed nothing better for him than driving cows in the bush became the President of Nigeria thrice under two different dispensations. The fortune of encountering Western education made all the difference.
True love for the fatherland should have dictated that fortunate Northerners like Buhari would spare nothing to see that every child in the North got the same opportunity that they did by embarking on a sustained aggressive program of education, like their Southern counterparts did. Unfortunately, they saw things differently. Apart from all sorts of tertiary institutions that the MDAs fell over one another to build in the North, Daura, the home town of Buhari, in particular, to impress his imperial self, Buhari did not commit himself to aggressive primary and secondary school education of the average Northern Nigerian child.
Buhari rather spent much of his energy to encourage Northern youths to roam the bushes with cows, the fate that he ran away from and which he never wished for any child of his. He felt that that was the way to show his love for his people. Buhari encouraged this same people to develop an appetite for raiding and sacking helpless farming communities which then gave birth to banditry as an occupation for those that Buhari identified with.
Education was badly hit. Schools had to be shut for many months in many Northern communities as going to school became too hazardous due to constant kidnapping of school children by amorphous terrorist groups. Buhari was ambivalent on Boko Haram, the group that had the philosophy of totally ridding Northern Nigeria of the same Western education that produced Buhari. Before he came to power, he had called them freedom fighters and they had named him one of their negotiators. In power, soldiers complained of top level compromise of operations against the group and this was in addition to a program of releasing those of them that were captured in battle and later absorbing them into the Nigerian Army.
With the passing of Buhari, there is a yawning gap for a new face of Northern Nigeria politics that will make a clean break with the past reliance on religion, nepotism and ignorance. Northern Nigerian youths are naturally as bright as their Southern counterparts. Religion has not been a hindrance to standard education and human development in many Islamic countries, such as, Indonesia, Malaysia, UAE, and Qatar, to mention but a few. There is no reason why it should mean ignorance and retrogression for the vast majority of the youths in Northern Nigeria.
Buhari has proved both the blessing and the curse of the kind of politics that produced him. It is one that draws life from the poverty and ignorance of a majority of the people. On the one hand, it has made Northern Nigeria the headquarters of poverty and ignorance and assorted terrorist groups and bandits that snuff out the lives of the people and any meaningful development. On the other hand, it has made the few that make it to the Federal bureaucracy get to enjoy the blessing of “Northerness”. However, that privilege is dependent upon their successfully keeping most of their younger compatriots down and out with religion and ignorance. The North must continue to remain “educationally challenged” for them to continue to enjoy the benefits of a quota system that sidelines competence.
The new face of Northern politics should therefore combine education with street credibility to produce a Northern Nigeria that beats the South in human capital. They should be at home with the Almajiri on the streets, as well as respectful and beholden to the Emirs, for whom Buhari had little respect. I am not surprised that not many of them have made the sort of effusions that President Tinubu, who has openly accused him of running down the country, has curated over his death and burial.
One would have thought that Datti Baba-Ahmed, the vice-presidential candidate of Peter Obi in 2023 would have seen his job well cut out for him. Unfortunately, he appears too stiff, too rigid and too emotionally and socially distant each time he makes a public appearance. He is not mobile around the North. He should have been organizing seminars, symposia and discussion groups all over Northern Nigeria at this time. The issue of the uplift of the average Northern Nigerian child is the core of the challenges of the North that he ought to be facing. We should have been seeing in him echoes of the iconoclastic late Aminu Kano and his protege, late Abubakar Rimi, who fought to elevate the status of ordinary folks in the feudalistic North while still maintaining a good relationship with the emirs and traditional institutions.
With the exit of Buhari, Datti’s rise to the occasion has become more urgent. Is he up to it or do we have to look for another.
By Chuks Nwachuku, legal practitioner and leadership and good governance advocate; [email protected]
