With duty in mind
We know the drill don’t we? The ceremonial pigeon gets released, set free to rocket into the boundless sky. The weather plays the generous event host of the day, and the crisply uniformed honor guard passes the command inspection one more time. The overall ambience is of course never more colorful. In the breasts of the children, as in those of the grownups, hope springs eternal. There is a palpable sense of possibility and promise. Oh my! It’s another independence anniversary!
Beyond all the economic, political and homeland security ups and downs, and beyond the ‘politricks’ of campaigns, elections and post election juggling, Nigeria is a year older this uncharacteristically rainy October month. And amidst the glories and hard knocks of nationhood, the country is still kicking, even if not waxing strong as repeated analysis of its blessings would predict. Viva Nigeria?
Happy independence and long live the dream of a great Nigeria!
Dutifully at the helm this 55th installment, President Buhari is chief servant-leader with the great honor of wearing the commander-in-chief hat. Being also the eye-on-the-prize hunter who never stopped shooting, he is now the second-time owner of the stress-and-sweat mixed title of commander/healer in chief of the afflicted land of an estimated 172 million underserved and yet very undeterred people. Buhari swears he is no miracle maker, but the hope is that he’s just being modest; he did after all vigorously seek the job. If the president intends for the majority of his citizens living the hellish consequences of cumulative bad leadership to breathe some relief soon, he’d better begin to whip up some miraculous human ingenuity.
Poor President Buhari!
So many lost miles! So much expected! Such little time! But “nothing spoil,” said the Lagos taxi driver as we zigzagged through traffic. “Man no die, man no rotten.” So lead on Mr. President! There has to be light somewhere in the tunnel – the reason you are looking hard for the right people to help find it perhaps.
As the new honcho charged with dismantling and reconfiguring Nigeria’s largely ineffectual story of 55 years of post-independence perpetual infancy, President Buhari is off to a race with promise and posterity. How he runs and with whom he runs is bound to make or break the race. Will Buhari run to win for Nigeria, and so for posterity? That would be awesome, wouldn’t you say? If he chooses to run otherwise, Nigerians vehemently hope not, will he stealthily circle round to ease into the same rambling narrative of public-fund-for-private-jet leadership with no accountability saga? For instance, will the president effectively shut down a significant portion of even the most obvious Nigerian respect-resource leakage points or largely play safe and keep Nigeria and Nigerians in a sorry state after all is said and done?
The high road this time?
Will the president’s focus lead to the recovery of lots and lots of Nigeria’s misappropriated riches carted away with the typical see-nothing-hear-nothing syndrome? Or will he leave Nigerians still pointlessly looking for missing wealth after he has danced out his hour upon the stage, even though the V.V.I.Ps (Very Very Important Personalities) who have bankrupted the country are bagging new titles and dancing all the way to banks on distant shores. For Nigeria’s diverse praying types, what prayer points and styles will help ensure that the president’s team leads for positive impact, and not for the same old song and dance? How does the team work to stay squarely on the business of doing the people’s business when the heat and stress of national office trades tackles with the rough elbows of high street hustle? Hard to know, but we must root for a Buhari big win for Nigeria, even if for this one reason alone. Nigeria urgently needs a more lucid, forward thinking national narrative. The stakes have never been higher!
Nigeria calls! From Sokoto to Delta, and from Borno to Bayelsa, Nigeria calls for a better way. There has to be a better way. But, no, this is not an ethnic or religious rallying call to battle. Those who quickly reduce national discourse to an ethno-religious side track, do so only for personal gain, and roundly miss the point. It is also not a class call. None of these perennial self serving clarion calls will do now. The Nigerian 21st century call is a socially liberating national call for conscious re-engagement and for the demolition of divisive and pickpocket strongholds; the only path that makes sense if the goal is to stir the ship of state into a great socio-economic, nationalistically invigorating, dock. This call has to become Buhari’s only call, and Buhari’s call has to become every Nigerian’s call.
Effective May 29th, 2015, Buhari has won his much sought-after crown of being another second-time-around leader of Nigeria. If anybody is well placed to understand the challenges that have been so intricately woven into the country’s economic, security, housekeeping, etcetera, etcetera spheres, largely as a result of a legendry level of attention deficit issues, he will make the very short list:
- Big money management headache.
2. Folks who make the heavens look really bad by making the mass murdering of their brethren their raison d’être.
3. A house perennially haunted and ravaged from its most hallowed offices.
You can of course recast the challenge as you see fit, but for the purpose of this piece, we’ll stay with the simplified triple challenge of resource generation and management, terrorism and fidelity. What a challenge this is! How badly Nigerians have longed for a leadership culture and teams with the clarity, courage and commitment to make a difference on this front!
What is Buhari Cooking?
The story goes thus. Having languished for far too long in the wilderness of creepy lead actors and awful dramas, Nigerians want names and resumes (of the dream team), and they want these fast. No less urgent, the people seem pretty hungry for the details on Buhari’s dream for a greater and brighter Nigeria, as well as the roadmap to the Promised Land. They have every reason to. All told, Nigerians seem to be long done with appetizers and small talk; they seem now to be surveying the kitchen for signs that the main course is on its way. How has the head chef’s response resonated thus far? Mostly mixed but thankfully tilting toward somewhat respectable!
Slowed perhaps by the enormity of the task on hand, the president prescribes patience. Patience for the suffocating patient? Hopefully it is not as bad as it sounds. Challenged by the raucous nature of the entrenched transactional politics of means and ends with a center that is yet to weld together to form a cohesive national engine for steady progress, Buhari seems hard at work on the math of political balancing and priority setting. While he plots his strategy though, the punditry circle periodically becomes animated with answers to questions that have yet to be asked or even clearly articulated. One such interesting answer seems to suggest that Cabinet ministers are not that important to the president, but it is not clear how come or why. We do know that it has taken the president almost as much time to find good men and women in a nation of an estimated over 172 million good people, as it would take China to build a small city. This hurts the citizenship pride big time; and it hurts the nation’s larger cause of being taken seriously by the rest of the world.
When a seemingly forthright Nigerian leader seems to be having a hard time finding honest and competent Nigerians to mind Nigeria’s business, this sends the most uncomplimentary signal to the rest of the world. Let’s make an important distinction at this point. When the local media and every-day Nigerians complain about corruption in their country’s leadership/stewardship culture, they are asking for solutions. They are giving the administration – national, state and local – vital tips on what mess they need fixed as of priority, or else be counted in as its orchestrators. On the other hand, when key government actors complain about corruption without actively and clearly backing up such concerns with sanitized processes and significant culprits in handcuffs on their way to jail, they are ostensibly asking the world not to take both the system and the country serious. To reverse this, the administration should talk less on this front and do more, much more. There are millions of Nigerians across the world that can help on the do-more side, and it need not take that much time to find and deploy them. All in all, the president’s voice comes across less than upbeat as he restates his theme call on citizens restless for momentum to invest more wait time.
Impatience, the unsung virtue
Speed or patience, one wish from the people and the other from their president! The two wishes can of course co-exist in the playing field if need be, but the jury has already returned the verdict on one thing. President Buhari himself, not the citizens who elected him to make miracles, must have to wear the hat of the whiz kid that substantiates dreams, whether as a miracle man or as a maverick. To do this, it seems pretty obvious that he must place significant value in responsible and response-able lieutenants, as democracy compels. On this one, he must be super competent at means and ends calculations or the battle will be lost before the first shot is fired. Cabinet ministers matter, despite the presidential mis-speak in France on the subject, and the president and his nation are best served by ones that are far from brittle when it comes to moral fiber and essential leadership fecundity.
Speed, patience and what have you; all may be in, but only the one that pays the piper has the last say. On this count, Nigerians seem to have found the collective swag to retain the privilege of being judge and jury on what dream teams do or do not come true for them. They now vote their dreams. Former President Jonathan and his friends probably know more about this than anyone else. Don’t get this wrong though.
That President Buhari will need time to service and fully reposition Nigeria’s ship of state for onward progress is something all Nigerians ought to agree on. Even so, having given their successive leaders so much time and banked such pitiful dividends, asking them for more time this time, even from a recharged and reformed comeback kid has a peculiarly lackluster ring to it. So, here is a point of view to consider. While the president angles for more time, he must think fast like a student writing an important exam. Remember, the student must manage time spent on answering each question wisely, such that when the proctor announces “Pens Down!, he/she has not spent all the time on just a few questions.
Skill sets and all such good stuff
Whether they celebrated the 2015 independence anniversary in Abuja-Nigeria or in Virginia-USA, Nigerians everywhere thirst for good news. And they viscerally wish for a speedy uptake in the pace of governance and policy clarity as they reflect on their 55th October independence anniversary. The fine details and how long it takes for citizen patience and leadership diligence to dovetail into clear signs of recovered glory must thus not be left to the gods. Communication, candor and mileage must be central to the governor-governed relay race, and this will be more about skill than about patience.
At the very least, Buhari’s success both as a politician with second-look appeal and as a president with an avowed goal of significantly raising Nigeria’s stock price will depend on his resource and time management abilities, and what targets and timeframes he sets for his captains, once he has them on their race tracks. Here, he must consider Cabinet ministers important to his success; else why hire them at all? Here then is a mutual draft contract that seems reasonable. Let President Buhari enjoy the undiluted goodwill of an unusually patient citizenry as he works to understand the fine details of what ails Africa’s most populous nation, and what prescription will make for wholesome cure. And let Nigerians enjoy the rare compliment of, hopefully, a nationally oriented president that is uncharacteristically nimble and time-conscious about their needs and concerns. After all, in leadership as in most worthy endeavors, time is of the essence.
To unshackle or not to…?
Speed – minus recklessness – is the most apt means of courageously orchestrating a beleaguered nation’s escape from a culture of significant leadership fidelity deficit. Speed is how you begin to tackle the avoidable human suffering that a largely unaccountable stewardship culture visits on the majority of citizens. Speed seems to have been the president’s approach to leadership changes at both INEC and NNPC, as well as with regards to public workers’ salary arrears. With regards to NNPC and salary arrears at least, the president’s focus seems to acknowledge the need for speed where speed is warranted. When a system, any living system, keeps citizens shackled while significantly operating below its promise, inspirational impatience is indeed virtuous.
Mark the good news in the above point; regardless of how poorly the president’s handlers packaged his independence messaging on impatience not being a virtue, much of the need for urgency for progress seems to be shared by Aso Rock. As President Buhari himself pointed out, “October 1st is a day for joy and celebrations for us Nigerians….because it is the day, 55 years ago; we liberated ourselves from the shackles of colonialism and began our long march to nationhood and to greatness.”
Aha! Did you read that? Unshackled by way of independence from colonialism, not so? Yes, there is history to prove that Nigerians wanted their independence with nonnegotiable urgency. But then the independence quickly took the wrong turn, as Nigerians got shackled again, this time by a profligate leadership culture with neither the fear of the Crown nor of God? Oh yes, there is in-your-face reality rubbing Nigeria’s nose sorely red on this shackle post. So when will this weird kind of independence end? When will ordinary Nigerians gain true independence and freedom from their shackles; whether they are handcuffed by their lucky-Charlie brothers decked in endless yards of sleek Atiku fabric, or by tea-drinking former colonial masters speaking through their fine pointed noses?
Postscript
As this piece unfolds, we have learned that the President’s long awaited Cabinet list has been submitted to the senate. The high point here is that the dial has finally moved. But the low point is just as newsworthy, unfortunately. The list seems to be made up mostly of the same old folks who have been at the helm of the ship of state for decades. So why did the country have to wait these many months for an old-blood team? Why the impression that the president was looking to really drain the swamp this time? WHY? Where will Nigeria’s much awaited renewed energy and sense of mission come from, if captains well schooled in the old culture are still in charge of what was meant to be CHANGE from the old way to a new deal?
Continues……
Pat Anyaegbunam
lightnigeria 