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Here is belated news. The president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Jagaban of Borgu, has returned home from France. He stepped back into the cauldron of controversies. But that is Nigerian politics 102. Tinubu and the vice-president-elect, Kashima Shettima, have now moved into Defence House and thus put their feet in the door of the most famous residence in the country – Aso Rock. It is not just a residence; it is the seat of power, much coveted.
Barring what the courts may decide, affirming or not affirming the people’s choice at the polling booths on February 25, Tinubu has about 31 days as you read this to don the presidential sash in succession to President Mohammed Buhari.
I hope that in his 34 days in France he took out some time to rest and seriously, rather than casually, reflect on the huge tasks ahead of him, to wit the challenges of forging a fractious and an atomistic country into a nation united by common dreams, common hopes, common aspirations and common commitment to move the nation forward, not as political sloganeering, but in practical terms as a modern nation with the right to become what it ought to be – the African leader and a beacon to the black race.
I hope he gave sufficient thoughts to power and the ends of power; and indeed, the meaning of politics and political power. I hope he made a rational choice between leading a nation and ruling a nation. But most importantly, I hope he knows he will be inheriting a country vastly different from what Buhari inherited from President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 – a badly broken country that can do without glib promises on how to fix it. Our country is a despairing picture of a nation hobbled by the bad choices of its successive leaders. Buhari has made himself the poster child.
Buhari does not know that our country is broken and he cannot, as I have observed in this column before, appreciate the extent of its brokenness, let alone commit to fixing it. From the series of his boasts in the past one week, he believes, in defiance of the ugly facts that dare him to blink, that he has done more than any of our past rulers to selflessly serve the nation and its people. His right to rehabilitate himself as he prepares to move to Daura and thence to Niger Republic if he is subjected to too much noise in the country, is a given and cannot be taken away from him. Fact checks: He came, he got what he wanted and he will leave a trail of woes and confusion in the nation.
Let me repeat here some of the challenges Tinubu will contend with, all things being equal. This is not a post mortem on the Buhari administration; just some reminders to the incoming administration, all things being equal, to take note of our considerable national challenges often played down by the politicians because doing so makes them look good as leaders.
Our national economy continues its steady match towards the south, blurring all hopes that sooner rather than later, another country will feel more entitled than ours to wear the global crown as the poverty capital of the world. Buhari promised to take 100 million out of poverty in ten years. It was a promise he could not keep – and he knew he could not but he also knew that unrealistic political promises never fail to garner insensate public applause.
Under him poverty escalated, pushing some 138 million people below the globally recognised poverty line. Remember it was under his keen watch over the economy that Nigeria toppled India from its perch as the poverty capital of the world in 2017. He could not fix the economy.
I wish the late President Shehu Shagari would rise from his grave and say to him, “how now?” In 1984, he said Shagari hopelessly mismanaged the economy. But in eight years, he demonstrated no capacity for economic management. He merely borrowed money from wherever to shore up the economy. And he leaves N77 trillion debt burden on the nation. It, indeed, is a heavy burden and one this nation ought not be saddled with.
But to be fair, Buhari made room for the emergence of new millionaires from either federal government favours bestowed on them or by the commanders and the foot soldiers of the anti-graft war looking the other way as the rats took over the barn under protection. Gleaming private mansions and expensive housing estates in Abuja and other towns and cities tell the unnerving current story of money-miss road and of a nation caught up in the web of the poor and the rich living in two countries in one.
Our famous, if that is the word, fault lines of ethnicity and religion have considerably and dangerously widened in the eight years of Buhari’s watch. Our country is more divided than it ever was. The ethnic and religious champions are at the public arena of our national politics, beating the harsh drums of ethnic and religious rights and deafening rational thoughts on what ails us as a nation rather what each group feels entitled to from the Nigerian state.
The late charismatic American president, John Kennedy, urged his fellow Americans to think of what they could do for the country, not what the country could do for them. But in our me-first philosophy of entitlements, we think of what the country can do for our ethnic and religious groups rather than what the ethnic and religious groups can do to build a nation, in the words of our national anthem, where no man is oppressed by reason of his tribe or the deity in which he puts his trust as an adherent.
Let me repeat the obvious that does not seems obvious to the minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed: our country is much less secure than it was in 2015. Boko Haram abducted over 260 young girls from their school in Chibok, Borno State, in 20114. The world was horrified. Foreign reporters flocked into the country in search of answers to the heinous crime and wondered at the apparent helplessness of the Nigerian state to rise up to the rescue of the girls.
But Jonathan and his wife misadvised themselves and argued that the abduction was but a tale concocted by the politically ambitious northerners to rubbish him. And so, he ill-advised himself to show his dancing skills on the stage in Kaduna as the traumatised children and their parents wailed in the agony of loss and uncertain future. Most of them have not returned home to their parents. And yet our constitution obliges the government to make us secure wherever we may be in the country.
Jonathan’s failure to rescue the girls was politically good news for Buhari. He seized it as evidence, in his words, that Jonathan had no capacity for anything. If he was elected the girls would be home. It was a promise he could not keep. Then another batch of girls were abducted from their school in Yobe State under Buhari’s watch. He persuaded the abductors to let them go but they held on one Christian girl, Lea Sharibu, who refused to renounce her faith. No problem, said Buhari. The girl would be re-united with her parents. It was a promise he could not keep.
The Nigerian state has failed to do its constitutional duty to the citizens, to wit, make them safe and secure everywhere they go. Boko Haram waxes strong in Borno State; bandits wax even stronger in Katsina, Zamfara and Niger states. Killer herdsmen wax strong in southern Kaduna, Plateau and Benue states. Mindless killings go on in the South-Eastern states. Our country is daily bathed in the blood of its innocent citizens. We have never had it so bad. We are paying the price of indifferent leadership. To allow things to continue this way is to continue with our ill-advised dance towards the Golgotha.
The ball will soon be in Jagaban’s court. This is not the time for long political promises that have no chance of being fulfilled. It is the time for short and realistic promises that are long on radical actions. Our broken country must be put back together through honest and committed leadership. It must be put back together through a policy of inclusiveness. It must be put back together through broad-minded leadership that acknowledges Nigerians, recognises and respects their rights as citizens and gives the many, not the few, the chance to give their honest labour in the vineyard of their country in which they have equal constitutional rights and equal stakes in its peace, unity and development. A new administration raises hopes of change. Our hopes have been raised many times and dashed many times. As Jagaban prepares himself for Aso Rock, he must ask himself this question: will it be more of the same?
