KEN UGBECHIE

A colleague helped to coin this headline. It
stemmed from our conversation on the
state of the nation; the anger on the
streets; the dismay and distraught that
drape the faces of the people, the
frustrations that barb the souls of men, the
bitterness that attends otherwise cordial
relationships, the Hobbesian vitriolic angst
that separates neighbours these days.

Our talk centred on the economy, the
erosion and degradation of the purchasing
power of Nigerians; the stripping of men of
their manliness, the corrosion of the pride
of women; the savagery of employers
against their employees to the point of
sacking them in hordes and driving them
into the streets of stress, into the paths of
pain. It was then my dear colleague, an
economist and Chevening scholar, averted
my mind to a trending disease on social
media. It is called Buharia, some dubbed it
Buhariasis. And someone even added that
it is worse than diarrhea.

The disease is reportedly fatal, more
dangerous than HIV/AIDS, heart attack,
malaria or any of the mortal ailments that
have continued to assail the nation.
Buharia is the latest malady in town and
its hatchery is the President Muhammadu
Buhari government. It should be expected.

Every government in Nigeria comes with
its peculiar manifestations. The Umaru
Yar’Adua government was notorious for its
self-inflicted inertia, a government that did
not move, could not move and did not
even attempt to make any motion. It was
simply inert. The circumstantial Goodluck
Jonathan government was itself bogged
down by circumstances of its birth. The
man from Otuoke all too soon lost his
streak of good luck and moulted into a
socio-economic gridlock. Both Yar’Adua
and Jonathan were weak leaders and the
locusts capitalized on their weakness to
feast on the national patrimony. But even
in their weakness, life was still tolerable
under both leaders.

Unlike Yar’Adua and Jonathan, Buhari
comes as a strong man of steely fibre. He
comes with a perception of being squeaky
clean, reticent, ascetic and someone who
would not condone the feast of lucre or
drink from the broth of corruption. This is
the profile that brought him to power. And
he knew it, and made good use of it when
he hinged his campaign on the ramparts of
anti-corruption.

But Buhari has a dark side which many of
his admirers never factored into the mix.
He is a poor manager, lacking in peoples
skill and void of the cerebral aptitude
required of his office. He has yet another
weakness. He is an unrepentant nepotist,
parochial in his worldview of the concept
of federalism and nationalism.

It is the clash of the dual personalities in
one man that has created the social
discontent that attends his administration.

Yes, Buhari the upright man is fighting
corruption, but it is a clearly lopsided fight
that tends to hypocrisy. Buhari is
vigorously probing how the Jonathan
government pillaged the national treasury
to execute their agenda in the 2015
general elections but he has failed to
disclose the sponsors of his own election
and how such sponsors made the billions
of naira splashed in the electioneering that
brought him to office. I commend Buhari’s
courage to tame corruption but it would
just be fine, even better and justiceable, if
he starts from his closets.

Buhari’s proclivity to nepotism beggars
belief. Nigeria is yet to witness any leader
that has acted in a manner that shows
scant or no regard for federal character.
Not even the late General Sani Abacha at
the height of his tyranny was this
nepotistic in his appointments. Indeed,
President Buhari deserves an Oscar in this
regard.

A more darkling and troubling part of the
President is that he is horrendously a poor
manager, an unwilling even unprepared
administrator. Buhari is a slow actor. And
even when he acts, his actions do not
justify his slowness because in most
cases, so far, they lack thoroughness.
Theresa May became the British Prime
Minister, the second female to hold such
position after Margaret Thatcher, on
Wednesday, July 13. Same day, she
named six key cabinet members with a
promise to unveil her full ministerial team
in a matter of days. Now compare with
Buhari’s style of leadership. He was
sworn-in as President on May 29, 2015.

He named no aide with immediacy, had no
ministers and trudged on without a cabinet
for six months. Such lethargy from a
leader; such inclination to walk and work
alone does no good to productivity. In fact,
it is anathema to productiveness.

But that is the character and nature of Mr.
Buhari, the lone ranger. As you read this
most parastatals are without the full
complement of their boards. Till this day,
about 38 parastatals do not have budgets;
their budgets are yet to be passed and we
are in the second half of the year. It is a
carry-over from the Buhari style.

Remember the national budget suffered the
same delay. First, it was submitted to the
National Assembly very late, then it got
missing, underwent mutilation and later
resurfaced before it was passed.

Newton’s law says “action and reaction are
equal and opposite”. This means that for
every action, there is a commensurate
consequence. In the case of Buhari,
Nigerians are already paying for his
slowness and inertia. The delay in passage
of the budget, the non-composition of
boards of parastatals resulted in the delay
in the execution and payment for jobs
requiring the ratification of a tenders’
board. Up till this day, President Buhari is
still grumbling over the recent devaluation
of the naira by Central Bank of Nigeria
(CBN). Yet, conventional economics and
wisdom suggest otherwise. He would
rather no action is taken at all to save the
naira.

This type of logic is what has kept the
national economy down. It is the root
cause of Buharia, the trending disease in
Nigeria. Its symptoms are manifold. High
cost of goods and services, massive job
cuts to the extent that the Minister of
Labour and Productivity tried to use fiat to
halt the job loss, avoidable social
discontent typified by the actions of the
pro-Biafra agitators, the Niger Delta
Avengers and other upheavals across the
nation.

The Nigerian economy is in stasis but it is
not solely down to the dip in crude oil
receipts. It is even much more a function
of lack of creativity and inventiveness in
the management of the little drops that still
accrue from the oil and gas sector.

President Buhari has demonstrated enough
evidence to show his poor understanding
of how to manage scarce resources. To
use the words of President Olusegun
Obasanjo: “Buhari is not a very hot person
on the economy and foreign affairs. But he
will do well in matters of military and he
will do well in fighting Boko Haram”.

Yes, Buhari may have done well in fighting
insurgency, but he has done a terrible
damage to the nation’s economy, first by
his inertia and now by his lack of
understanding of the dictates of modern
economics.

Way out: Mr. Buhari should reform his
ways, be more inclusive in his
appointments; learn to trust people
including those he appointed. He would do
well to arrest the drift to anarchy
especially by assuaging the anger of the
various agitators. The consequences of
Buharia are damaging enough; he must
not add to the distress that hounds the
people.


sunnewsonline.com/buharia-worse-than-diarrhea/

We call it anyu-agbo in igbo language

shut it