Last week on this page, I responded to the many Vanguard readers who have reprimanded me for voting for Buhari; and I admitted that he has yet to deliver the Change he promised Nigerians during the run-up to the 2015 election campaign and that I myself am disillusioned by the fact that the country is in very bad shape (thanks to electricity meltdowns, fuel shortages, widespread poverty, etc). Some APC supporters were unhappy when they read the above comments and have contacted me to accuse me of defeatism and unfairness…and to chide me for caving in “too easily” to critics of Buhari’s administration…because they reckon that it is too early to be disappointed in Mr President, given that he inherited several monumental headaches from Jonathan and has only been in office for 11 months.
Fulfilling his potential For the record, I have NOT given up on Buhari and agree that he has not had enough time in which to fulfil his potential and show us what he can do for us. However, I completely disagree with the view that Jonathan is to blame for almost everything that is going wrong at the moment (let me facetiously say that some folks are so eager to lay all of our woes at Jonathan’s door that I’m surprised they are not running around insisting that the global oil price drop is Jonathan’s fault!). And I refuse to apologise for feeling that Buhari will have to become more dynamic on several fronts if he wants to shine and deliver before his term expires in 2019. A Fulani friend tells me that he has ceased to believe in Buhari because his people have a saying that you will know by Wednesday how the weekend will be. I’ve told my friend that he is being too pessimistic because we haven’t yet reached Wednesday! If you do the maths and divide five weekdays by four, each year of Buhari’s tenure boils down to 1.25 days…which means that we are still on Tuesday morning! But time flies and Wednesday is around the corner. By the end of his second year in office, we will hit Wednesday afternoon; and Buhari needs to get his skates on NOW if he wants to convince sceptics that a pleasant weekend is on the horizon.
Yes, Buhari was saddled, from Day One, with chronic problems that existed long before he took over the reins of power – insane levels of corruption, decaying infrastructure and the Boko Haram curse, for example. And I don’t think that anyone with half a brain expected him to eradicate all of these ills within a year. But some of the problems with which this administration is grappling are largely or wholly self-inflicted. For example, I don’t see why Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu should hold two super-tough government jobs simultaneously and be the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and the Group Managing Director of NNPC. Laudable credentials Kachikwu possesses laudable academic credentials and was working for a respected multinational oil company (ExxonMobil) before Buhari recruited him. But Kachikwu’s intellectual brilliance and impressive CV are not manifesting themselves in the job he is doing. His embarrassing struggles with fuel supply issues prove that he has bitten off more than he can.
His failure doesn’t surprise me at all because industry experts have told me that there is no other country in which the Oil Minister also happens to be the Chief Executive of the state oil company. So why on earth did Mr President take such an eccentric gamble? I sometimes admire original thinking; and I’m not opposed to the idea that Nigeria needs to develop some unique strategies that will address our peculiar circumstances. But there are contexts within which it makes sense to be conventional and simply copy those who are doing well; and the stakes are way too high for this type of experimentation. If countries that are more successful than Nigeria are not giving one man two huge hats to wear, why should Buhari decide to do things differently? Similar concerns I have similar concerns about Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), the former Governor of Lagos State who is now the Minister of Power, Works and Housing. Fashola has a big brain and was much-praised between 2007 and 2015 for his calm, effective gubernatorial style and his considerable achievements in Lagos. But his reputation has taken a massive nosedive in recent months as Nigerians bitterly protest about the constant power cuts that are making our lives a misery. And I wonder why Buhari gave Fashola 3 extremely difficult portfolios to manage. Power is more than enough wahala on its own. Ditto Works. Ditto Housing. And I am pretty sure that no mere mortal can skilfully juggle all of these responsibilities.
If I’d been in Fashola’s shoes, I’d have politely declined and requested a less hellish workload when Mr President summoned me to offer me this triple whammy! To cut a long story short, optimism is still called for because Buhari means well and still has three more years in which to get his act together, prove his enemies wrong, make his supporters proud and drag Nigeria into the 21st century. But journalists – and citizens in general – SHOULD grumble LOUDLY, whenever this (or any other) government makes mistakes or performs lethargically. Democracy is about holding our leaders to account, about demanding that they earn the privileged existences they enjoy (Buhari and his family do not have to worry about mundane and stressful chores like finding petrol for their cars!) and about NOT sycophantically letting them off the hook when they are clumsy or inept. Human nature is such that most of us benefit from constructive pressure. A teacher or boss who doesn’t accept feeble excuses for laziness or avoidable faux pas gets better results from his or her pupils or staff and a President who has to deal with high expectations from his electorate is more likely to pull his socks up.
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