By The Editorial Board
This speech is a political satire by the Editorial Board of The African Mind Journal (www.africanmind.org). It portrays President Buhari as a thoughtful, introspective, and repentant man. We realize this may require some imagination.
My fellow Nigerians: Eight years ago, you gave me a mandate to govern as your president. This is the last speech I’ll deliver as president before the next administration is sworn in.
I deliver this speech from the heart, a burdened heart. It’s both an apology and a plea for national reconciliation.
As you recollect from my inaugural speech, I promised to leave Nigeria better than I found it when I took office. That is, to make sure that your life is better than it was in 2015 when I became your president.
I vowed to grow the non-oil economy and create jobs to ensure any Nigerian who needed a job can get one that pays a living wage.
I promised to reduce our national debt per GDP and increase foreign reserves.
I promised to alleviate poverty and create a more equitable and equal society where your ethnicity, gender, state of origin and religion were no longer impediments to success.
I told you I would decimate Boko Haram and other enemies of the state and secure and stabilize the nation from terrorists, kidnappers, armed militias, armed robbers, agitators and tyrants.
I pledged to unite the country under my One Nigeria umbrella, be inclusive in appointment of competent and talented people to help me run your government.
I told you I would kill corruption and annihilate those who engage in it.
I rolled out my policy priorities to invest in education, healthcare and rebuild our dilapidated infrastructures, including power supply, transportation networks, telecommunication systems, etc.
My fellow Nigerians, my heart and my best intentions still tell me my promises were honest and actionable.
But the facts and the evidence now tell me I over-promised and under-delivered for the Nigerian people. Obviously, you are worse off today than in 2015. I misled you.
And to my disappointment, I’ve left you in a hellscape. My term is climaxing in insecurity, animosity, recrimination, and despair.
It saddens me that Nigerians are angrier, more fearful, less trusting of one another, more divided and more unequal than at any time in decades. As I leave office, I leave a nation on the precipice of ruin.
As I conclude my term, I stand before you today to admit that what we have achieved is far below expectations. We did not accomplish what we came here to do.
Self-Analysis
In preparation for this speech, I conducted a postmortem of my years as your president. This was the first time in my two administrations that I personally reviewed my performance as president.
My fellow Nigerians, I must admit that my performance is abysmal, not something I’m proud of. I give myself an “F” grade; I failed in every measure of performance.
Here is the summary of my report card.
Under my watch, unemployment worsened, especially for our youth. The economy nosedived. Inflation is rampant and out of control.
Foreign debt per GDP skyrocketed. I leave the next administration with a huge debt burden.
Poverty and economic inequality reign. Instead of lifting 100 million out of poverty, I condemned 100 million more to abject poverty. Under my watch, more Nigerians go to bed hungry than at any time in my life.
Corruption and inequality have increased as the corrupters got richer and the rest got poorer.
The CBN dollar-naira exchange rate was N178 (N200 in the secondary market) when I took office. Today it’s N438 (N850) and worsening.
The education budget as percentage of national budget and the quality of education have declined each year under my watch.
Major infrastructure projects remain underfunded, incomplete and run the risk of abandonment.
Despite these abject failures, we achieved several legislative successes, mostly through Executive Orders.
However, the bottom line is that Nigeria under my watch is a miserable country for most of our citizens.
Yes, I read in the papers that my wife, Aisha, apologized on my behalf. However, for the pain and suffering my administration and party, the APC, have caused, my wife’s apology is not enough.
Therefore, on behalf of my administration and party, I stand here today to offer my own heart-felt apology to all citizens. I take full responsibility for the harm my policies, or lack thereof, have caused our citizens. I truly ran our country to the ground.
Why I Underperformed
To be fair, circumstances beyond my control — my health, oil price collapse, and the covid pandemic — played a role, though a minor one, in my administration’s underperformance.
As you know, I spent over 25% of my presidency seeking medical treatments overseas. While I believe that my age was not a factor when I was elected, I now know and agree, as you must, that age matters. My age was a liability. It certainly limited what I could have achieved.
As I got older in the presidency, I became less cognitively sharp, less energetic and less motivated. With age and associated health challenges, it became increasingly challenging for me to respond effectively to the complex problems we faced.
However, truth be told, the root causes of my underperformance were many.
Let me touch on the key contributors, if for no other reason, to ensure that the next president doesn’t repeat my mistakes.
First, I wish my vision for governance was clearer to me and that I had a strong grasp of the challenges we faced as a nation when I decided to run and after I was elected. My vision and agenda, as it were, were shaped by myopic political ideology, religious ambition and provincial loyalty.
Another failure factor was governing only for those who voted for me and not for the whole nation. This further influenced the way I selected people for top national positions and how national funds for infrastructure were allocated to reward my constituents.
Another contributor was my poor judgment in appointing people to help me run the country. I did not consider the competence, experience and character of those I appointed to critical national positions.
I must admit, appointments were based solely on partisanship and allegiance to my party and loyalty to my ethnoreligious roots. I now realize this was a big mistake from which I couldn’t recover.
My hand-picked loyalists were devoid of progressive ambition, lacking in creative ideas and, for 7-plus years, barely seemed to have any effective strategy on how to tackle the enormous challenges faced by our country.
Unfortunately, people with real knowledge of policymaking were often excluded from my inner circle and hardly held any important roles in developing critical national policies. I regret this self-inflicted wound the most.
I wish I had listened to my wife, Aisha, when she warned that my administration had been hijacked by a cabal who now wield sweeping powers, but are hardly interested in advancing my agenda in the best interest of our people.
Truth be told, I failed to build the consensus needed to lead a democracy. My lack of engagement with the national assembly and state governors to seek consensus on critical national security issues hampered my ability to kill corruption and defeat Boko Haram and other emergent terrorist groups.
Another key factor was lack of communication with the citizens. I wish I communicated more directly with you to share my vision along the way. The outcome was separation between my administration and your problems and needs.
My Regrets
My fellow Nigerians, I leave office with many regrets. Hindsight is always 20/20.
On a personal level, I regret saying that my wife’s place is in the kitchen, living room and my bedroom. This was an insult to all women, including my friend, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was there when I made the statement.
I regret my interview with Al-Jazeera when I stated, “Why didn’t I come when the treasury was full? Oil price was over $140 per barrel and when I came, it slipped down to $30. Why me?” As your president I was elected to solve problems in both boom and bust cycles.
I regret not being an inclusive president. I failed to appoint qualified people from the Southeast in my top cabinet where their expertise could have benefited the nation. It was unpresidential for me to retaliate against the Southeast for not voting for me.
I regret asking the facetious question on December 30, 2015: “What do the Igbos want?” My question was divisive and exclusionist. I was expressing frustration that they didn’t vote for me.
I regret my reluctance to condemn Boko Haram and their sponsors and the Fulani Herdsmen atrocities with the urgency and directness required to minimize further loss of life and property.
I regret giving Boko Haram murderers amnesty and political escape while denying the same to IPOB members who I classified as a terrorist organization. This I now recognize was a double standard.
I regret threatening Igbo youth when I tweeted: “Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us (who) were in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war. We will treat them in the language they understand.” Threatening serious violence against any citizen is a crime, especially when the perpetrator is your president. I overreacted. This was unpresidential.
I regret getting my medical treatments abroad when millions of my fellow Nigerians couldn’t find a hospital bed locally, when our healthcare system was severely underfunded by my administration.
I regret my veto of State policing and reluctance to restructure the federal government. I know this did not sit well with many people. As a matter of fact, I was protecting the interests of our fellow citizens who see restructuring as a threat to their dominance and hegemonic ambitions.
Finally, I regret my administration’s tragic mishandling of the #EndSARS protests, and the Twitter ban. I violated the constitutionally guaranteed right of all Nigerians to free speech. I was ill-advised.
For all my lack of leadership and governance malpractices, again I say I’m sorry. I have let you down. I let down my friends, I let down the country, and I let down my party.
Advice for Presidential Candidates
The job of the president is challenging, especially given the enormity of the problems we face, and the vision needed to solve them.
The next president will inherit a nation deeply traumatized, weaker, more divided, and more violent. It is, therefore, imperative that the next president learn from, not ignore, the lessons of my administration.
As I stated previously, I spent over 25% of my presidency seeking medical treatments at home and overseas. The inconvenient truth is that my age was a liability.
Knowing what I know now, I would not have sought the office of the president in 2015. I overestimated my fit for office and my preparedness to do the people’s job.
My age and challenges that come with it were a warning sign I refused to accept, and which the voters mistakenly ignored when I was elected.
This leads me to salient advice directed to the three presidential candidates: The presidency is not for tired, old men. No person who has signs of health deterioration should be eligible for election to the office of president. The presidency is not an old people’s home or retirement job.
As we’ve found out together, a president’s success is predicated on the quality, character, competence and commitment of the talented people around him, who actually do the job.
So, I advise my replacement to assemble a class of competent and morally upright people. It matters that they come from different social, economic, geographic and ethnic backgrounds. Inclusiveness and diverse perspectives are the kingpin of solving the diverse and complex problems facing our nation.
Advice to Voters
If we’re fortunate and you make the wise choice, you will elect a president who is a moral and effective leader to redirect, rebuild, and renew Nigeria with intent to improve justice, peace, security, equity, inclusiveness, prosperity and accountability.
But I have bad news for you.
Some of the people running (I will not name names) to replace me are worse than the people who served in my administration, who failed to deliver for you. I have no confidence in their ability to solve the problems they will inherit from me.
Trust me, I tried my best to deter one of them from running. As in all things, in politics, you must pay back your debt. But it may prove to be a devil’s bargain if voters are not careful and again elect the wrong candidate for president.
I worry that as godfathers, one or two of the candidates will make the same mistake of appointing only their godchildren, partisans and ethnic cronies, with enormous negative consequences for you.
Importantly, I worry about the candidate’s age, health and mental acuity. I worry about their incompetence, character flaws and potential health challenges.
Accordingly, I want every voter to answer these very important questions before casting votes:
- Who among the three candidates is visionary, competent, innovative, ethical, healthy, agile, compassionate, and inclusive enough to solve your problems?
- Who will create jobs for you and your children?
- Who will secure and stabilize the nation, so that you feel free everywhere you go?
- Who will lower the costs of food, gas and healthcare?
- Who will provide affordable housing and education?
- Who will invest in education and rebuild infrastructure?
- Who will finally kill corruption in all facets of our society?
- Who will unite the country?
- Is it Peter Obi or Bola Tinubu or Atiku Abubakar?
Please choose wisely, because your life, and our nation, depend on it.
Closing Remarks
In closing, let me express my overwhelming gratitude for the love and support of my wife and children. Standing by me while watching me fail repeatedly could not have been easy.
I thank my staff and all those who supported my administration all these years. And most importantly, I thank you for your care and concern when I was ill.
I go away from Aso Rock with a heavy heart.
I pray for you and your children; I hope the worst is over.
I deeply believe that if you make the right choice in this presidential election, our country will avoid the troubles ahead.
I will return to my farm. God willing, I will make every effort to right the wrongs of my administration before I lose the power to do so.
God bless you and the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
