For most of the last four years President Goodluck Jonathan was Nigeria’s dartboard – the target at which we all projected our collective frustrations. Nigerians have voted for change and by that token made Muhammadu Buhari the new receptacle of our collective rage if things don’t start changing fast.
By convention, new governments get a honeymoon period where there’s little or no criticism as they try to bed in. The length of this blissful time varies depending on circumstances. Sometimes it could be as short as three months or as long as a year. But something tells me that for the new president and his All Progressives Congress (APC) that honeymoon would be very brief.
When Nigerians voted out Jonathan, and his ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) on March 28, the problems that cost the outgoing president his job didn’t disappear with the ballot. They loomed large over Buhari from the moment he was declared winner.
The list is long and intimidating: a stuttering economy that has seen the naira collapse against major world currencies, massive unemployment, chronic inability to provide electricity, endemic corruption and a devastating insurgency that is yet to be stamped out.
This list of national troubles was compounded by a bitter election campaign that tested our ethnic and religious divides to the limit. It would require major work to heal the wounds and bruises of the last three months – and that is another of the heavy responsibilities that has landed on Buhari’s plate.
As daunting as the task may seem, the president-elect and his team have a unique opportunity not just to address the problems that now seem intractable, but also to change the very nature of Nigerian politics if they are willing to take radical steps.
Jonathan failed because he promised transformation but only delivered a damp squib. Instead of a breath of fresh air and a new Nigeria, we were confronted with business as usual and national decline to levels we never imagined possible. Values disappeared, parts of our territory were appropriated by mindless killers masquerading as Islamic zealots, and institutions were desecrated before our very eyes.
Those whose responsibility it was to ensure that these things didn’t happen couldn’t understand why we were complaining about the appalling new order. Their misunderstanding of what the times required is what has brought about the leadership changes that have been celebrated across the length and breadth of the country.
Permit me to refer here to one of the immortal quotes of disgraced former United States President Richard Nixon. Before he went to the White House, he had run for governor of the state of California. On November 7, 1962, after he lost to Democratic Party incumbent Pat Brown, an embittered Nixon attacked the media, telling them: “you don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
In another eight weeks we won’t have Jonathan to ‘kick around anymore’ over fuel scarcity, Boko Haram attacks, electricity and sundry headaches. The APC and its supporters who had excelled in their role in opposition would now have to make the swift adjustment to being on the receiving end. It’s a different ballgame when the buck stops at your table.
A few days ago Public Affairs Adviser to President Jonathan, Dr. Doyin Okupe, who had sworn repeatedly that Buhari would never come to power, was forced to make peace with the new reality in the land. He then declared – hopefully – that PDP would stage a comeback in 2019.
Some may want to dismiss him as a humbled dreamer, I don’t. If Buhari and APC don’t do what is required to move this country forward, it is possible that in 2019 PDP or a coalition of parties could oust them from power as we’ve just witnessed. Let’s not forget that Jonathan received it on a platter barely four years ago – and the party that toppled him is roughly two years old!
So, lesson number one for the president-elect and his party is: goodwill can disappear. The same people are jumping around doing cartwheels and screaming ‘Sai Buhari!’ are capable of turning around to chant ‘Ba mu so.’
In 2011, ten million votes separated Jonathan and Buhari. This year the challenger has prevailed with less than three million votes. If ten million voters can desert a candidate in the space of four years, it would be no big thing for three million to evaporate.
The second lesson is that being nice and honest is not enough to succeed as president. In the beginning, and for much of his reign, Jonathan was sold as a simple and humble man. But he stumbled at the hurdle of competence.
Nigerians are looking for leadership that would deliver results. Buhari and APC will not solve all of Nigeria’s problems in four years; they would be courting disaster if they create that impression. But if by 2019 Nigerians can flip a switch and receive electricity, they would reward Buhari with another term. If not, then all of his reputation for honesty wouldn’t save him from punishment at the ballot box.
The only guarantee of longevity in power is good governance – and it begins with the team the president-elect puts together.
The APC is a patchwork of parties and interests so it is understandable that Buhari would be paying back lots of political IOUs. However, the biggest mistake he can make is to fill his cabinet, or the circles around him, with jobbers and the same old faces that have haunted the corridors of power in both military and civilian dispensations over the last four decades.
The experience of these people cannot be discounted and they could serve the new president very well as respected and distinguished counselors. But the federal cabinet should be skillfully put together in such a way that it addresses the practical reality of paying off those who worked for Buhari’s victory, while infusing the government with younger men and women with the energy and vision required to transform the country into a prosperous 21st century democracy.
Perception is important and should not be dismissed lightly. The PDP repeatedly raised the issue of Buhari’s age during the campaigns and we countered by saying there are times when an older leader is what a country needs.
That said the new government needs to tap a younger generation between 30 and 60 so that a new layer of leaders can be groomed to build on whatever the Buhari administration would do in the years ahead. If he’s to be viewed as a forward-looking leader, he cannot afford to surround himself with his age mates.
But of all the deadly poisons that finished off Jonathan and PDP, the one Buhari needs to avoid the most is the arrogance that creeps upon and ultimately overwhelms the powerful. The outgoing administration and its leading lights got so power-drunk they forgot that the people are actually the ones who decide who governs.
That arrogance was repeatedly captured in statements like ‘We will never handover to this or that’; ‘this person or that one will never become president – we would rather handover to the military.’ All those comments make no reference to voters. Those who had been voted into power now assumed they had the power over life and death.
It was that same arrogance that led Jonathan and PDP to turn state institutions like the armed forces, police, DSS into toys to be deployed for partisan ends. They and these institutions came to be reviled by all those they oppressed. In the end the oppressed spoke loudly with their ballots.
On March 28 and the weeks that preceded it, Nigerian voters were reminded again that power belongs to the people. Desperate politicians courted then assiduously with everything from bags of rice to crisp US dollar notes. By kicking out Jonathan, voters now know what their votes can achieve. It would benefit Buhari and his team not to become so arrogant and distant from those who can decide their fate.
