100 days of Buhari: Political paralysis or policy crisis? (2)

No matter how vehemently Buhari’s campaign promises are denied, from the prism of an average Nigerian, President Buhari and APC have violated their promise of neutrality since in their view, equity and justice which are supposed to be the fulcrum of the party are not being observed in the allocation of offices. So the Buhari myth is being shattered.

The pushback has been very damaging and it has taken a heavy toll on the pristine integrity of Mr President and the APC. So the shape and colour (in terms of the character, content and ethnic balancing) of the candidates for the cabinet office which President Buhari presents to the Senate this month for clearance would determine whether the goodwill quotient of this administration remains robust or suffers early death.

Somehow, the APC and President Buhari must have anticipated the potential backlash of the high expectations of Nigerians if they fail to keep campaign promises when Mr President in his acceptance and thank you speeches advised Nigerians to tone down expectations as he had no magic wand to wave so that all the imperfections of governance in Nigeria would vanish overnight. While Mr President’s admonition was yet to sink in, the firestorm which engulfed the legislative arm of government, when principal offices were allotted or when power was seized, as the case may be (sometimes power has to be seized, not given), the APC lost focus of its initial task of dousing the high expectation of Nigerians. This is perhaps why the aftermath of the first major presidential appointments which turned out to be contrary to the expectations of some of the party faithful hit the party like a thunderbolt as both image-makers and apparatchik were caught napping.

The point here is that it’s about time the APC starts being proactive as opposed to being reactive. After the National Assembly showdown, the appointments faux pax is one calamity too many in 100 days of being at the helm of affairs. Now, let’s return to the reason why most Nigerians regard politicians as liars and untrustworthy. It is simply because politicians are always trying to be clever by half when they take the electorate for granted by presenting simple cases in convoluted manner and in the process stand the truth on its head.

If the actions of politicians could be altruistic, Nigerians may accord them more credibility. For instance, in his characteristic plain speaking manner, President Buhari has explained in a BBC Hausa language programme (Although it could have been better through a national forum) that those he appointed to office so far are the people he trusts, having had long-standing working relationship over the years with them. I’m inclined to believe that the explanation by Mr President has resonated with a lot of reasonable Nigerians, so he cannot be begrudged. The question is, why was this justification not given as the appointments were being made to foreclose the hoopla of sectionalism and ethnicity which the appointments generated? Clearly, this is a case of medicine after death.

Another very crucial point which the party and President Buhari’s reputation managers have been mute on and which could have been very critical in minimizing the gale of criticism against the last appointments is the fact that ministerial appointments are statutorily to be allotted to at least one person from each of the 36 states of the federation. By virtue of their offices, the secretary to government of the federation and chief of staff to the president are members of the Federal Executive Council. When President Buhari appoints at least one minister each from all the states later this month, each would come from Rivers, Lagos and lmo/Anambra States where Rotimi Amaechi, Babatunde Fashola and Ogbonnaya Onu/Chris Ngige hail from, and if they were already cabinet members as SGF, chief of staff, etc as initially envisaged by their supporters, would such states or regions not be having the undue advantage of two cabinet members representation instead of one? Would it be fair and justifiable that the state and region of the sitting president where he garnered overwhelming majority of votes has cabinet representation less than Lagos or Anambra where he received less votes?

As Garba Shehu would say, “I can bet my last kobo” that Nigerians won’t scoff at such reasonable political balancing act of President Buhari if such had been disclosed ab initio. This is more so as Mr President already made it clear in his Washington DC address to Nigerian community in the USA (some say it’s  more or less a Freudian slip) that he should not be expected to give equal political patronage to the region that gave him 95 percent vote and the one responsible for only on 5 percent. Be that as it may, Mr President may want to look at the issue from another perspective which is a salient point that probably escaped his scrutiny before arriving at the conclusion for his 95 percent vs 5 percent logic. This alternative point of view is that whereas the 95 percent which was about 12 million votes in 2011 could not clinch the presidency for him, it is the 5 percent which he lacked in 2011 but got on his side in 2015 that won the presidency for him due solely to the statutory requirements for national spread of votes. By that logic, the zone that contributed a mere 5 percent is Mr President’s critical success factor. This is a case whereby the few votes in the South-south and South-east became the critical game changer compared to the huge votes from Northern Nigeria. Against the foregoing analogy, President Buhari should be magnanimous to the contributors of the 5 percent votes to his success because they are the game changer and can’t be the scapegoat as the people are suspecting. We can glean from the above analogy that not communicating to anxious Nigerians the aforementioned simple and logical actions taken by President Buhari in a timely and effective fashion is the president’s Achilles heels and that that of the APC.

Magnus Onyibe