By Kennedy Emetulu
Without prejudice to whatever legal or other lawful
challenges that President Goodluck Jonathan and his people might institute as
part of his reelection effort, let me in the meantime congratulate the winner
of the election, General Muhammadu Buhari.
General Muhammadu Buhari’s story is one of the most
inspiring stories to come out of our nation. Rejected as a military leader for
running a government that had no regard for people almost thirty years ago,
Buhari worked his way back tirelessly through the tortuous democratic route.
For the past fourteen years, he’s joined others within different political
parties and formations not only to actualize his ambition to return as a
democratic president, but also actively participate as a stakeholder in the
democratic life of the nation.
True, Buhari’s politics is not everyone’s cup of
tea, but at this point, that is not the issue. I for one have been one of his
most strident critics and I’m sure that won’t change very much, depending on
how he chooses to operate as president; but, at this point, all he needs is our
support.
Buhari has very dated views about the economy and social relations,
but we must expect that a huge and influential section of the national
coalition that worked to get him to Aso Rock would work on these rough edges
and prevail on him to brush up on what he needs to brush up on and dump what he
needs to dump.
Now that he has been elected, outside the partisan
fog, we need to give Buhari a clean slate and not judge him on his past,
because that is what the democratic project demands. The majority of Nigerians
who voted for him are not fools. They know precisely who he is and what he
stands for and have chosen to go with him, irrespective of what the rest of us
think of President Goodluck Jonathan.
We, the minority have had our say; but we
must allow the majority to have their way. President Jonathan has done pretty
well in resuscitating agriculture and the real sectors and he’s also invested a
lot in education, infrastructural development and a lot of other things. Buhari
and his team must build on these.
He must avoid the politics of religion,
because as we can see from the Boko Haram menace, the surest way to get Nigeria
destroyed is to encourage religious or ethnic politics.
Bola Tinubu would be quite influential in the
incoming government. I salute his political sagacity and ability to work
through the system to help achieve this victory for his party, but I’m no fan
of his economics, cash and carry and accumulation politics.
It’s one thing for
him to economically colonize Lagos and the APC-controlled states, but quite
another to think such a formula can be applied to Nigeria as a whole. He has to
give the presidency and vice presidency room to breathe, because if he
overplays his hand, Nigerians would not hesitate to let him know that he is no
God.
For Buhari, his first task is to do away with his
messianic complex. Of course, the expectations are quite high, but he has
to responsibly manage those expectations and the mantra of change he’s dropped
on people’s lips.
Indeed, there are things he’d promised in the course of the
campaign that are plainly impossible, but now that he’s about to get back to
government in a democracy, I suggest he sets up a national policy review
council made up of Nigerian experts in every field and opinion leaders to sit
down with him and his team between now and inauguration to take a close look at
what the situation is with out finances and performance updates in every sector
with a view to keeping those things that needs to be kept, continuing with the
laudable ones already started and cutting out waste and corruption where
necessary. For me, he needs to forget the highfalutin proclamations in the APC
manifesto and focus proactively on what exactly exists on the ground. In short,
he has to hit the ground running, because no one will accept his age as an
excuse.
Most importantly, Nigerians must now be very
careful. There are many disgruntled elements out there in high places thinking
this is an opportunity for them to foment trouble. Some of these persons have
no respect for democracy and would think nothing of scuttling it. But if we do
not encourage them or listen to them, they would remain powerless. Individuals
and communities must therefore watch out for them.
We must continue to let Nigerians know that we are
all one. True, some of us might see some ethnic and religious elements in the
result of the election, but that is natural. The better way to look at it is
that there is a lesson here for us all. That lesson must help to improve our
democracy, rather than diminish it. We can only improve it if we appreciate
that whoever is at the top only has four years or less to show us what he/she
can do.
The power remains in our hands to send an incumbent
president packing. If we have done it with a Jonathan that has the best
democratic temperament amongst all Nigerian leaders, we can do it with anyone.
In our new vibrant Nigeria, Buhari’s honeymoon might be over, even before it
starts, because if there’s any lesson to learn from this, it is the fact that
Nigerians are not afraid of change, even where they have no idea where it would
take them. So, Nigerian leadership, beware!
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