Jibo, Bugaje, el-Rufai, by Hakeem Baba-Ahmed

2026-02-17 - 04:58

“One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency”.– Arnold Glasow I travelled by road for much of the last one week. Nigerian highways are faithful records of causes and consequences of our current state as a nation. Their skeletons remind you of promises and hopes of a great nation that were betrayed by successive custodians. Every pothole or dangerous stretch reminds you of a country that built infrastructure with public resources not as a favour to the citizen, but as statement of faith that roads will lead to markets, schools, hospitals and a hardworking citizenry that will build on its value. Our highways now highlight our decay in all its gory tragedy. Security officials use them to make money, not to protect citizens from threats. Vehicles are loaded with humans and goods in a manner which suggests that laws do not exist even against the most incredible violations. Armed criminals know the best places to wait to abduct citizens. Faces in mobile contraptions on Nigerian roads scream resignation and defiance all at the same time. My escape from swamping wrecks, inescapable sense of helplessness and daring looks of insecurity officials as they collected money from virtually every vehicle was a heap of stale newspapers and electronic devices that allowed access to electronic media. Fortunately, it was a time rich in developments and events that speak to the state of our country and its leadership and our challenging future. Jibrin (Jibo) Ibrahim’s column in Friday’s Daily Trust was a sobering indignation over how much we have changed as a nation. You could feel the pain of an aging patriot as he lamented our descent from a new former colony in 1962 which had the guts to say no to a colonizing power that had not even finished packing out, to where we are now: an African country throwing the red carpet for American imperialism. In characteristic, measured manner, he destroyed the idea that the virtual and celebrated surrender of our leadership to the designs of the US is intended to relieve our country of its burden of exposure to all manner of armed criminals. At precisely the period our country was counting 50 years since the assassination of the most celebrated leader we had, President Tinubu leads us to welcome American boots on Nigerian soil, a telling capitulation to the contrived accusation that Nigeria is incapable of protecting its Christian population from genocide. Jibo invoked the memory of the famous speech delivered by General Murtala Mohammed at the OAU Summit which held a few weeks before his assassination. Basically, the speech said: it is enough; Africa can solve its problems and will not accept to live under the designs, dictates or terms of other countries. That speech was profound in capturing a key moment in Nigerian and African history. Other leaders who came after Murtala gave effect to those famous words by tapping into popular sentiments which supported the basic character of the African; his determination to break all bonds and put the rest of the world on notice over a new world. Nigeria helped build the most successful regional body; took pride of place in dismantling the remnants of insulting colonial traditions and apartheid, and fixed crippling conflicts in many African countries. The supreme irony is that the most profound capitulation in Africa is Nigeria’s, and its magnitude will be felt by every Nigerian and reverberate across the world. Our leadership accepts that America has the good intention of protecting Christian Nigerians. Jibo makes the point over the fallacy of this thinking: we have let the US in under false pretenses, and the price we, Nigerian Muslims and Christians, will pay will be very dear indeed. Dr Usman Bugaje’s uncharacteristically passionate, even angry contribution at an event on the reforms of our electoral system was captured in a short video that went viral in the last few days. It provides a clue to Dr Jibo’s lamentations over the collapse of quality and purpose of leadership which General Murtala and his colleagues represented. This outstanding public intellectual and crusader for good governance lived up to the billing of the organizers, and, if it has not done so already, this administration consigning our future to the US should better listen to voices like Dr Bugaje’s. From sovereignty belonging to the people, not politicians, he reeled out heavy concepts such as prebendalism, state capture, primitive accumulation and pariah state. He painted the picture of a country in the grip of politicians who have successfully led it towards failure. He told the young people in his audience that their future is being stolen by leaders who run a country of criminals. The attempts by the Senate to frustrate genuine reforms of the electoral process must be resisted, he insisted, because they could lead to the type of crises which could end the democratic system or even the country itself. Our young, in particular, must resist this. If there were people who thought Dr Bugaje’s anger and emphatic doomsday predictions without deep, substantive changes in the manner leaders treat the country were extreme, the programmed airport drama which followed Malam Nasir el-Rufai’s return from his annual vacation in Egypt last week must have prodded them towards a re-think. Almost farcical in the manner it unfolded, the face-off between the former Governor and security officials at the airport should cause many serious heads to shake at what the country has become. What level of intelligence is there that cannot see that el-Rufai virtually goaded agents of the state into an embarrassing encounter he was bound to win? But this was not an ego trip involving two sides desperate for scalps. It has turned out to be a major fracas over the frailty of the law in the hands of our politicians; opening skirmishes over 2027, and a brazen display of power and the consequences of its abuse. That airport drama is now at the heart of the fight for our future. The duty to hold leaders to account against allegations of corruption, the imperatives of respecting the law, the boundaries of decency and levels of responsibility leaders owe a duty to show will be casualties as the fight between el-Rufai and his ADC and a presidency which has lowered the bar on competence and intelligence to the ground gathers storm. When you cannot tell the difference among politicians between a victim and a villain, or when it becomes easy for one to be both, the entire foundations of our democratic pretenses become a farce. That, precisely, is where we are.