Do we still have a president?

Two whole months after directing the Inspector General of Police to relocate to Benue state to stop the killings by herdsmen in the state, president Buhari just learnt that the IG disobeyed his orders and spent only one day in Benue state whereas that news has been public knowledge for two months. “It is only now that I am hearing this. But I know that I sent him here, Buhari retorted in shock to General Atom Kpera (rtd) who pointedly challenged him that the IG did “not do the work you sent him. He stayed for less than 24 hours in Benue and relocated to Nasarawa, and then said what he saw was a mere communal clash…”

For me this is the final piece of evidence I needed to conclude that either Buhari is perniciously deceptive or he is not in charge of the country, completely walled off from Nigerians, as it were, and only knows what those who caged him wants him to know. If it is the latter, then Nigeria is clearly an acephalous state with shadowy and divergent figures exercising different aspects of presidential powers.

In the run-up to the presidential election in 2015, my main worry was not about Buhari but the shadowy person(s) behind Buhari who will wield real power and authority in the country. I was not deceived. Those fronting Buhari were aware of his shocking lack of knowledge and incapacity to govern a complex and diverse country like Nigeria. But they found his near mystical reputation indispensable to capturing power and they rode on it to get to power. They didn’t disappoint. Right from the beginning and despite public assumption that Buhari was in charge, those figures took over, exploiting the President’s ignorance, lack of understanding of economics and most complex issues of governance, as well as vulnerability due to old age, to completely take over governance and policy decisions in the country. What makes the takeover by this shadowy group more complete is the tendency of the President, a highly provincial man himself, to over-trust and over-delegate authority to his close aides and associates – appointed or not – who are mostly his relatives and or people from his part of the country. Stories abound of these powerful individuals determining by fiat key appointments. It is an open secret in the country that what is needed for a job, a connection or contract with the government is to get to meet a member of this powerful group.

President Buhari empowered this group early in his administration to be the clearing house and policy centre of his government. If there was any doubt as to the role of this powerful group, the President himself cleared that doubt during a retreat organised by the Presidency for the then Ministers-designates. The President ordered that “all communications and appointments from you (ministers) to the Presidency should be routed through the office of the Chief of Staff as it is the normal (procedure) in this presidential system.” In effect, ministers are not allowed access to the President and must pass any communications through his Chief of Staff and also receive instructions through that same medium. One can only imagine how powerful Abba Kyari has become since then. Naturally, and as is usual in our climes, this untrammelled and extreme power without accountability breeds corruption.

There was a strong allegation that Abba Kyari demanded and collected N500 million as part of a deal to reduce the hefty fine of over $5 billion imposed on MTN by the NCC for contravention of a SIM registration directive. Despite being cleared by the Presidency, MTN got the fine reduced and the issue has long been settled with the Nigerian authorities.

So complete is the takeover of the government by this shadowy group that even Buhari’s wife felt completely sidelined and left out of the scheme of things that she was forced to take the unprecedented step of going public with her discontent when she accused a powerful cabal of hijacking her husband’s government.  “Things are not going the way they should…” “Nobody thought it’s going to be like this”. “They [the cabal] don’t know our party manifesto, they don’t know what we campaigned for, they don’t have a mission, they don’t have a vision of our APC,” she angrily told the BBC late last year.

But if she was expecting her outburst to change anything, it achieved the exact opposite as her husband firmly reminded her, in Germany, that she “belongs to his kitchen, his living room and the other room” and should have no business with or role in governance.

But despite this take-over, no one is effectively and totally in charge of the country meaning constant clashes among and between these shadowy figures has continued to define this administration. The war between the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and the Directorate of State Security, DSS, headed by his kinsman, is well known. Twice the president sent the name of Ibrahim Magu as substantive Chairman of the EFCC to the Senate and twice, on the advice of the DSS, the Senate rejected his nomination. Buhari had tried but failed to mediate in the war and hasn’t been able to rein them in.

Worse is that now, virtually every appointee of the president (or technically appointee of the powers behind the president) now exploit the obvious weakness and incapacity of the president to pursue selfish personal agenda. As the case of the IGP show, they openly disrespect, disregard, disobey the president and the president appears incapable of calling them to order. How much worse can it get for a country?

The bigger picture here is the threat posed to Nigeria’s democracy by the constant hijack of power by an unelected and shadowy cabal who, though wields great powers, are not accountable for the powers they wield. As a political economist and public commentator asserted sometime ago, “nothing undermines democracy and good governance more than shadowy people who wield so much power but are unaccountable.” In saner climes, parliament, who constitutionally performs oversight functions on the executive, will publicly name and quiz such individuals and protect the Presidency from being hijacked. But how do we expect Nigeria’s two-chamber parliament to perform such functions when even the heads of these chambers are more engrossed in fights to retain their offices and will readily trade the independence and control of the parliament to the presidency just to retain their positions?

Christopher Akor