27th February, 2017
…President Buhari sure cannot deceive himself that his health does not constitute a formidable challenge to his ability to provide sound leadership for Nigerians. His famed love for Nigeria and his passion to see Nigeria become a country of positive example must be demonstrated by his decision to pen and present his resignation letter.
By Ademola Adesola
No one needs to be that poet, Robert Frost, to understand that walking the road less (or not) taken is not the same as a walk in the park. It is one path no one likes to traverse; yet it is the track of honour, glory, and fame. Accounts abound in history tomes of leaders who, fully aware of the unattractiveness of the road, elected to travel it and in the end etched their names eternally in the memory of humankind.
Those who have chosen the road did think selflessly. Love and consideration for the good of society, not overly the self, were the motivation for their decision. It was the road that Nelson Mandela chose when he refused to seek re-election as president during the post-apartheid period that he suffered and laboured to birth. He could have – like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Cameroun’s Paul Biya, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, among other unyielding illiberal African leaders – held on to that office under the guise of spending 27 years of his life in prison for the good of the country. But recognising that the land he had helped to reclaim from the throes of the ruthless system of dehumanisation would necessarily find the path to progress and happiness with or without him, Madiba, as Mandela was lovingly addressed, voluntarily put his feet to the road not taken.
Thus, to take the road not or less taken is to do that which is neither fashionable nor popular. It is to ignore the appeal of a choice that resonates with the majority, be they onlookers or admirers. Using the road less travelled also means coming to terms with one’s incapacitation and limitations. It involves being brutally frank with oneself and as such giving up a cause one knows he is incapable of making a success of.
That is the road I commend to the ascetic President Muhammadu Buhari. Yes, I am, from a heart devoid of bile and ill-will, encouraging him to resign from his position as the president of Nigeria. It is a tough decision to make. To wake up and decide to ignore the huge resources and strenuous efforts that went into the election that threw him up as president? To dip the whole of 12 years of vying for the presidency into the ocean of resignation? Damn the cult-like following and the massive support keeping the General going in spite of the marked failures of his administration? Yes!
The rationale behind the call to President Buhari to resign is mainly informed by his poorly cloaked health challenges. As Nigerians know, the president has on three different occasions taken time off his demanding work to attend to his health in London. The third, being the current one, with so much absurd dramas arising from the sheer inelegant management of information on the part of his media minders, has more than the previous occasions shown that there is more to what ails the president than meets the eye. It is doubtful whether with his infirm health President Buhari can live up to the leonine demands of the office he occupies. And it is not for nothing that sound physical health is emphasised as a core desideratum for anyone who is to function in that office.
The problems assailing Nigeria are formidable and complex and so require a mentally strong and physically fit leader who will lead and work with other equally sound minds to proffer solutions to the challenges. Nigeria is evidently in need of a leader who will not be frequently distracted by stubborn personal health worries. Ours is not yet a polity that can move on meaningfully in the absence of a president, or with an acting president deeply distrusted and unwelcomed by members of the ethnic formation to which the president belongs. For us in this clime, too many things needlessly revolve around the person and office of the president. And so the already slow pace of progress becomes even slower with the absence of the heavily burdened leader.
More, though the horrible healthcare system in Nigeria cannot be pinned to the less-inspiring present administration, the scathing truth is that President Buhari’s preference for seeking cure overseas eloquently teaches Nigerians to not expect any significant improvement in the healthcare system under his watch. It is difficult to see how a president, and by extension his aides, ensconced in the pleasure of seeking solution to bad health abroad can understand the horrors those he leads go through when they visit local hospitals, let alone find a lasting solution to it.
If President Buhari takes the road not travelled, he will do himself and Nigeria a whole world of good. He will have enough time to attend to the problems of his health and on that score probably live longer. It is not out of place to imagine that the highly arduous nature of his task as president takes a toll on his health and exacerbates whatever condition he has been managing prior to his assumption of office. It is possible to think that Umaru Musa Yar’Adua might still be alive today if he had quietly repaired somewhere after his eight-year stint as governor of Katsina State and not taken up the more difficult job of president. Good judgement should compel Mr. President to choose the road not travelled by his predecessor.
Moreover, Nigeria will benefit in saving some pretty sum and having some more significant attention given to it when a healthier and more visionary person is in charge of its affairs. There is no doubt that every single day the president spends abroad leaves some telling marks on the exchequer national treasury, for the treatment he seeks off this shore would be certainly high-priced. He will be doing Nigeria a great service if he comes to term with his health condition and allows a more capable mind to keep on the good work of getting the country out of the boiling cauldron of corruption, poverty, insecurity, and unemployment.
The point, of course, has to be made that those who think the war against corruption, warts and all, or the present embryonic efforts to change the country for good will suddenly come to a halt if, for whatever reason, President Buhari is no longer in charge are deeply insulting other Nigerians. Even the last 21 months of his being president have shown that the president’s capacity to get the job done is exaggerated and that he is not the messiah Nigeria needs – if it ever requires one. President Buhari does not have in him all of the wisdom, ideas, and vision with which to transform the country such that if he is no longer there we become stuck in the stasis of decadence, degeneration, and degradation. The unadorned truth is that Nigeria will move on and probably fair better without President Buhari. Besides, it will amount to embracing a delusion of great grandeur for anyone to conclude that whoever enjoins the president to resign on account of his weakening health must be an admirer or even one of the feral beasts in the terrible wilds of corruption.
If every other person is drumming deceit into the pit of his ears, President Buhari sure cannot deceive himself that his health does not constitute a formidable challenge to his ability to provide sound leadership for Nigerians. His famed love for Nigeria and his passion to see Nigeria become a country of positive example must be demonstrated by his decision to pen and present his resignation letter. If he does this on his return to the country, he will be able to say later, like the persona of Frost’s poem, that: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference.”
May President Buhari find the grace and fortitude to make this decision.
Ademola Adesola, a public affairs analyst, writes from Ibadan.