There must be a belief among Nigeria’s ex-generals and retired military men that they hold the key to Nigeria’s political and economic wellbeing. I remember when they turned up in droves in the build-up to the 1999 elections. This would be the only explanation for the likes of General Ibrahim Babangida and retired Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari wanting so badly to be the country’s president. 

Indeed, if there were a prize to be won for perseverance in trying to win, it would go to Buhari. The consistency of his quest for presidential power is matched only by his inability to win an election. He tried in 2003 and 2007. The problem with the gangling ex-soldier is that he is not a politician. Only a non-politician will fail to realise that in Third World party politics, only politicians win elections. Because he is not a politician, he has also failed to realise that politics starts from the grassroots.

Apparently, Buhari’s only claim to the throne rests on his 18-month as military head of state, the only memorable legacies of which were the War Against Indiscipline, WAI, and the switching of the denominations and colours of the national currency. The consequence of that fiscal policy was an austere time which reminded the people of the Civil War and its aftermaths. It was a completely purposeless policy that had neither economic nor political benefits. Nigerians remember that period.

Of course, it is true they also remember the days of the queue, when Nigerians learnt to line up at such public places as banks, airports (especially airports where chaos was the norm) and petrol stations. That, perhaps, is the only fond memory of that era. It is not enough to win democratic presidential elections.

With due respect to the sacrifices of the military in defence of the nation in times of internal and external threats, the military as a national institution cannot lay any claim to any magic wand that will alter the political and economic fortunes of the nation for good. Like most African military insurrections of the last half a century, the Nigerian military’s misadventure into politics has been instructed mostly by poorly formed patriotic zeal rather than any well-articulated grand strategy to alter the Nigerian ethos and bequeath to posterity an egalitarian, civil, orderly and prosperous society. It was always tinged by a desire to effect change by inflicting pain. 

There have been periods in the history of other lands when the military took the decisive step of intervening in politics because they had another vision for the nation-state. Such was the story of Mustapha Kemal, the legend of Turkey, who today, is remembered as Kemal Atartuk, father of the Turks. That appellation speaks volumes of the man and his times. Then, perhaps, there was Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States. There aren’t enough of them in the history books to serve as models for emulation.

That being the case, it is the wrong plank to stand upon as Buhari has tended to do, with disastrous consequences, in his last two attempts at the presidency. He has refused to play politics. In the periods between elections, Buhari goes to sleep instead of working to build grassroots support for the ANPP and convert it into a truly national party. Then when the election looms, he assumes a divine right to carry the ANPP presidential flag. Yet, he has done little to build a national consensus around himself; he stays holed up in the Katsina-Abuja axis, known very little outside the North by the new generation of voters who have only a flitting knowledge of the short-lived Buhari-Idiagbon incursion. His is a selfish mission, based on the wrong reading of his standing with the Nigerian people, rather than a mission to change the character of Nigerian politics – from a creeping one-party state to a pluralistic political culture, a country where a variety of political viewpoints are represented in the legislatures across the land and where people are elected into positions of political authority based on globally accepted standards. That kind of political regeneration is hard work, patient recruitment of like minds, which means garnering them from state to state. The retired major-general is not cut out for such drudgery, which, by the way, is the real stuff of politics. Neither are the leaders of ANPP or whatever it is called today, who are unwilling to live in the discomfort of the political wilderness. So, they run with the hare and hunt with the hound. That is why there is trouble right now in the house of the ANPP.

Without taking anything away from his purely military credentials, on the evidence of his political credentials before the Nigerian people, Muhammadu Buhari will never be president! He had his chance and blew it. He is overbearing and presumptuous of his capabilities. Like IBB, he is blind to the fact that at the threshold of 70, his time has passed. The politics of the second millennium is for the young: Everywhere except Africa, political power has gradually passed to a younger generation. In our country, we insist on recycling ageing politicians, failed businessmen and contractors, retired soldiers, and a sprinkling of con artists in the political system.

One of the wonders of Nigerian politics of the 20th/21st Centuries is that in the eighth most populous country in the world, there is no late-30 to 40-something person who is fit to be president!