The response of a large section of my compatriots to the ministerial list under the four-month old administration of President Muhamadu Buhari is, to me, a general mental disposition of the Nigerian citizenry that leaves much to be desired. The the stream of opinion that seeks to devalue the painstaking process that preceded the list submission further gets worrisome by the unfortunate enlistment of some supposed statesmen and respected social critics in the army that has been misfiring the shots. Whether sincerely or mischievously espoused, the view that the list of nominees is not worth the long wait is a mistaken one that sadly suggests that many citizens that sweated and sowed the seed of change on March 28 do not really understand what exactly must change for their dream Nigeria to be.
What our country has always lacked are institutional frameworks or formworks which role is to statutorily reshape the varied personalities elected or appointed into governmental offices into a standard character-shape suitable for the manifestation of governance as an organic whole.
Since independence, governance in Nigeria has been fully shaped by personality factors. In other words, it is the personal character-traits – beliefs, opinions, thoughts and personal idiosyncrasies – of the man that controls the power levers at any point in time that has always determined the shape, size and quality of governance. This is exactly why successive administrations in the richest black nation on the surface of the earth have, so far, failed to translate even half of our potentials into concrete socio-economic and political greatness.
To really appreciate the need for Buhari, a leader the vast majority of the citizenry trust and believe in, to have waited for four months before announcing the names of some of his close associates as ministerial nominees, one only needs to look back into time to behold the untold disasters that character difference amongst the ministries of the same government has foisted on our collective destiny. It has always been the case that Nigerians expect a state apparatus to perform or behave as determined by the personal vision, mission, skills, vigour and zeal of its operator. This is why my people are wont to praise or condemn appointments purely on personality factors.
Thus, at any point in time, Nigerian government has always cut a picture of a mixed-bag. A mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly in terms of comparative performance of ministries that are supposed to interrelate to produce a single unified result – good governance.
If anything is alterable, logical and mathematical truths do not belong to the class of such amendable facts. So, our government as a melting point of positive and negative, each in its raw form, has always cumulated in the negative, simply because positive multiplied by negative is equal to negative.
This is just why the institution and operation of artificial due process regulations have not and would never help us. Perhaps, we have relegated the truism that holds that no one can give what he does not have.
Due process, ideally, is a device of entrenching sincerity and transparency in the handling of official transactions. It then follows that an administration that sets out to legislate a pattern of due process for governmental business must itself satisfy the preliminary criteria of integrity, credibility and discipline. Unfortunately, it is a common piece of knowledge amongst Nigerians that our past leaders that sought to demand equity never came with clean hands. Hence, a purely fictitious regime of due process has been deployed to rob us. Day and night robbery by the thieves that we have, in the past, appointed as our security guards and bandits we have crowned as knights of our markets.
Now that we have Buhari whom even the Olisa Metuh’s of this world subconsciously believe in and trust as a man of integrity, honour and discipline, is it nor high time that we patiently tap from hindsight in order to acquire and deploy the foresight required for genuine change to be?
Foresight capable of manifesting the truth in our individual and collective psychology – that Buhari, with all his reputed finesse, is but a passing phase in the history of Nigeria, a socio-economic and political milieu made of permanent socio-cultural nations. Therefore, should our new anchor of change behave true-to-type, as most had expected, by rushing to put in place egg heads who, in turn, would excitedly set out to do things differently, would the immediate gains that would result not end in nullity, in the long run, when successors in the mould of past jaundiced leaders may be unavoidable?
Otherwise, the gains will be gargantuan and everlasting. I mean, the gains that will proceed from the establishment of governance frameworks such as the Treasury Single Accounts initiative and many other revolutionary systemic reforms which the new government has spent quality time to package prior to scouting for operators who would still be schooled and reoriented to operate their respective ministries according to some new uniform pattern to be unveiled in due course.
Without being on Buhari’s team, I need no one to tell me that the four months that it has taken to nominate ministers has not been expended on mere list compilation. Rather, the suspense-filled period has been devoted, I am convinced, to evolving and mapping pragmatic patterns that would insure the running of ministries against the risks of personal whims and caprices of office-holders. A development that would not only, for the first time ever, introduce character into governance at the federal level, but also come with the realistic potentials of preventing official corruption. The latter, proactive and preventive measures against sleaze, rather than the curative we have been used to, is a sure dividend that would flow from the helmsman that has, in abundance, the quality of integrity and discipline that would foreclose the intentional errors inbuilt in past efforts – I refer to the type of loopholes deliberately designed and integrated into what we used to regard as due process in the past.
However, it is not surprising that even the closest hint to this position from the government in this direction has, so far, failed to influence the perception of the many. The explanation from the seat of power that it took some considerable time to study, analyse and project ahead from the handover notes passed unto it by the past government, just four days to its exit. If anything, my people had never in the past heard any administration refer to such vital documents in its character and policy formulation and implementation. After all, Nigerians were aware that, once in power, our ‘leaders’ were always too busy to study such lengthy documents let alone act on the basis of what is contained therein. The regular ill-fate of panels’ reports and white papers in our clime is perhaps responsible for their scepticism.
What a pity! Governance, in the past, had, thus, been perfunctory and the citizens made accustomed to devastating suspense and eagerness in respect of ministerial lists in a hasty bid of knowing where the pendulum of governmental patronage and favouritism swings. But, this is a government of change that has no choice but do things differently. Hence, it is not the individuals that have been nominated that really matters in projecting what is to come as much as the newly-packaged system they have been nominated to operate. Two Yoruba proverbs help to emphasize my drift on the benefits of having strong system/institutions rather than strong individuals. First, “The absence of openings on a wall blocks the entry of the lizard” and lastly, “None is immune against the pilfering proclivity in an environment that is stealing-conducive and enabling”.
- Olokode a journalist writes from Lagos.
