By Umar Ardo, Ph.D
Most Nigerians do not know how actually President Buhari’s political misfortunes suddenly changed from a three-time serial loser to a dramatic winner in 2015. The incipient seed of this victory was sown in April, 2011, shortly after the declaration of the presidential election results that pronounced incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan victorious. This is a fact shared between myself, the president himself and a few people about us.
But on victory, the president seemed to have resolved to firmly close his door and so that of the government he formed against me. From his declaration as president-elect to date, I have not been privileged to an audience with him even to say “congratulations, Mr. President-elect”. Why has President Buhari decided to do such a thing, till date I cannot hazard a guess. Maybe it is what is called power play; and if it is then it is ill, bad and injurious to power itself.
How can he act in this way against somebody that he worked with closely while seeking to be president; someone who approached him in his hour of grief, when most people were running towards the victorious Villa and away from him, after being pronounced defeated for the third time in an election he vowed was his last if he lost; someone who on convictions came to offer him free skills and services to his politics of becoming president; someone who gave him not only the idea as to how to turn his perennial political misfortunes to electoral fortune (which he accepted within 3hrs), but also drew out the plan, brought in key contacts, sourced the funds to organize and drive the plan; someone who was responsible in convincing him change his publicly stated position of never to contest again the fourth time – a contest that turned out victorious; someone who gave him hope at his most despondent moment; someone who he worked with himself closely for about 3yrs of his most trying moments; someone who he never failed to see or ever failed to pick his calls in all these years; someone who he introduced to his close confidants, including family members to work with; and someone who he prided to others during this period as his most trusted political ally. And this is all true. Why then did he refuse to even see such a person from the moment of his attaining victory?
I know as president-elect and then later as president things must have changed fundamentally, but still he remembers people, calls people and sees people. Why then has he apparently refused to remember me, to call me and to see me nearly seven years since his election as president – and this is so even after making several reasonable efforts, including writing him three letters seeking appointments; sitting severely with his Attorney General, whom he introduced to me; severally with his State Petroleum Minister, whom I introduced to him; severally with his brother-in-law, who is the first person he introduced to me; and lately twice with his COS, who is to me an elder brother.
With all these efforts, why is it that the president refused to see me? If it is something I did wrong (which I believe it isn’t), given our short but intense political relationship, isn’t it reasonable that he confronts me with my faults and hear my side of the story? But to refuse seeing me at all in spite of everything is to me incomprehensible, leaving me with only one conclusion in mind – that the president is simply in denial of the truth, and maybe afraid of it, of my input to his fourth presidential contest! For some inexplicable reasons the president seems unwilling to admit this truth and so cannot look me in the face and say otherwise of it. I assume that he therefore thinks it best not to see me altogether after victory. Hence his refusal to see me henceforth – not even to share congratulations for a victory of a contest I conceived for him and closely worked so hard together to achieve. To me, this is the only plausible reason why he shut me out from the moment he was declared President-elect on 1st April, 2015. I know in our kind of politics people cheat, lie and disappoint others with complete abandon, but I never thought that perfidy would come from where it did.
It is obvious thousands of people had worked to help President Buhari attain victory, but I see mine as uniquely different (and I believe he knows this too) in that I am the initiator of the foundation upon which everyone else helped build to completion. Obviously I feel more than disappointed – I feel betrayed, and I live everyday with the astonishment of such an act from the quarters where l least expected it. *Sei mai gaskiya*, was President Buhari’s hailing phrase; but his denial of this truth to me made a fallacy of the phrase. But, as a faithful Muslim, I leave everything to our Creator Who know the entire truth. As his Minister of State Petroleum would gleefully say, “you cannot reverse the hand of the clock”. While I will agree with the minister that no one can turn back the hand of the clock, it is also true that no one knows where the ticking hand of the clock will ultimately take one to. That’s why it’s divinely ordained for man to always strive and pay back good with good and refrain from paying good with ill. In any case, all said and done, I am actually thankful that the experience teaches a good lesson of circumspection in trusting and dealing with human beings whosoever they may be on their face value.
Ardo, a political strategists writes from Abuja.
