President Buhari – Toxicity of Power in an Embalmed Narcissistic Fossil

Considerations regarding President Buhari:

“Narcissists and psychopaths dissociate a lot because their contact with the world and with others is via a fictitious construct: The false self. Narcissists never experience reality directly but through a distorting lens darkly. They get rid of any information that challenges their grandiose self-perception and the narrative they had constructed to explicate, excuse and legitimize their antisocial, self-centered and exploitative behaviors, choices and idiosyncrasies … [They] are not invested with the emotions and cognitions that are integral parts of real memories.”  (Sam Vaknin, Professor of Psychology)

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Nigeria’s massive October 2020 youth-led, ethically organized, needful and powerful protest movement against long decades of unconscionable police brutality, was countered by a hail of bullets, deaths, injury, and the spiraling offshoots of uncoordinated revolts, loosely termed by some as a new class war that has been long in the making. The disruptions and shifts are heartbreaking, but are no surprise. President Buhari, erstwhile military dictator, had shocked many global observers with his prolonged chilling silence, stupor and lack of leadership in response to the youth-led #EndSARS movement. This was a struggle against the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad; a police unit best described as combining the worst excesses of the Mafia, Hitler’s Gestapo and Rwanda’s roving Interahamwe killer bands.

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SARS’ rampaging excesses and show of impunity, has made the country’s regular police force appear to be members of the Order of the Gentle Saints (even though their trademark is also the routinization of brutality and corruption). The growing movement had evolved in just two weeks to include hundreds of thousands of extraordinarily organized and creative protestors. They made available free food, umbrellas, charging stations, and organized nightly cleanup of the trash left after the daily demonstrations. Demonstrators were energized by the supportive power of popular artistes. Some of them like Candy Bleakz crafted songs and short films to the marching slogan of the now viral response of a young person who responded angrily to a governor’s inaudible address to the crowd: “Soro Soke! Werey!” (Speak up! madman!). 

The Silence

Not surprisingly global allies like Tyler Perry wanted to know the meaning of “Soro Soke” as they joined the fight and amplified the struggle. But from the Nigerian President ensconced in his Aso Rock villa, came nothing but silence, a prolonged silence of incompetence and arrogance. Meanwhile, the military announced it would commence “Operation Crocodile Smile” on the 19^th of October, an exercise supposedly unrelated to the #EndSARS protests.

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The Killing Squad, The Shootings and The Deafening Silence

Then came Toxic Tuesday: Lagos •  Upscale Lekki Toll Gate •  13^th night of protest • First, the street lights went out • the dazzling billboard lights darkened • CCTV cameras were removed •  then soldiers emerged from trucks • unarmed protestors started singing the national anthem draped in flags •  then the shooting started •  live rounds fired indiscriminately into the crowd •  the crying, running, the desperation and disbelief •  there was the camaraderie of helping the wounded •  the videos • private hospitals opening doors to the wounded • visit by the Lagos state governor desperate to regain trust and control •  the world’s media began speaking •  the multiple mobilizations by Nigerian groups – feminist coalition, women’s coalition, youth groups •  then the anger: the looting and burning of public buildings, banks, state buses, businesses.

Buhari’s continued silence may have shocked the world, but was still no surprise. As the president and “commander-in chief of the armed forces” maintained his chilling silence, the nation mourned, reeled in pain, demanded answers, sought shelter, sought emergency care, and Lagos, former capital city and still the epicenter of the nation, began to burn. 

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• Tuesday night: Presidential Silence of Hostility
• Wednesday morning: Presidential Silence of Assent
• Wednesday afternoon: Presidential Silence of Arrogance
• Wednesday night: Presidential Silence of Callousness
• Thursday morning: Presidential Silence of Toxic Power
• Thursday afternoon: Presidential Silence for Pre-recording of a National Address
• Thursday Evening: The Tone-Deaf National Address Unleashes Ire, not Surprise

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President Buhari finally emerged from a state of malignant inertia to assail the nation with a rambling, coldly threatening speech. He demanded that protestors leave the streets but made no mention of the Lekki Toll Gate shootings at protestors by military boys. Someday, we may learn who and what it took to persuade him that he needed to address the nation.  Unfortunately, his handlers could not cajole him into saying anything worthwhile. International media reported that Nigerians were disappointed by the president’s speech. Not really.  Nigerians were angry, frustrated and irate. HIS SPEECH ANGERED THE NATION, BUT IT WAS NO SURPRISE.

“the strongest indictment of the president’s speech is that most young Nigerians expected little from it in the first place”- Yomi Kazeem, writing in the Quartz.

The Narcissistic Fossil and Malignant Inertia

Delusions of Grandeur: Like US President Trump, Buhari’s true colors and values (or lack thereof) were evident from his campaigns for temporary occupancy of the legendary Aso Rock Presidential office. A grandiose self-perception fueled his quest for power; all quite evident when he desperately ran for office for the fourth time. Millions of desperate citizens chose to ignore it- driven by the persuasion of hope and the corralling of electoral options into a two-party game supervised by big money.

The Myth: Buhari was always a part of that same corrupt enclave he derided. He rode on the coattails of sublegal funding from his sponsors and handlers to achieve his need for power and control. Indeed, the obtuse arrogance with which he has treated the nation in this tragic season of protest is akin to the same narcissistic delusions by which he convinced himself and his followers that he embodied virtue personified, the exalted and unassailable “Sai Baba,” — riding into office on the wings and funding of flawed politicians but somehow unsullied by their crass identities and corrupt actions.

Buhari is convinced by his own anti-corruption narrative of self-virtue, even while he has stayed embedded in and elevated by the wheels of corrupted power, by his own corrosive and dangerous identity politics and misuse of office; and by the dubious wealth of his sponsors. Can an arrogant narcissist be woken from the torpor of his myths of entitlement that are anchored to his parallel conviction of the unworthiness of others?

The Mirror of the Narcissist: Perhaps Buhari is too deeply sunken in the abyss of this toxic pathological narcissism; too comfortably comforted by his discourse of  self-affirming “apartness” from his people. This is why he was able to characterize Nigerian youths as lazy and uneducated louts while speaking at the Commonwealth Economic Forum. His arrogance reveals what he thought of those who unfortunately frenziedly joined his campaign caravan and carried him into office on their backs. His ingrown narcissistic blinkers allow him to imagine his identity and person is securely separated from the fate of ‘those other unworthy citizens’.

The president’s deeply obtuse lenses permit him to hail himself as a nationalist while trading in politics of hierarchical inequity and ethnic disposability; to imagine himself as ‘hardworking’, while actually sequestered in parasitic indolence. His inflated sense of entitlement deflates his sense of shame as he frequently departs his own country for the United Kingdom for prolonged healthcare massages paid for by his “lazy” nationals. The tragedy is that millions had bought into his delusional self-affirmation — delusions of righteousness, of competence, of empathy, and of reformism. The reality is that President Buhari has always been incapable of producing a different script for an angry grieving nation. He lacks the capacity for seeing the truth, of owning who he really is. He cannot acknowledge and cannot own his lack of integrity, nor his incapacity for empathetic oversight of any part of the nation other than his little space of origin, identity,  and identification.

He is in many respects, a soul brother of the current US president — more given to the business of divisiveness than reconciliation; of violence rather than peace; of elimination of the opposition than a respectful and safe dissension; and of assaults rather than protection.

As we continue this long struggle against police brutality and state violence, we have to continue to fight to ensure that perhaps someday citizens will vote soberly, without hyped-up fervor, remembering that most, (but not all), of those who rise to the top of a corrupt political edifice are often the most skilled in the arts of corrupt politics with complicated relationships with their deep-pocket sponsors and handlers. They will remember that those who successfully negotiate a violent political arena are often the most committed to maintaining the same scaffolding of brutality and criminality that catapulted them to fame.  We must hold onto these truths so that we can protect another generation from being pre-sentenced to abuse, violence, and death;  and prevent them from feting the same cynical despots who will eventually callously execute them, as President Buhari has done by his actions, inactions and consenting silence.

President Buhari, your assent to extra-judicial assassinations is no surprise.

But this nation has brought you into the dock, indicted, and judged you, and found you unworthy of the office you hold.   

To all courageous and ethically driven activists, Onward then … Aluta Continua!

Peyi Soyinka-Airewele | October, 2020