Buhari And Jonathan: Character As Destiny By Ogaga Ifowodo

Amidst the many thoughts and emotions
that crowded my mind when it became
apparent that Maj-Gen. Muhammadu
Buhari was well on his

way to defeating
President Goodluck Jonathan, the word
“character” kept asserting itself.
Puzzling this little conundrum, I soon
discovered why. Character had been the
organising concept for my endorsement
and advocacy for Buhari. I had said as
much without elaboration in three
columns: “Buhari: Beyond Tribal,
Religious and Ideological Fallacies” (14
January); “A FeBuhari Wind of Change
in March” (11 February); and “For a
Second War Against Indiscipline—After
Voting for Change on the 28th” (25
March). In private conversations,
however, I had articulated this framing
idea, which, I must add, goes beyond
the fact of my membership, and futile
bid to be a Representative under the
platform, of the All Progressives
Congress.
Ogaga Ifowodo
Sometime in late February, I visited a
friend of mine in Abuja who heads a
major federal department in the power
sector. There were about three others in
his commodious office and before long,
the conversation turned to the
rescheduled presidential election. My
friend’s sympathies, naturally, were
with his boss.

He was surprised that
despite Jonathan’s many achievements
— the power sector he was appointed to
oversee as a case in point — and
Buhari’s heavy baggage lugged from his
stint as a military dictator, the odds
seemed to be against him. Just when he
was about to blame poor communication
for Jonathan’s seemingly dismal
prospects, I interjected. Anyone seeking
to understand the dynamics of this
election, I opined, would be making a
mistake by looking to the conventional
indices of achievement by a president,
though even there the Transformation
Ambassadors’ claims far exceeded any
objective assessment. The soul of the
nation has been mortally wounded by
the cumulative assault on it by
despicable leadership, military or
civilian, especially in the last 16 years
of impunity, institutionalised corruption
and lack of a clear vision to lead the
country out of its ethico-political
predicament, I said.
My argument was that whenever a
society was faced by a serious threat to
its core values, meaning those first order
principles that distinguish us as human
beings, whenever the social fabric was
rent and frayed and total anomie
seemed imminent, such abstract ideals
as freedom, liberty, equality, dignity,
democracy or self-determination, etc.,
trump mundane matters of bread and
butter (or roads and bridges, for that
matter) as the inspiration for struggle
and change. Nigeria, I said, is yearning
for a person of character and integrity
to take charge of its affairs and restore
a modicum of decency. And Buhari was
perceived as a man of character,
exemplified by his quasi-ascetic
lifestyle. In a country being eaten alive
by corruption, you looked at him and
were impressed that despite having been
at the most lucrative posts for self-
enrichment — military governor, federal
commissioner of petroleum resources,
chairman of the Petroleum Trust and
Development Fund, not to mention head
of state — he is not a billionaire, and
apparently not a multi-millionaire
either.
Consequently, even the very trait used
to paint him as an incorrigible dictator
becomes the shining colour of his
character: his stern, no-nonsense
demeanour that would lead him to
launch his infamous war against
indiscipline, his unmitigated aversion to
official graft to the extreme of trying to
smuggle home from the United Kingdom
to face trial for embezzlement a scion
of the Northern oligarchy, Umaru Dikko.
It was proof that he would chase
corruption and the corrupt to the ends
of the world. He would be a trusted
custodian of the nation’s purse which
has been passing from the hands of one
band of robbers to another up to the
point where the naira has been all but
abolished as legal tender in favour the
hard currencies, chief of them the
American dollar. He presented a clear
contrast to a president whose only show
of mettle is the shocking defiance “I
don’t give a damn” when urged to
publicly declare his assets so he might
earn the moral authority to fight
corruption, and even surpassing himself
with the gratuitous sophistry of
distinguishing between stealing and
corruption.
I had also touched on an implicit aspect
of character by adding that one of
Jonathan’s greatest undoings is that he
lost the “intellectual class.” “Character
is destiny,” said the Greek philosopher
Heraclitus. A variant translation from
the original Greek has it as “One’s
bearing shapes one’s fate.” Any
intellectual not in the pay of the
government or who did not harbour the
expectation of being called to “come and
chop” couldn’t fail to be profoundly
disappointment by the bearing of a
purported member of the fold. Whether
reading from a script or speaking ex
tempore, what hit you was a palpable
lack of rigour, the absence of a mind
attuned to the range, depth and
complexity of the problems confronting
his beleaguered nation. Always, you
would feel a lack of gravitas, a measure
equal to the power and prestige of the
office he occupied as president,
reminding you too often of how he got
there in the first place: by blind, and
perhaps comedic, luck. It led to the
unflattering perception of the leader of
the most strategically important black
nation on earth as a man of dour,
uninspiring personality with hardly
enough wattage to light a candle.
Mild-mannered was the euphemism
often employed by the foreign media to
describe him. Ironically enough, it is this
insipid attribute that accounts for the
unanticipated yet unsurprising glory of
Jonathan in defeat. What better
illustration of the notion of character as
destiny can there be than that in being
true to his mild-mannered nature,
Jonathan should promptly concede
victory, thereby denying his kinsmen who
threatened war if he was not elected
any opportunity for calamitous
mischief? I join in praising him. By one
single act of statesmanship, Jonathan
has managed to include a brilliant
footnote in an otherwise lacklustre six-
year record as president. Saved his best
for the last, you might say, yet for that
the nation owes him a debt of gratitude.
The great German playwright and moral
philosopher, Bertolt Brecht, was right
after all: in the contradiction lies the
hope — or, as my teacher and older
comrade, Professor Biodun Jeyifo
prefers it, Contradictions are our only
hope! This, at any rate, applies equally
to Jonathan’s victorious rival,
President-elect Muhammadu Buhari,
whose tenacity of purpose in pursuing
power through the ballot box, serial
failure notwithstanding, promises to
erase the record of his dictatorial past
and mark his metamorphosis into the
father of a truly free and democratic
Nigeria.
It is, needles to say, more than a
thousand miles to the fulfilment of that
promise but Buhari has taken the
proverbial first step by making history as
the only opposition candidate in our
country to defeat a sitting president.
For the sake of the nation, we must all
lend him a hand so that his personal
Road-to-Abuja conversion can also be
the story of Nigeria’s transformation
from an almost-great nation to a self-
fulfilled one at long last.

omoliho@gmail.com

views expressed are not necessarily the opinion of blog author.