Buhari’s Interview: Is Nigeria Run by an Idiot?

An armchair judgment of President Buhari’s intellectual ability based on a single interview

President Buhari.

Introduction

I have been quite disconnected from “instant media” for a while now, and more so recently as I had just deleted my 10(?) year-old Twitter account — about one month before Nigeria’s controversial ban on the micro-blogging platform. Maybe, now, you can imagine my surprise at what seemed to be WhatsApp posts about a supposed live presidential interview… And it seemed to have passed. In case you have no idea why an interview with Nigeria’s current president is such a big deal, this would be his first live interview since the onset of his second term — over two years ago. In fact, many critics have adopted the event of such an interview as a benchmark for the president’s fitness for office, a position that also finds relevance in the face of the conspiracy theory that the real Muhammadu Buhari actually died in 2017, two whole years before his reelection. In all, one can imagine how this interview was an in-your-face moment, a sarcastic gift from Buharians to the restless people of dear Nigeria.

The general sentiment that I initially perceived was that people were ironically disappointed with the outcome of the interview. Disappointed, it seemed, at the president’s lack of… er… mental strength? Ironic because it is a little funny to be disappointed when something conforms to one’s expectations. Anyway, perhaps this sentiment was only popular among the folks on my contact list. Well, I would go on to find out that YouTube commenters, on the video recording by Arise News, were almost unanimous in their judgment: The interview was a waste of time; the interviewers did not ask critical questions; and most importantly, the president did not manage to grant a coherent discussion. According to this online panel of judges, the president did not answer the questions asked, and (and yes, this is the most important part) it is because he lacks the intellectual capacity to do so. As you may have derived from my rather suspicious tone, I do not think this judgment was sound. Also, there are more and many important things to learn from the interview. These are the objects of this writing.

Why the President is Misjudged

Firstly, I simply make a counterclaim that the president of Nigeria is not mentally retarded. Yes, one could have gotten this impression from numerous sources. Yes, it sort of feels good to think less of a leader whose government has seen the country through some of its worst economic hardships of your lifetime. But I hate to break it to you, General Muhammadu Buhari is not an idiot. Not the one your social media judges have made him out to be.

However, we say where there is smoke there is fire. As I read through the YouTube comments, I began to recognize the reasoning behind President Buhari’s misjudged intellect.

1. He frequently answered questions indirectly. Multiple times during the interview, the media personnel would ask a question, clearly pointing in a certain direction, but PMB would begin attacking it from another angle. One who paid little attention would soon be lost in the gymnastics of the response, suspecting that the intended idea had been misconceived. Well, not only can this ‘indirect’ address be acknowledged as a political skill, but the maneuvering of subjects, while either preserving the crux of the matter or ultimately arriving at a super-relevant conclusion is, if anything, a sign of intelligence. It requires the speaker to have a large working memory, a competent vocabulary, and a good command of analogical thinking; all indications of high intelligence. While not all of his answers were simple, they mostly addressed the emotions behind the questions. Well, this social media generation is not exactly known for its long attention span.
2. Buhari speaks with a markedly Northern accent. As superficial as it sounds, many social media judges, many of whom are from the Southwestern and Southeastern parts of Nigeria, cannot bring themselves to see past Buhari’s thick Fulani accent. The underlying assumption is that the Fulani man is symbolized by an uneducated cattle herder who has no horse in the race of intellectual conversations. From my observations, this stereotypic association by non-Northern Nigerians overcomes their judgment of both the grammatical quality and logical appeal of speakers from the region.
3. Buhari’s ideas are old-fashioned. I have a surprise: a 70-something-to-80-something-year-old retired general, a product of an old-time socioeconomic and political culture, now heading a nation whose majority demographic is the under-30 group seems a little old-school. Putting it that way, would it not take a miracle for things to have been different? It surely would. From Buhari’s frequently told story about the praise-punishment regiment of his beloved boarding school teachers to his perspectives on economic reform, it is clear that Buhari is a man from a different time. But the generational appropriateness of his ideas is a better predictor of his age than it is of his I.Q.
4. Buhari is popularly believed to be undereducated (specifically, under-schooled). It used to be a politically relevant ‘fact’ that Buhari could not produce his secondary school leaving certificates. While he reports having attended secondary school, as far as some critics are concerned, his lack of advanced schooling makes him illiterate. This bias seems to foreshadow the judgment of his outputs. How much does this really mean? Well, the truth is that proper secondary school education is more than enough to establish one intellectually, to the extent that there is much to establish. It is only a coincidence that for many people, the post-secondary school mental development, over the years, occurs within the context of a university. Given his experience in military education, he surely had sufficient context for intellectual growth. The provision for self-study also should not be forgotten. Branding Buhari as an illiterate makes it easier to see nonsense where he makes clear sense.

Conclusion

In general, Buhari’s intelligence is underrated by ‘Nigerian Youths’ because he did not learn like them, does not agree with them, and does not sound like them… And this is a somewhat accurate ordering from the least to the most influential factor. It also does not help that he is visibly old and speaks relatively slowly. But from my experience, which includes intellectual ability research involving Nigerians, my armchair analysis is that the Nigerian president just might be, for his age, a highly intelligent individual, given that the interview footage was not severely edited. Thus, critics have a tougher job of discrediting his opinions on merit, you know, like one actually should. Meanwhile, any of those YouTube commenters who thought they could knock out the president on a one-on-one debate would likely end up surprised.

A key factor that could cause one to overestimate president Buhari’s intelligence from the video is that being the most respected individual in the room, his authoritative status may have overshadowed the influence of the others, thereby contributing to an illusion of intellectual superiority. But for what it’s worth, his (apparently) unscripted speeches indicated a good understanding of his ideas and a largely consistent internal justification of his political conclusions. And THAT has an even more significant implication on the question of his governing competence and political intentions, things about which one should have learned from the interview. Maybe in a follow-up writing?