This commentary is inspired by Olusegun Adeniyi’s “Of
wailers, counterwailers and Buharideens”(ThisDay,
March 31). In that piece, the ace journalist and public affairs commentator
successfully defines the tri-polarities governing public responses to the
Muhammadu Buhari administration. The
take-away is that the biggest challenge that Nigeria faces at the moment is
political partisanship, which has divided the country into the camps of rights
and wrongs and a fierce and bitter contestation over who is right or wrong.
One year after the last Presidential election that led to
the exit of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), after 16 years in office and
power (sorry, the 60 years project failed) and the exit also, of the Goodluck
Jonathan administration, there is now a bitter fight out there on the streets
over whether or not Nigerians took the right decision by voting for change, the
All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Muhammadu Buhari. President
Goodluck Jonathan’s over 12.8 million supporters have proven to be loyal and indeed
that they exist as a serious, organized political force.
They have wasted no muscle, saliva or emotion in slyly reminding
Nigerians generally that the electorate didn’t think properly about the choices
they made in the 2015 general elections. President Buhari gained 15.4 million
plus supporters in that election and they too are not ready to abandon their
choice. And as Adeniyi brilliantly points out, you have the Buharideens, whose
devotion to the incumbent is at the level of passion, religion and ethnicity.
Adeniyi forgot to mention the Jonathanians (I wonder why) who afraid of
persecution, have since laid low strategically, but are now beginning to show
their hands, as a new contest for the public mind begins, close to the first
anniversary of the Buhari administration in power.
My tentative take is that there is too much ego, passion and
self-righteousness out there on the streets. Add the reverse triumphalism of
the defeated PDP. Well, scratch that. Add opportunism. You may scratch that too.
Add didn’t-we-tell-you-the-change-you-sought-was-nothing-but-one-chance?
Now, scratch that and replace with the other group saying you-thieves-should-go-hide-your-heads-in-shame.
Hmmm, scratch that quickly and replace withall-of-us-na-barawo-una-go-see-wetin-we-go-do-to-you-when-we-come-back. Now don’t scratch this completely, leave some
of the ink, and replace withthere-is-no-vacancy-here-na-joke-una-dey-joke-because-we-know-corruption-is-trying-to-fight-back.
Now, come on, scratch everything and replace with the realization that
Nigeria today is entrapped in a vicious power game, a muddled integrity game
and a desperate one-upmanship, my-car-is-better-than-yours
game. It is as if the election has not ended, it is as if we are still in the
season of political campaigns.
I blame the APC strategists for allowing things to remain at
this level. They have failed to see the need to move quickly from campaignto
governance mode. They are also behaving as if they are under the spell of
Karma. The PDP wailers are tying them down, with taunts, forcing them to still
campaign after the election. They have nowpushed them to become defensive, the
exact place where the PDP was more than a year ago,but it is worse, as the APC
and its agents have become irritable.The result is that the APC and its
government are beginning to over-react to every little provocation. They used
to accuse the Jonathan government of being reactive rather than pro-active (I
never agreed), but that is what they are doing now, and it is worse according
to current testimonies. They who used to be regarded as the masters of this
kind of game are losing grip of it.
Today’s men are thusmaking precisely the same mistakes we
made, if we may charitably say so, and if they continue this way, and do not
quickly change the narrative, their tactics and their strategy, they may with
their own hands unwittingly prepare the grounds for the hobbling of their own government.
They have already made one big additional mistake, which the Jonathan
government didn’t make: they are forcing the people to look back. They are
forcing the people to check the dictionary for the meaning of change and to
start asking simple questions. They are practically motivating the people to be
nostalgic. The kind of compare-and-contrast narrative that is determining prevalent
sentiments is ironic at all levels.
A fellow that should professionally qualify as an idiot even
asked the other day: who is thinking for this government? The truth is that
there are always people thinking for government but they are mostly the wrong
people, exploiting primordial advantages rather than natural and trained
gifts. But the worse that has happened
in the shape of an own goal is the APC fighting itself.
This is too Karmic, and too much of a
repetition of recent history, to be true. When Asiwaju Bola Tinubu called out
Dr Ibe Kachikwu on the management of the lingering nationwide scarcity of fuel,
and the latter’s response to public angst - that was a deadly own goal. When
the administration puts Senate President Bukola Saraki in the dock,and treats
him like a renegade, that is another own goal. The seemingly intractable
scarcity of fuel and foreign exchange and the rising cost of everything is the
biggest own goal, in addition to the open denial of promises made to the
people.
In our time, there were persons who used to wonder whenever certain
things occurred if the Jonathan government was not under a metaphysical spell;
perhaps, it is possible for a government to be under spells: man-made and
induced. We have been told, for example,
that government is not a magician, credited to Dr Ibe Kachikwu, the Minister of
State for Petroleum/GMD NNPC but is anyone aware that another government
spokesperson had actually said President Buhari never promised to perform magic,
weeks before Kachikwu echoed the same point?. Check that, and reflect on the
point about magical spells.
I bring up these
points merely to provoke further thought. In the last one year, certain specific lessons
have been learnt, and you don’t need a Ph.D to know this, just check with the
ordinary man on the street. Lesson one:
change doesn’t mean transformation.
The change of form is not the same as the
change of content or style. Lesson two: politicians
are the same, no matter the label. Lesson
three: it is not easy to run Nigeria. The challenges, year after year,
government after government, party after party, are basically the same. Lesson four: it is easy to criticize; it
is not as easy to govern. Lesson five: every
party or government in power has skeletons in the cupboard and ghosts in their courtyard.
Lesson six: the contest for power in
Nigeria is a permanent struggle at the heart of the national question.
Lesson seven: Nigeria is a country in
search of good men and heroes. Lesson
eight: the love of government, religion or the kinsman, is not the same as patriotism.
Lesson nine: truth can be relative. Lesson ten: politicians in Nigeria are
who they are: whores.Lesson eleven: small
things matter most.
These
propositions are organically contradictory to the extent that they provoke
further interrogations. They could generate egotism, unnecessary contestation,
bile and argumentation. We do not need that right now. Those who voted, not
necessarily for the APC, but for President Muhammadu Buhari saw him as a game
changer and a statesman, who having nothing at stake other than love of
country, will move the country forward.
The grievances in the land are directed
at him. The people may not know APC but they know Buhari. They placed their bet
on him. They want answers from him. Olusegun Adeniyi says he should not lose
the popularity that brought him to power, but he does not tell us how.
I
suspect that the answer lies in President Buhari insisting that Nigeria must
come first. The Manichean approach to governance that has remained dominant for
almost one year has divided the country right down the middle, vertically and
horizontally, creating camps of disaffection that government does not need. The
effect may not yet have been seen, but it is that latent effect that will on
the long run, determine the fortunes of the Buhari administration. The time has come for President Buhari to take
another look at the tea leaves and ask the forces of division to put Nigeria
first.
He came into
office as a legacy figure and statesman. He assumed office not as a man seeking
history but as a man of history. His remit is to deepen that history and his
credentials as a legacy figure and statesman. Those who are reducing his tenure
to a competition with the immediate past as justification and platform miss
this point and they have seen enough contradictions on display to realize the
limitations of their strategy just in case there is one. There is only one
valid strategy for a man with Buhari’s antecedents: sustained connection with
the popular will.
President Olusegun
Obasanjo managed that very well during his first term (1999
-2003) and President Goodluck Jonathan is gaining back whatever he may have lost
- his individual heroism and the failure of the APC ‘s post-election tactics,
have shed useful light on his achievements in office via the force of
inevitable comparison.
I believe that the Buhari government has reached that moment
when it must review its house-keeping tactics.One option is for the President
to move beyond the APC and run a government of national unity. He must search
far more widely for meaning, purpose and inclusivity at the levels of thought
and policy options.
He needs to run a
government that shows that it has since gone beyond elections, and seeks to
build a nation. One year is gone, so he has very short time. The best
assessment of the last one year in office cannot even be done by him, his staff
or pundits. He only needs to listen to the anonymous man on the street from
Kano to wherever.
The people will always speak, and they must be heard, and as
the Buhari government approaches its first year in office, the people are
speaking louder than ever. Nigerians may be implacable, but when they begin to
murmur, it is better to listen.
If
anyone tells President Buhari that it is the PDP making such noise, let him not
believe such persons. If they tell him there is a Jonathanian cabal fighting
him, he should tell such persons to try another line because that particular song
is beginning to sound too familiar. There may be no magic to governance, but
there is certainly serious magic in statecraft. Mr. President, the past is in
the mirror.
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