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| President Muhammadu Buhari |
Punch News writer OLUSOLA FABIYI writes on the claim by President Muhammadu Buhari that age may limit his performance in office
In a period spanning 12 years, President
Muhammadu Buhari traversed the length and breadth of Nigeria,
campaigning for votes and telling Nigerians why he should be saddled
with the onerous responsibility of leading the country. On three
consecutive occasions when he contested the position of the President,
he was rejected by Nigerian voters — going by the outcomes of the
election results. It appears that a majority of the voters did not
believe in his capacity to lead the nation. But Buhari disagreed with
the results returned by the Independent National Electoral Commission in
the three presidential elections as he headed to different tribunals to
argue his petitions. His efforts at having the tribunals uphold his
petition never materialised. And the man, Buhari wept, when he
considered the unmitigated decline and challenges threatening the future
of his fatherland.
Winners, they say, never quit and
quitters never win. Buhari proved this age-long saying right when he,
for the fourth time, threw his hat into the ring again.
Past president Goodluck Jonathan’s poor
leadership gave vent to the clamour by Nigerians for a new lease of life
in the country’s administration. Indeed, the Jonathan-led government
literally paved the way for Buhari’s emergence as Nigerians grew more
and more worried about the ceaseless killings in the North-East and the
economy-crippling fuel crisis. The inability of the Jonathan
administration to check incessant power outage coupled with the alarming
unemployment index and frightening crime rate increased the popularity
of Buhari, whose major selling points were his anti-corruption stance
and his promise to battle insecurity.
By late 2014, it was clear where the
pendulum of victory would swing in the presidential election as
Nigerians were ready to vote out the former President and his political
party, the Peoples Democratic Party, whose leadership had boasted that
it would rule for 60 uninterrupted years.
Hate campaigns employed by the then
ruling party to disparage Buhari did not dissuade voters from their
goal, which is to get rid of Jonathan and the PDP. Even when the former
Head of State was accused of not having a secondary school certificate,
his supporters said they were ready to accept him even if he presented a
mere electricity bill as certificate. That was the level of the
frustration Nigerians witnessed under the then President, who paraded a
PhD.
Since his assumption of office on May 29,
the two-time lucky former soldier had been assuring his supporters and
Nigerians in general that he will not disappoint them. He said he would
fight corruption, ensure security, provide food for school pupils,
encourage young farmers, provide four million new homes, pay N5,000 per
month to the oldest and the weakest and create 740,000 jobs for young
school leavers.
President Buhari also vowed to provide
regular power supply by 2019, give Nigerians “super-highway modern rail
and commercial airports, provide industrial and technology estates with
free internet and electricity,” among others.
It is, however, instructive to note that
there were concerns about the ability of the retired solider to rule.
Among those who expressed this apprehension were the Governor of Ekiti
State, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, and the wife of the former President, Mrs.
Patience Jonathan. Both of them insisted that Buhari was too old to rule
while Patience Jonathan even added that “people when they become old
may not reason well and their brain may even be dead.”
The leaders of the All Progressives
Congress, which fielded Buhari as its presidential candidate thundered
back, saying that it was not true that the Daura-born major general was
too old to rule. Specifically, a former Governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju
Bola Tinubu, said leaders who liberated their countries were not young.
He had said, “Leaders who ruled their countries and liberated them
ruled at old age. Nelson Mandela ruled South Africa at over 70 years.
The man who liberated the United States of America ruled the country at
over 70 years, so, if we are presenting Buhari, a 72 year-old man to
liberate us in Nigeria, it is not a sin.” The electorate believed him.
It was, however, astonishing when the
President admitted last week that his age would limit his performance.
Buhari, who was a military governor at 33 and Head of State at the age
of 40, said he would have loved to be President at a younger age. He
will be 73 on December 17, 2015. The President spoke with Nigerian
residents in South Africa on Monday after taking part in the 25th
Assembly of Heads of State and Governments of the African Union in
Johannesburg. He said, “I wish I became Head of State when I was a
governor, just a few years as a young man. Now at 72, there is a limit
to what I can do.” Despite his advancement in age, however, Buhari gave
an assurance that his administration would make a difference, adding
that what brought him to his current position was his love for the
country.
The acceptance of whether he would do
well because of his age caught the attention of a pressure group within
the PDP, known as The PDP Media Watchdog. The group called for the
resignation of the President. It described the APC and Buhari as a gang
of hypocrites and liars. The group, through a statement signed by its
leader, Tunde Lawal, said that the admittance of age hindrance by the
President vindicated the PDP. Lawal said his party had raised the alarm
that the President was not going to perform maximally due to the age
factor. “The PDP is again vindicated by this confession from President
Buhari. Nigerians will recall that during the presidential campaigns,
the PDP and other well-meaning Nigerians complained over the choice of
sponsoring Buhari as the presidential candidate of the APC and the
effect it will have on the country when it comes to managing the affairs
of a multi-dimensional nation like Nigeria, but the APC and its leaders
said that age is just a number.”
The APC, however, reacted angrily to the
position taken by the self-styled watchdog as it described the
assessment as a product of poor thinking and deliberate mischief. The
National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said if
the authors of the statement had understood simple English and taken the
pains to engage in deep contextual thinking, they would not have rushed
to the press to ask the President to resign. He said, “What President
Buhari was saying, which was lost on those who issued that jejune
statement, is that only his love and passion for the country could have
made him, at his age, to come out of retirement to seek the office of
President, over 30 years after he presided over the affairs of the
country.” Mohammed said that for 16 years, Nigerians gave the PDP the
benefit of the doubt to move the country forward, but instead, the party
put Nigeria in an auto reverse gear, speeding towards the precipice – a
move which was only averted when Nigerians showed the PDP the red card.
Mohammed added that this was what
necessitated Buhari to continuously seek the country’s highest political
office, so as to help pull the country away from the precipice unto the
path of socio-economic discovery. “Nothing else matters, not for him
the excitement of an office he previously held and the quest for
personal accomplishment,” the party’s spokesperson added. Mohammed said
that if the country had been well managed, President Buhari would not at
72 be crisscrossing the whole world, seeking solutions to Nigeria’s
problems.
Asking the APC to tread with caution, the
PDP, however, told the ruling party to stop making a mockery of
governance with premature celebration of imaginary achievements “except
if the intention is to set up President Buhari for national and
international ridicule.”
The party said it was embarrassing that
the APC and the aides of the President decided to inundate Nigerians
with propaganda and tissues of lies instead of assisting the President
who was inaugurated three weeks ago to settle down, form a government
and deliver on his campaign promises.
It wondered why it was difficult for the
APC-led Federal Government to fill the positions of the Secretary to the
Government of the Federation and the Chief of Staff to the President.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, said the nation and
democrats the world over were thoroughly embarrassed by the alleged
lists of achievements made public by the party.
He said this action had further exposed
the APC’s lack of capacity and direction as well as its inability to
draw a line between propaganda by an opposition party and dissemination
of credible information as a party in government.
Metuh said, “How can a serious government
start claiming achievements and make bogus claims on the fight against
terrorism when the effort is apparently losing steam as insurgents who
had already been pushed to the verge of surrender in Sambisa by the
Goodluck Jonathan administration are now surging back into the country
under the APC-led government? How can a serious government claim
achievements and attempt to explain away the untidy fact that after
three weeks, it has not been able to organise itself to take basics
steps by making conventional appointments such as those of the Secretary
to the Government of the Federation, the Chief of Staff to the
President and advisers in key sectors of the economy?”
Metuh said that the APC should not by any
means attempt to use its flimsy list of achievements to divert
attention from its numerous campaign promises.
Within the short period of the ruling
party in power, Mohammed insisted that the APC had, through President
Buhari, succeeded in returning Nigeria to the comity of nations such
that world leaders are now so eager to engage the President on how to
assist the country in key areas, including security and the fight
against corruption.
In a reassuring tone, however, the
President said that he is like an old wine which gets better with age.
Besides, he said that though at 72, he could not be called a youth, but
that “he has in quantum the wisdom, patience, temperance and forbearance
that age brings.” Explaining that he was the one that sought the office
of the President, Buhari stressed that he will not disappoint
Nigerians.
He admonished Nigerians not to be
discouraged by the hard times, saying that the country was on the path
of greatness. “My election is a proof that Nigerians know what they want
once they make up their minds. You can give them the money, some
refused to take it, some took it and said it is our money and they did
exactly what they wanted to do,” Buhari added.
Source: Punchng
