If you are a lecturer in any of the tertiary institutions and you have concluded the topics in your course outline, your students would likely ask you for topics to focus their attention on in their preparations for the upcoming examinations.
President Muhammadu Buhari
The motivation behind such request is to enhance targeted reading and reduce the possibility ofspending valuable time on materials that are irrelevant with respect to the examination questions, especially if the topics covered in the course or subject matter were voluminous.
Giving students areas of concentration is helpful for those students that are genuinely interested in their academic work and are determined to perform well. Butwhat has that got to do with President Buhari?
The answer to that question will emerge in the course of our analysis. Meanwhile, I am one of those who wanted former President Goodluck Jonathan to win the March 28 presidential election, and my reasons for preferring him to Buhari were clearly articulated in several essays in this column and elsewhere.
But Buharimaniacs whose exaggerated admiration for Alhaji Buhari beclouded their sense of reasoning believe, wrongly, that anyone who supported Jonathan must either have been bribed or was scheming for political appointment, as if they themselves were immune to such Machiavellian calculations. Such holier-than-thou hasty generalisations and flippant condemnation of supporters of the former President betrays an immature understanding of the imperatives of political choices in a democratic setting.
I am aware that what we have in Nigeria presently is agbata ekee or chop-I-chop democracy in which many of the so-called elected representatives of the people and members of the business and military elite connive to steal as much as they could without considering the plight of suffering compatriots.
I also know that the evolution of top quality democratic culture is extraordinarily arduous – even the United States of America with over two hundred years of continuous democratic practice is still battling with the challenges of democratic governance. The main problem in our own case is that key players in Nigeria’s political arena have continued to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors as if they are completely ignorant of our chequered political history.
Each time a new political dispensation comes into office riding on the goodwill and high expectations of Nigerians, the leaders abandon their campaign promises and begin to see themselves as overlords whose main occupation (or preoccupation) is primitive accumulation. This tendency of not learning anything concrete from the past for better performance in future is euphemistically captured in expressions such as “nascent democracy”, “our democracy is a learning process” etc.Objectively considered, most prominent politicians in Nigeria lack the degree of self-discipline and emotional intelligence required to run a democratic system for good governance.
Therefore, despite the noisy sloganeering and self-exculpatory pronouncements of leading members of the All Progressive Congress (APC), it is unlikely, considering the questionable antecedents of well known carpetbaggers in theparty, that it has the requisite number of creative, courageous, disciplined and responsible politicians to bring about meaningful change in Nigeria at this time.
Going back to our major theme, one must acknowledge that the task before President Buhari is extremely daunting. But since nobody forced him under duress to contest in the last election, since he was the one who worked so hard to be President and Nigerians obliged him, the onus is on him to keep his promises to Nigerians. It is amusing that some so-called intellectuals who claim that it is too early to criticise the President for certain errors of judgement and sluggish one-man-show performance thus far, also claim that he has done extremely well.
The irrational bias behind this kind of sloppy reasoning is too obvious to go unnoticed. Anyway, whether the President and his supporters like it or not, he must be prepared for constant criticism, because criticism and plurality of opinion are essential ingredients in a democratic arrangement. Of course, democracy is a meaningless hollow concept if dissent is suppressed simply because it might annoy the leaders or puts pressure on them to do their jobs well. The important thing is for criticism to be based on sound logic and relevant facts, and for those criticised to learn from it.
Irrespective of one’s preference during the presidential election, Buhari has assumed office as President, and according to the 1999 Constitution it is his duty, in concert with members of his Executive Council and the National Assembly, to run the country in a manner that would uplift the lives of Nigerians. Like every top political leader, sycophants around President Buhari who are keenly interested in protecting their own selfish interests would be telling him the things he would like to hear and prevent him from having a direct existential acquaintance with the grim reality Nigerians are facing at the moment.
Of course, part of the problem is the unnecessary opulence of public office at the highest levels of government, which tends to prevent occupiers of such office from having a deep understanding of the excruciating pains of poverty, destitution, unemployment and hopelessness among the people. Buhari can shield himself from the deadening effects of the opulence attached to his office by following the exemplary leadership style of Jose Mujica, the President of Uruguay, who demonstrated through personal example that one can be a President and still maintain a simple, humble and selfless lifestyle in the service of the people.
Now, although I did not support his quest for the presidency, I sincerely want President Buhari to succeed. To start with, if during his tenure the incidence of corruption goes down considerably and the hideously corrupt irrespective of who they might be are severely dealt with, financial leakages in the system are blocked, increased opportunities for employment are created, electricity and fuel supply improves considerably, andBoko Haram insurgency and other sources of insecurity nationwide are suppressed, the well-being of Nigerians, including myself and my family, would be enhanced.
Again, the President and members of his family would benefit tremendously from the good name and peace of mind which a solid performance brings in its wake. Leaders who lay the foundation for or bring about positive changes in peoples’ lives are immortalised, such that even when they are dead, they become role models and live on in the minds of the people they have transformed either directly or indirectly.
Supposing President Buhari, after four years in office, succeeds in laying a strong foundation for his successors to build on and Nigeria eventually realises her potential as the greatest black nation in the world, historians will place his name alongside the giants of Nigerian political history, such as Herbert Macaulay, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Sam Mbakwe and Alhaji Ahmadu Bello among others. Finally, a successful tenure by Buhari will enhance Nigeria’s standing in the international scene, where countries are ranked according to the strength of their economies, military capability and level of industrialisation based on science and technology.
In this connection, it is imperative that Nigerians, irrespective of ethnicity, religious persuasion and political affiliation should rally round the President and help him in whatever way they can to make Nigeria great again.
Before I identify areas of concentration for President Buhari, it is important to remind his aides and supporters to stop talking and acting as if the President belongs to them alone or as if they have a greater stake in the Nigerian project than others. In my opinion, every bona fide Nigerian citizen has as much stake as those in Aso Rock and all government houses across the country.
Certainly, the President’s remark about belonging to everybody and belonging to no one is logically incoherent; but if he genuinely wants to succeed, he should consider the entire country as his constituency and treat each geopolitical zone fairly. Those closest to Buhari should allow him room to be himself; they should not suffocate the man by building unnecessary psychological Berlin walls of discrimination and vengefulness around him. Meanwhile, even if APC leaders think that Goodluck Jonathan’s government is the most corrupt in Nigerian history (an assessment which might be mistaken), it is unhelpful for PresidentBuhari and his cohorts to continuously dwell on the issue all the time as if corruption is in the DNA of Nigerians.
Vanguard
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