Happy birthday, President Muhammadu Buhari! Many will still remember your words in 2015, a few weeks into office, while speaking with the Nigerian community in South Africa: “How I wish I became head of state when I was a governor, just a few years ago as a young man.” “Now that I am 72, there is a limit to what I can do.”
This makes sense because younger people are often more physically motivated, less cynical, and have more energy.
Nigerians, for the most part, and even people across the world, see the name Nigeria as synonymous with corruption.
Buhari, as a man and a leader, has shown that he does not categorically have deep exploitation impulses and an obvious style for corruption.
But a simple search of Buhari’s presidential practices, as he may agree, has not been short of nepotism, ethnocentrism, tribalism, ethnic profiling, one-sidedness, favoritism, and preferential treatment when it comes to appointments to the highest levels of sensitive and national security jobs.
Psychologically, Nigerians will always remember Buhari as a tribalistic president. Some have labeled him as an Islamic religious zealot.
Regardless of these reported mannerisms of Buhari, it is undeniable that his official ways reflect disciplinary instincts and patriotism.
He genuinely believes ethnicity and religion are not to fully blame for Nigeria’s problems, but the people themselves, as they apparently have the cyclical and inherent will for personal and institutional corruption and conflict. To Buhari, Nigerians have largely shown disloyalty to the national pledge of being faithful, loyal, and honest because of greed, indiscipline, corruption, and impunity.
So, by definition, Nigeria has been a sick society and has long gone sicker or even insane due to denial or without the people being aware of society’s own deterioration.
Buhari’s coming to power in 2015 to replace Goodluck Jonathan, a leader largely described as ineffective, did not help an already sick society, as Buhari was seen as unwell, weak, and old, making Nigeria sicker.
No one is free from being sick periodically, but the image of Nigeria as sick has steadily gotten worse since 2017, especially the year of Buhari’s most prolonged absence from the country due to illness.
Based on Buhari’s history of medically related absences, national leadership has been that which is sick, and as long as Nigeria remains sick as a society, the place becomes a place full of people who are discontent, disillusioned, and in despair.
Buhari, who by nature is largely viewed as humble and authentic, has presented himself as weak and sickly, making his leadership sickly, which makes him an obvious vulnerability in a system of government that is bound to reflect his sickness.
Buhari, although a patriot, compassionate, and selfless man, is unable to fully carry out all his desires in terms of actively being in the country to discharge his duties because of his illness.
It is not strange to say that a tired leader becomes a vulnerable leader, and the society he leads becomes sicker with on-going insecurity, exploitation in high places, and hunger in the land.
Time and energy are vital in leadership, and in their absences, leadership by many in his administration becomes powered by government officials who pay more attention to themselves than to their citizens.
Under a sick, aging, and tired president in an unnecessarily challenging country like Nigeria, public accountability and providing solutions and answers to the people become marked by indifference.
In a sick type of leadership and a society that reflects the sickness of governance and ailing national interest, it does not get the strength and capacity it deserves.
As it is now, Buhari, at 80, just wants to steadily try his best until May of this year, when he departs office, and Buhari knows that his age and health have not allowed him to fully stand up to the bad ways of government officials and greedy corporate leaders; consequently, the crisis in security, economy, and government continues.
Let’s hope the next president will be younger and healthier so Nigeria can become a less sick place, as such an environment drive everyone into uncertainty, institutions into disorder, and the nation into even more sickness.
John Egbeazien Oshodi, is an American based Police/Prison Scientist and Forensic/Clinical/Legal Psychologist wrote in via info@teuopen.university
