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At eight o’clock on Tuesday night, my attention was drawn to the coverage of the National Convention of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) on NTA Live. I abandoned the football game I was watching and tuned in. A band was playing behind which was what looked, oddly, like a large open space. A couple of minutes later the music stopped and focus switched to a crowded podium. One man was in a smart suit, six or seven others in various agbada designs. There was now just background noise but the compere soon appeared to introduce Senator Faruk Bunza who we were told was going to get the Convention to approve the nomination of General Muhammadu Buhari as the Presidential Candidate of the
CPC, Buhari being the sole contestant. It took several minutes for Bunza to show up during which time there was a lot of pointless comings and goings on the stage. Bunza said he wanted to “hear vibration (sic)” from the audience. “C P C,” he shouted, but his voice is a low, miserable susurrus and he failed to get the feedback he expected. He asked for ayes and nays. Three times he put the question: all those in favour of the nomination say aye, those against say nay. Each time a resounding aye. No nays. Each time the focus turned to General Buhari who seemed to be very pleased with the endorsement seated in the front row in a chair royally set apart from all others. But he fidgeted and there was something unsettling and suggestive of the late Umaru ‘Yaradua about him.

With his candidacy approved, General Buhari was then invited to address the Convention. Standing in front of the microphone on the busy stage Buhari cut a very uninspiring figure. Many of Buhari’s fervent supporters set store by the image of the stern, no-nonsense Military man standing upright in his polished shoes and starched khaki with a smart cap to match. But this was a very different Buhari. Dressed in an ill-fitting blue babbanriga, he looked like a spent, retired dispenser out of some rural store east of Kauran Namoda.

And when he spoke, the disappointment was greater. He held his speech in loose sheets in his hands and as he spoke, a man standing alongside him would move to retrieve each read page. This, a Presidential candidate’s address this year! Long before Mrs Margaret Thatcher began her political career, she had taken elocution lessons to polish her English speech which she deemed a handicap, and which she was determined to address if she was to realise her ambition of leading the Conservative Party in Britain. For General Buhari, English, despite it being for all intents and purposes our National language and despite the period he spent in Military school in England, has remained very much a Foreign language he sees no reason to master. Buhari’s talk of ‘suportatas’, ‘folowas,’ ‘smoos’ and ‘sru’ ‘sik’ and ‘sin’, quite apart from being cringeworthy served to divert our attention from trying to understand what he was attempting to say. Many people mock Mrs Patience Jonathan’s English speech but she must have sat in the same classroom with General Buhari because he picks his words as she does hers, requiring you to listen very carefully to make sense of what is being said. Not many of the new supporters Buhari must win if he is to realise his dream of the Presidency will be willing to take the patient, attentive listening, route.

Buhari spoke for only a few minutes. He came across as petty and embittered. He complained about the ANPP and about previous elections manipulated by the PDP; said “only the PDP believes that we are practicing democracy in this country;” and tried to curry favour with the current head of the Electoral Commission. That was all. His manifesto for change, he said, has been widely circulated. I later asked about half a dozen random persons if they had seen it and not one person said yes. Perhaps you have. That a Presidential Candidate of a Party can speak at its National Convention aired live to a National audience without outlining his programme is astonishing. That his speech did not contain a rallying cry to get his suportatas and folowas out to electoral battle is absolutely beyond belief. General Buhari did not name a running mate either; the Convention was all about him.

A man introduced as Madam(!) Hamma did speak about the CPC’s manifesto. It was a very muddled presentation. He did not have a document to present. He blustered extempore. He regretted that there was not enough time to go into it. However, insufficient time is never a valid excuse in organised events like this. Whatever happened to preparation and rehearsal? It was just as well that we were spared an extended listening. Hamma said their “manifesto does not believe (sic) in privatisation, it believes in proper privatisation.” He was trying to convey a rejection of a Western economic agenda for Nigeria but he had a hard time doing it. Some of what he said was truly bizarre: “How many people know how many zeroes to write a trillion? So we believe we will speak language of the people.” And other non sequiturs in the same vein.

An hour later and it was all done. The only other business, ratification of amendments to the CPC’s Constitution, done without demurral. Reflecting on the organisation and conduct of this Convention, one cannot fail to wonder about the whereabouts of the substance of the Buhari platform and the quality of its officials and aides. They failed to put on a good show. It is evident that Buhari has a poor speech writer and, worse, that he lacks the intelligence to make useful revisions to what is presented before him. A truly great man of thought and accomplishment, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo had argued with clarity and conviction more than thirty years ago that a Political Party worthy of the name “must present a coherent and unequivocal programme,” and a leader must make “binding undertakings.” How could Buhari spend eight years campaigning for the Presidency and not have a clearly articulated and coherent agenda which is understood by all as well as subscribed to and promoted by his supporters and followers? How can the presumed personal integrity of one man alone be deemed a sufficient political platform when it cannot even organise a Convention in a professional and inspirational manner?

I have argued elsewhere that Buhari is the nostalgia candidate; those who support him expect him to pick up from where he left off twenty five years ago. They choose not to evaluate today’s version and what it has to offer in what are now very different circumstances. This Covention has highlighted the vacuity of the wizened babbanriga version. But there’s one more thing. No one has succeeded in stamping his imprint on a Nigerian government to the extent achieved by the late General Tunde Idiagbon. How much of the credit attached to the Buhari/Idiagbon regime is attributable to General Idiagbon? In looking at what is today on offer from Buhari and his apparently inadequate advisers, one is increasingly led to the inescapable conclusion that the earlier work, such as there was, was all Idiagbon’s.