By Salihu Moh. Lukman
Background: The
Democratic Context and Contest
Recently, His
Excellency, Amb. (retd.) Ignatius C. Olisemeka, former Nigerian Ambassador
to the United States, made the point "a leader must have a strong,
solid, moral and disciplined background, the inspirational ability to galvanize
his people to higher, lofty and common purpose."
This was contained in one
of the rarely expected testimonials endorsing Gen. Buhari's leadership and why
he should be the next President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
For Amb. Olisemeka, Nigeria badly needed "a leadership that will turn the country around; and rescue us from the depth of chronic indiscipline, disorder and decadence we have, over the years, gradually descended and slided into."
That Nigeria badly
needed a leadership that can rescue the country "from the depth of
chronic indiscipline, disorder and decadence" cannot be contested. Amb.
Olisemeka simply spoke the minds of millions of Nigerians. What is sharply
being contested is whether Gen. Buhari can provide that leadership.
Our
electoral option is President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. Of course, in between,
there are other less prominent candidates. The challenge before Nigerians, as
far as the 2015 elections are concerned, is making a choice between President
Jonathan and Gen. Buhari.
With a voting
population estimated at about 60%, our young people are certainly the dominant
players. Being the victims of almost a failed nation as evidenced by the
increasing rates of unemployment (23%), poverty (70%), crimes, etc. one expects
that they could make rational decisions. This is however a function of their
knowledge base in terms of what the two candidates represent especially with
respect to capacity to rescue the nation.
Parts of the
questions that should dominate the minds of many young Nigerians include: what
will be the new initiatives of government to address in particular the problems
of poverty and unemployment in the country post May 2015? How can these
initiatives, for instance, respond to the crisis in our education sector? The
big elephant in the room is the insecurity challenge; what will government do
to defeat the menace of Boko Haram in the country? Against the background of
our two choices, whose leadership will respond to these challenges effectively
and faster? President Jonathan or Gen. Buhari?
In summary, these
are both the context and the issues for contest in the 2015 elections.
Providing answers require comparative assessment of the two candidates. In a
functional society, propaganda will take bearing from the facts. Our curriculum
of education would have unbiasedly tutored our youth about what the facts are.
Both contemporary
and comparative assessments of performances of current and previous governments
should have guided the decisions of our young people. It is possible that this
is the case. In which case the campaign messages of both President Jonathan and
Gen. Buhari would not in any way attempt to take our young people for granted.
To that extent therefore messages would not distort history.
President Jonathan
Vs. Gen. Buhari
Unfolding events,
especially coming from President Jonathan’s campaign, contradicts and distorts
the facts. Given that our youths are active witnesses of current situation
(2010 – 2015), the major challenge is how they are able to interpret our
national developments under President Jonathan. Questions such as, why the
current high state of insecurity? Why is Nigeria under President Jonathan
losing its territory to rag-tag Boko Haram insurgents? Are they superior to
Nigerian army? If so, what could have accounted for that superiority?
If not,
why has it taken the Nigerian army so long to be able to assert its superiority
to defeat Boko Haram? Could the speculated conspiracy theory whereby Northern
leaders, including Gen. Buhari, are using Boko Haram to disgrace President
Jonathan out of power, really be true? What benefit does such conspiracy theory
portend to the Northern leaders and why has President Jonathan’s administration
been unable to assert its hegemony and bring to end activities of Boko Haram?
Could the conspiracy by the Northern leaders be informed by a Machiavellian logic
of the end justifies the means?
Other questions
starring the face of President Jonathan and his team include: why is the
government unable to provide enough jobs, reduce poverty, etc.? Or put
differently, is it true that government has transformed the economy? Is it true
that government through SURE-P, etc. has provided millions of jobs? Have these
really taken care of the national needs? What could government have done
differently?
Answers to these
questions could have naturally lead our youths to objectively assess the
Jonathan administration. The big dilemma of the President Jonathan campaign
could perhaps be its inability to provide convincing empirical answers to these
questions – undisputed answers that mirror the lives of our young Nigerians. For
instance, answers such as creating millions of jobs under SURE-P have not
explained why the jobs have not resulted in reduced poverty in the country. The
other predicament of the regime is why the provision of those millions of jobs
did not translate into protection for our youths.
Lack of protection could have
explained why thousands, if not millions, of our youths become vulnerable to
administrative extortions by top functionaries of the regime through job
recruitment scams such as the prisons, immigration, customs, police, etc.
recruitment exercises that required qualified young Nigerians to pay for job
applications resulting in the unfortunate stampede of March 15, 2014 in Abuja
Stadium causing the unfortunate deaths of at least 15 young Nigerians.
Claims such as with
the rebasing of the Nigerian economy, we are now the biggest economy in Africa
needs closer interrogation. In concrete terms, what does this mean? Of what use
is it to have the biggest economy with levels of poverty and unemployment?
Inability to
provide convincing empirical answers to these questions has pushed the Jonathan
campaign to present a propaganda version of historical interpretation of what
Gen. Buhari represents. Records of Gen. Buhari’s leadership between 1984 and
1985 are being presented through adverts in prints and electronic media.
Following the emergence of President Jonathan and Gen. Buhari as the candidates
of the two leading parties – Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and All
Progressives Congress (APC) – the President Jonathan’s campaign attempted to
hoodwink families of some refutable Nigerians that were victims of alleged
Buhari’s dictatorship to reject the candidature of Gen. Buhari based on the
propaganda version of his 1984 government. Notably, Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s and
Alh. Shehu Shagari’s names were flaunted. Representatives of both families
publicly dissociated the families from those propaganda claims.
By far, the most
resounding masterstroke against the anti Buhari propaganda came from Mr. Tunde
Thompson, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, Ms. Lola Shoneyin and Mr. Ismail Lawal. These
are people that were direct victims of the so-called authoritarian
highhandedness of the 1984/85 era of Gen. Buhari’s government. Mr. Tunde
Thompson was jailed under Decree 4 in 1984. Mallam Adamu Ciroma, being a
Minister under the regime of Alh. Shehu Shagari was together with many
political office holders of the 2nd Republic unfairly detained
for months. The father of Ms. Shoneyin, like Mallam Ciroma, spent months in
jail.
Mr. Ojuolape Lawal, father of Mr. Ismail Lawal, was one of the three men
executed for drug trafficking in 1985 by Gen. Buhari’s administration. That Mr.
Ismail Lawal would announce that execution of his father “doesn’t matter” on
account of which he declared that he “would vote for Gen. Buhari” is by far the
one singular most important endorsement Gen. Buhari has secured in the contest
for 2015 elections. Like Mr. Lawal, Ms. Shoneyin, Mallam Ciroma and Mr.
Thompson all endorsed Gen. Buhari.
History, Politics
and Leadership
Politics is
practically about capacity to express our choices. Under democratic system of
government the choices should be expressed in the results of periodic elections
based on which leaders will emerge. Most times, our choices don’t have to be
rational, logical or even informed by the facts before us. Clearly, with the
levels of decay in the country, our choices seem to be dictated by the
perception of the dangers facing us as a people. The views being expressed by
people such as Mr. Tunde Thompson, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, Ms. Lola Shoneyin, Mr.
Ismail Lawal, etc. basically reflects the estimation of the national danger
facing us as a country.
Perhaps, the
increasing momentum of the Gen. Buhari campaign is an indicator to this
reality. Somehow, President Jonathan’s campaign is able to correctly read this
national estimation. It is however unable to respond appropriately and
persuasively to be able to win the hearts of Nigerians and to that extent
therefore hopefully win the votes in the 2015 elections. In the circumstance,
President Jonathan’s campaign is becoming more and more desperate and in the
process present messages that only distort history and in many instances
present fabricated stories, all aimed at proving how Gen. Buhari is such a bad
leader that represent threat to the nation.
As a result, there
is the calculated design to confuse our young people about what defines the
danger. Is it the inability of the current government to guarantee protection
of life and property, which is the primary function of government, or the
potential of a Gen. Buhari presidency, which may reincarnate the 1984
experiences by throwing many innocent Nigerians into jail, executing drug
pushers, etc.? Is it possible for Gen. Buhari presidency (or anyone for that
matter) to re-enact the 1984 scenario of enacting retroactive decrees,
arbitrarily arrest innocent Nigerians?
The desperation to
make the case that Gen. Buhari represent the danger made President Jonathan’s
campaign to produce messages such as the one purporting that after Gen. Buhari
lost the 2011 elections, he wept and declared never to contest again. The truth
is that Gen. Buhari, saddened by the national reality, wept while addressing a
world press conference at the International Conference Centre on April 13,
2011, as it closes its presidential campaign just before the 2011 presidential
election. The 2011 presidential election held April 16, 2011. Such messages
denigrate the person of President Goodluck Jonathan, insult our sense of
historical recollection and reduced President Jonathan’s campaign managers to
bunch of liars.
In all these, it is
therefore important that we remind ourselves as Nigerians that in democratic
political systems, some of the defining attributes of leadership are lost or
muted based on how we desire to interpret our history. Should we rely more on
distorted historical accounts; we are more likely to end up producing dishonest
leaders.
This may perhaps be
one of the many justifications why we can have a President of the Federal Republic
that can attempt to prove that stealing is not corruption. This may also
account for why billions and trillions of naira will be missing,
misappropriated, disappeared from public treasury, etc. and no probe can lead
to any judicial action.
With a campaign
that clearly threw away virtues of honesty, it was very easy to use issues of
age and military background. Reason, Gen. Buhari is 72 years old and a former
military dictator. With such allegations, one would expect President Jonathan’s
campaign to be radically different. Unfortunately, the reality is that, if age
is anything to go by the PDP Presidential ticket is equally old with an average
age of 59. Expanding the analysis to include leaders of the campaign
organizations, PDP present a far older team with the DG of the campaign, Col.
(retd.) Ahmadu Ali being 79, Chief Tony Anenih at 82 (10 years older than Gen.
Buhari), Chief Bode George, among others, leading the PDP team.
Col. Ali, Chief
Anenih and Chief George were retired military, police and naval officers
respectively. Why then the noise about Gen. Buhari’s military background? Is it
because the PDP leaders such as Col. (retd.) Ali, Chief Anenih and Chief George
were not privileged to rise to the position of Heads of State? What were their
records as military, police and naval officers? How were those records
different from those of Gen. Buhari? Perhaps, the narrative of 1978 Ali Must Go
embodies the radical differences between these men, on the one hand, and Gen.
Buhari, on the other.
Often, it is
convenient to pass judgements as not everyone is cut out for the rigorous
auditions associated with political leadership under whatever circumstance.
Yet, because political leadership produced under democratic dispensation is one
of the most important innovations of civilization and remains the best means of
legitimizing leadership by ensuring that leadership and power are arrived at
through majority decisions as reflected in periodic elections. Nigeria is today
at a critical crossroads – one where the quality of leadership – more than
anything else is one that will determine the destiny of over 170 million people
for the next generation.
Why is the issue of
leadership so critical, especially for Nigerian youth who have not have the
opportunity to experience genuine and quality leadership, nor realize that a
choice as simple as the choice of who to elect has more far-reaching
consequences than they can possibly imagine? Is there anyone out there that
will set aside partisan considerations and set the records straight so that we
can at least learn from history and not repeat the mistakes of history?
The Pre-Gen. Buhari
Narrative
Clearly, the
biggest debt older generation of Nigerians owe our younger ones is to
reconstruct political leadership in the mould of sound values set in the
plaster of logic and the common good and as exemplified by force of personal
example, courage, conscience, charisma, humility, fairness, ability to listen,
penchant for team work and capacity to make difficult but expedient decisions.
The attempt to
reduce the factors determining the choice we are going to make in the coming
elections in propaganda terms need to therefore be resisted. We must proceed
based on the capacity to recall true accounts of our history. In doing so, some
facts should be established, especially around the factors that led to the
December 31, 1983 military coup, which produced Gen. Buhari as Head of State.
For instance, why was the Alh. Shagari government overthrown? Did it just happen
because Gen. Buhari and his colleagues in the armed forces were opposed to
democratic rule?
Any objective
presentation would highlight the following:
1. With
the coming of Alh. Shehu Shagari’s government on October 1, 1979, prices of
crude oil shot up to $29.27 per barrel from $14.33 in December 1979. By July
1980, the price had risen to $37.00 per barrel and went up to $40.00 per barrel
in January 1981. Between April and December 1980, Nigeria earned N10.366
billion as oil revenue, which almost doubled what the country earned in 1979.
By mid 1981, there was oil glut in the international market and prices of crude
oil began to tumble and by mid 1981 it has collapsed to about $18.00.
2. High
oil revenue at the beginning of the Shagari administration led to high public
expenditure resulting in high pay for public officials – President N50,000,
Vice President 30,000, Federal lawmakers N15,000, etc. Note that at that time
the naira was stronger than US $. This led to agitations for increased workers
minimum wage in the country, which used to be N80. After two day national
strike led by Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on May 11 – 12, 1981, N125 minimum
wage was achieved.
3. Declining
oil revenue in 1982 resulted in President Shehu Shagari proposing the
Economic Stabilization Act to the National Assembly, which was expeditiously
passed. This Act contained a number of austerity measures designed to check the
sliding trend of the national economy. The stabilization measures as contained under the Act include exchange
control – Basic Travel Allowance (BTA) was reduced to N500 from N800, Business
Travel Allowance similarly reduced to N2,500 from N3,000, among other measure.
4. Some
of the resultant impact of the 1982 economic stabilization measures includes
retrenchment of public sector workers and by December 1983, it was estimated
that about 20,000 public sector workers lost their jobs. Declining revenue and
reduced public expenditure also resulted in non-payment of salaries especially
teachers’ salaries running into months. This led to increased incidences of
public sector strikes.
5. Import
restriction measures led to phenomenal shortages of what was then categorized
as essential commodities from Nigerian markets. Milk, sugar, bread, etc. falls
under this category. By December 1983, government resorts to distributing some
of these products through the public sector.
6. Rising
problems of budgetary deficits led to considerations by the Shagari government
to apply for $2.8 billion IMF loan with the conditions of Naira devaluation,
withdrawal of subsidy on petroleum products, rationalizing public sector
workers (in other words mass retrenchment) and trade liberalization measures.
7. The
challenge of responding to problems of declining revenue by the Shagari
administration couple with the need to pacify international financial
institutions pushed the regime to adopt unpopular policies such as reduced
public expenditure on sectors such as health and education leading to increases
in the costs of feeding and accommodation in Nigerian universities and
introduction of fees in public hospitals across the country.
8. Politically,
the Shagari regime was a ghost of itself by December 1983. Long before then,
problems such as the deaths of 50 Nigerians in Lagos in a Black Maria in March
1980, the massacre of innocent protesting Bakalori peasants by the Nigerian
Police in April 1980, allegations of corruption against leading public
officials of the Shagari administration, etc. contributed substantially in eroding
the legitimacy of the 2nd Republic.
The Buhari
Narrative
While it is
important to avoid approaching the debate with the goal of rationalizing why
the 2nd Republic under Alh. Shehu Shagari collapsed the way it
did, it is important however to point out that by the time of the collapse,
Nigerians were yearning for justice. Somehow, the rumor of military overthrow
of the government was almost everywhere, especially following the landslide
rigging of the 1983 elections. This largely accounted for the popularity of the
coup that ushered Gen. Buhari in December 1983.
In many respects,
it needs to be stated that the arrest of the 2nd Republic
political office holder’s by the Buhari regime was very popular. The anti-IMF
stance of the 1984 Buhari administration was also very popular. The major
problems Nigerians had was the fact that the regime continued with economic
austerity measures of reduced public sector expenditure resulting in
retrenchment of another 10,000 workers.
A major
achievement of the administration was that phenomena of corruption in the
public sector were drastically reduced. Arrests and trials of the 2nd Republic
political office holders endeared the regime. Recovery of some public funds
e.g. N300,000 from late Sabo Bakinzuwo, former Governor of old Kano State
raised expectations. Attempts by the regime to bring late Alh. Umaru Dikko to
trial, including the dramatic attempt to kidnap him from London on July 5, 1984
and bring him back to Nigeria soared the popularity ratings of the regime at
home as one that is determined to bring all corrupt Nigerians to face justice.
The
anti-corruption stance of the Gen. Buhari administration naturally led to
strong regulation of distribution of essential commodities. War Against
Indiscipline (WAI) launched by the administration promoted values of discipline
in the country.
If anything, one
of the public accounts of why Gen. Buhari was overthrown by Gen. Babangida,
include the retirement of some senior military officers, including Gen. Aliyu
Gusau from the Nigerian army and the plan to retire Gen. Babangida on alleged
charges bordering on profligacy. Once the Gen. Buhari regime was overthrown,
some of the first actions of the Gen. Babagida government was to reverse the
retirement of Gen. Gusau and with Gen. Babangida as military President
therefore halt his retirement. Some of these revelations by Newswatch under
late Dele Giwa were said to have made intelligence arm of the Babangida regime
to be uncomfortable. And with the effrontery of the late Dele Giwa Newswatch to
doggedly continue to investigate the whereabouts of Miss Glory Okon who was
being detained on charges of drug trafficking, the public suspicion, rightly or
wrongly, was that the death of Dele Giwa on October 19, 1986 through a parcel
bomb was the handwork of the Babangida administration.
Assessment of the
Gen. Buhari’s administration therefore will be incomplete without looking at
the context that produced it. The most important point that cannot be missed
was that just like our contemporary reality, Nigeria was confronted with crisis
of economic downturn occasioned by sharp decline in oil revenue, corruption
took over our public life, there was complete collapse of values and problems
of drug trafficking was beginning to rear its ugly head by December 1983.
In evaluating
both the Shagari and Buhari regimes, it is important to emphasize that they
both came at a time of national nostalgia following the short reign of Gen.
Murtala Mohammed when the country experienced six months of exemplary leadership.
This was the period when our Head of State move without siren with just his
driver and ADC. It was also the period when all government employees had to be
exemplary.
A major contrast
with the Murtala administration was that for the six months of the regime, no
Nigerian was arrested. Not even when Dr. Obarogie Ohunbamu accused Gen. Murtala
of owning fleets of trailers and rows of houses. Instead of arresting Dr.
Ohunbamu, Gen. Murtala went to Igbosere magistrate court and sued him.
Following that court action by the Head of State, the Federal Director of
Public Prosecution on behalf of the Attorney General of the federation promised
that Dr. Ohunbamu would be given “every reasonable opportunity to prove or
justify his assertion” including freedom to enable him search for and obtain
evidences. The matter was scheduled to come up for hearing on March 17, 1976
and Gen. Murtala was assassinated on February 13, 1976.
2015 and What to
Make of the Gen. Buhari Narrative
The emergence of
Gen. Buhari in the early hours of January 1, 1984 with the identity claim of
being an offshoot of Murtala/Obasanjo administration rekindled hope in the
nation. There was no way it could have in anyway match that claim with an
agenda of fighting corruption without fighting 2nd Republic
politicians. Other levels of political enquiry, at the time, justifies the
December 31, 1983 coup based on issues of class preservation with the threat of
the possibility of a J. J. Rawlings type of coup.
For very ordinary
Nigerians, given the perceived sense of loss and declining welfare of citizens,
a J. J. Rawling coup in 1983 would have been very popular. Somehow, there are
still public commentaries that suggested that we are where we are today as a
nation, held hostages by corrupt politicians, because of the absence of the J.
J. Rawlings type of coup. With Ghanaians basically now restoring their national
pride with public institutions especially in relations to health and education
comparatively doing very well, sympathy for our dominantly perceived corrupt
public officials is low and dangerously clamor for the J. J. Rawlings
treatment.
The popularity of
Gen. Buhari, especially in the North where increased poverty is the dominant
attribute since the mid 2000s as revealed by Dr. Charles Soludo as Governor of
Central Bank, owe its origin to this reality. Presenting negative
interpretation will not change this reality.
In some ways, it
needs to be acknowledged that Gen. Buhari of 2015 is radically different from
Gen. Buhari of 2011 or even 1984. In 2011, Gen. Buhari’s popularity is limited
to the Northern parts, his party, Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) was
poorly organized and therefore his campaign was less impactful. In 2015, he had
a national party, All Progressives Congress (APC) with a campaign organization
that matched that of the PDP in everyway.
Moving Beyond
Static Analysis of Threats to Agenda Setting
Thanks to the 2013
merger of our legacy parties – ACN, ANPP, CPC, Okorocha’s APGA and New PDP –
our country is blessed with an opposition party that is able to develop the
needed strengths to present a formidable electoral contest for the 2015
elections. It is however important that we are able to go beyond static
analysis of threats of 1984 and move into the realm of agenda setting.
From all
indications, PDP is not favorably disposed to any discussion of agenda setting
especially if that would take bearing from the poor records of the last sixteen
years. Distorting our history would only amount to resistance to do the
needful. The challenge of moving Nigeria forward is not about producing a saint
but one that involve a strong recognition of the need to throw up competent,
courageous, selfless and inspirational leaders. Therefore in engaging the
debate, our past experiences should serve both as reminders and as compass.
It is therefore
with this in mind that we should engage all actors including our youths based
on a strategy of using the current national struggle for the soul of the
nation, to provide the needed critical support to our leaders by drawing
attention to take the right initiative. Leaders that distort history in order
to project themselves must be avoided as they can only compound our national
problems.
With President
Jonathan and Gen. Buhari being our choices for the 2015 elections, clearly, the
nation is left with only Gen. Buhari as our only hope. Being the only hope
doesn’t mean Nigerians may not have issues, disagreements or even grievances
arising from the leadership styles of Gen. Buhari. Our preoccupation should be
how to ensure the provision of institutional and organizational mechanism to
address such issues, disagreements and grievances as integral components of the
new government and the consolidation as well as guaranteeing the growth of the
APC post 2015 elections. Accordingly therefore the following proposals could be
considered:
1. Avoiding
the PDP Pitfalls: Gen. Buhari and our APC leaders need to take urgent
steps to avoid the PDP pitfalls. Under no circumstance should victory in the 2015
elections take our attention away from the need to continue with the project of
building our party, APC. Just as we prepare for the March 28 elections, our
party needs to adopt a double strand leadership setup. One strand will be the
team to drive government. The second strand will be the team to drive the
party. While the governmental team will have the task of giving life to the
vision of the party as encapsulated in our manifesto, the second, will have the
task of consolidating and growing the party.
In approaching this
responsibility, we need to be reminded that our party is young and the task of
consolidating and growing it will call for sacrifices. A major aspect that
needed immediate attention is that of developing the administrative capacity of
the party, which would require professionalizing functions of the party. This
is important given that almost every leader will want to serve in government.
Being a party that is borne out of sacrifice, some leaders need to make the
needed sacrifice in order to consolidate and grow the party.
Consolidating and
growing the party will require that we are able to continue with the strategic
goal of combining with new political partners, which was what made the 2013
merger successful. Given current challenge of fighting against the attempt of
the President Jonathan administration to subvert our democracy, our party has
found new allies such as Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), Kowa Party,
National Conscience Party (NCP), etc. As we approached the 2015 elections and
after, Gen. Buhari and our leaders need to win the confidence of leaders of
these parties to agree to combine both on short, medium and long term strategic
political agendas.
Inability to
address this challenge is what has since 1999 destroyed the core values that
produced the PDP and reduced the party to a Frankenstein monster.
2. Political
Leadership Development: There is the urgent need to free the process
of political leadership development in the country. Situation where money
exclusively determines the emergence of leadership is unhealthy. In fact,
should that be exclusively the case during the December 10, 2014 APC Convention
in Lagos, it is debatable if Gen. Buhari would have emerged as the APC
Presidential candidate for the 2015 elections.
What this requires
is that Gen. Buhari’s leadership should encourage democratic emergence of
leaders at all levels. Accordingly, processes of nominating leaders should
promote consensus building and elections. It should also require that public
functionaries must respect citizens and where it is established that public
functionaries contemptuously disrespect Nigerian citizens, appropriate
sanctions should be applied. This may require APC to develop some byelaws to
regulate conduct of public officials. Being a ruling party, as custodians of
the nations constitution, APC must be governed by its internal rules. That way,
Gen. Buhari Presidency will be able to guarantee unfettered constitutional
development of the country.
3. Meeting
Public Expectations: Amb. Olisemeka has argued that “it will soon be
clear that those of his (Gen. Buhari) followers of questionable and dubious
pedigree who think they can latch on to the reputation of this rare Nigerian
would be the first to be highly disappointed.” This is an important
precondition in ensuring mistakes such as Kano 2003 – 2011 and Bauchi in 2007
are not repeated.
Related to this is
the issue of who is qualified to be part of Gen. Buhari’s team in government.
During the town halls meetings in both Lagos and Kano, Gen. Buhari has assured
Nigerians that his government will assemble qualified and competent Nigerians.
In far more profound ways, on February 26, 2015 at Chatham House, London, Gen.
Buhari announced that corrupt Nigerians would not be appointed into his
government. And while responding to questions from both Aljazeera and CNN’s
Christiane Amanpour, Gen. Buhari emphasized that his government will operate
based on 1999 constitution.
These declarations
have further served to rekindle the hope of Nigerians around the notion that a
federal government led by Gen. Buhari will be a radical departure from what we
had in the last sixteen years under PDP. It will above all also be a democratic
government as opposed to the 1984 military government. We need to develop the
needed capacities both within APC and as a people to be able to push Gen.
Buhari as President of the Federal Republic to give practical expressions to
these declarations.
4. Promoting
National Reconciliation: Ethno-religious conflicts over the years have
engendered high tension and frequent violence in the country resulting in
unfortunate loss of lives and property. Mutual suspicions saturate the polity.
Gen. Buhari Presidency needs to emerge with a strong national agenda to promote
national reconciliation.
5. Agenda
for the Youths: Gen. Buhari’s presidency need to prepare to rollout
radical policies that will address the crisis in our educational sector in very
fundamental ways. A situation where parents receive better education than their
children is unacceptable. Again, a situation where virtually everyone with
means send their children outside Nigeria for education, including ridiculously
primary education must be halted by all democratic means possible.
The good thing is
that the APC Manifesto has very far-reaching progressive proposals. What is
urgently needed is some complementary demand framework driven by our young
people. Given the urgent need to develop our young people, Gen. Buhari’s
Presidency need to consider developing a mentoring agenda whereby all
appointees should appoint at least one young person, persons under the age of
35, as Personal Assistants, Special Assistants or Special Advisers.
In addition to
mentoring, we need to have a strategic plan as a nation to develop sporting
activities as integral components of our educational sectors with the goal of
discovery the talents of our youth at the same time promoting sport as economic
activity.
Conclusion
The 2015 elections,
from all indications, is not just about making a choice between President
Goodluck Jonathan and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari; it is not about choosing between
PDP and APC; it is not about our interpretation of, or capacity to distort,
history; it is not a contest to showcase how rascally we can be.
Democracy as
expression of civility should not denigrate or antagonize age. The Gen. Buhari
challenge given present Nigerian reality is about lifting Nigeria out of crisis
of monumental proportions. Reducing the issues to age, military background or
educational qualification of Gen. Buhari may only serve to distract and confuse
young Nigerians who may only rely on secondary sources for the accounts of the
Gen. Buhari era of 1984.
There is no doubt
that the scale of Nigeria’s problems calls for the development of good
competent and courageous team of leaders to drive the business of governance.
We need to approach this challenge as citizens and offer our contributions in
our different roles wherever we find ourselves. Finally, we must be ready to
tenaciously seek to develop the capacity to engage all our leaders to consider
and negotiate all proposals. That way, our democracy will have a meaning and
the provisions of Section 14(2)(a) of the 1999 constitution, which declared
that “sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through
this Constitution derives all its powers and authority” shall be true.
Salihu Moh. Lukman can
be reach through smlukman@gmail.com
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