By Femi Aribisala
APC Joint Leadership Meeting: From left, National Publicity
Secretary of APC Alh. Mohammed Lai, National Chairman
John Oyegun, National Auditor Chief Morgan, Senatorial
Candidate of APC, Hon Dino Melayi and APC Presidential
Campaign Organization and River State Governor Rotimi
Amechi discussing during APC Joint Leadership Meeting
held in Abuja. Photo by Gbemiga Olamikan.
IT is all going to happen within four days. Four days to the
great national revival and renewal. Four days to the
rejuvenation and restoration of the Nigerian economy. Four
days to the great “changi” we have all been waiting for.
Four days to the arrival of the Nigerian messiah,
Muhammadu Buhari. I am sure we all can hardly wait.
In four days time, there will be an end to the problems of
Nigeria. Corruption will be killed. NEPA will be reborn.
Youth unemployment will be a thing of the past. The
international oil market will stabilise. The naira will find its
level. Petrol will sell for 40 naira per litre.
The Boko Haram will lay down their arms. Fulani herdsmen
will stop their killings. Our cotton mills will roar back to life.
The groundnut pyramids will reappear. Our cocoa farmers
will laugh all the way to the bank. Our hospitals will stop
being consulting clinics. Our universities will once again
become ivory towers of learning.
Hallelujah
We will achieve all this “changi” because Muhammadu
Buhari will make a transition from president-elect to
president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. May 29th will
no longer be known as Democracy Day. It will henceforth
be Buhari Day. On Friday, we will finally bid goodbye to the
PDP, and usher in the APC who will rule Nigeria for the next
60 years! I can hear vice-president-elect Osinbajo saying:
“Let everybody shout hallelujah!”
However, the hallelujahs have been dying down lately. The
“Amen and Amen” are getting few and far between.
Believers are becoming uncertain. Cynics and skeptics are
beginning to come out of the woodwork. The Buhari
brigades are fast losing their mojo. Indeed, if the election
were to be re-held today, many would not even bother to
vote for their Daura favourite-son. Not much is heard
anymore of “Sai Buhari; sai Baba!” The wedding is on
Friday, but we are not even sure anymore whether the
bridegroom will show up.
Buhari’s supporters are no longer as bullish as they used to
be. They are no longer sure if there will be “changi” after
all. Some now hasten to insist they did not vote for Buhari;
they voted against Jonathan. They are now likely to point
out that Buhari is not a magician. They would have us
know that Rome was not built in a day. But nobody
bothered about these truths during the election campaign.
Then, Buhari was presented as the answer to every
question. He was sold as the solution to every problem.
Illusory change
I am a Nigerian who lives in Nigeria. It is in my interest for
Buhari to succeed. I am the potential beneficiary of every
Buhari success. But I don’t see him succeeding because
APC told too many lies in order to get him elected. They
built up expectations to unrealistically high levels. They are
not going to be able to tamp down those expectations now.
They are simply going to be left to drown in them.
There is an expiration date for the current penchant to
blame the PDP for everything. That date is May 29, 2015.
The blame-game has served its purpose. It has secured
APC the certificate of occupancy to Aso Rock. What
Nigerians need to know now is what the APC has to offer.
Alas, in that department, Buhari and his cohorts do not
seem to have a clue. They are now just holding
conferences at this late hour in order to put together a road
map. By all indications, that road map leads to nowhere.
“Power must return to the North. Power must return to the
North.” We have heard this chant for the better part of six
years. Congratulations are now in order: power has
returned to the North. Now what is the North going to do
with this power? Will this power be used to revamp the
Nigerian economy? Or is it merely fulfilling the imperatives
of “Turn-by-turn Nigeria Limited?” Will the power now light
up our home and industries? Will it be used to overwhelm
the Boko Haram?
Not likely! Those who wanted power to return to the North
are now calling for amnesty for the cold-blooded Boko
Haram killers. Could it be that their insurgency has fulfilled
its purpose? Those who insisted power must return to the
North certainly did not make this demand in order to make
Nigeria great. They made the demand because they are
hungry. They want a Northern lion share of the national
cake. Anti-corruption is anathema to their agenda. In the
anti-corruption campaign, Buhari is on his own. He is a
lone-ranger. He cannot even secure the unflinching support
of members of his own APC party.
Corruption incorporated
One of the myths of the last presidential election is that it
was won and lost on the platform of anti-corruption.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The APC and the
PDP are yin and yang. Neither party is anti-corruption. As
a people, Nigerians are definitely not anti-corruption. From
the mechanic to the plumber to the dentist to the policeman
to the Senator; Nigerians are corrupt. In Nigeria, we live and
breathe corruption.
The new class of 2015 in the National Assembly is not anti-
corruption. One of our Senators-elect is already wanted for
drug-smuggling in the United States. These people cannot
be expected to fight corruption. What is likely to happen is
that they will fight Buhari’s pretensions to anti-corruption to
a standstill.
In my youth, there was the story of Ali Monguno, a federal
minister from the North-East, who was hated by his people.
Their angst against him was that he was not corrupt. His
people found it unacceptable that while other ministers were
corrupt; their own representative was foolish enough to be
upright. They wanted to be fully represented in the
corruption at the national level. They wanted a
representative thief for Borno in Lagos.
Buhari does not understand this propensity. As long as we
continue within the current federal framework where the
centre controls far more resources than all the states
combined, the issue of corruption will remain with us. As
long as Buhari sits in Abuja with 55% of national resources
to which he and most Nigerians are abstracted, so long will
there be corruption in Nigeria. As long as the whole point of
government is the allocation of resources deemed to belong
to nobody and to everybody, even so will the emphasis be
on dividing the cake rather than on baking it.
If you steal the money of cocoa farmers, you will have to
answer to cocoa farmers. But if you steal Nigeria’s oil
wealth, you are the man. To deal with corruption
structurally, you have to deal with Nigeria’s lopsided federal
structure. But the issue of fiscal federalism does not
feature at all in Buhari’s anti-corruption road map.
Political dynamite
In any case, any attempt by the in-coming Buhari
administration to address the allegations of corruption
under Goodluck Jonathan is bound to be problematic. Out
of 55 years of Nigeria’s existence, the South-South has only
been in power for five years. You cannot prosecute
corruption in the five years of South-South rule without
being accused of ignoring corruption in the 50 years of
North-West and South-West rule.
In many respects, South-South corruption while in
government is justifiable in view of North-West and South-
West corruption while in government. Since the oil is from
the South-South, the geo-political zone is entitled to its own
oil billionaires as those of the North and the South-West.
Why should Theophilus Danjuma and Folorunso Alakija be
oil billionaires when the sons and the daughters of the Niger
Delta are not? These questions will continue to haunt any
and every attempt at addressing past corruption in Nigeria.
Anti-corruption is good public relations, but it is no
substitute for a viable programme for economic growth. In
the final analysis, it is all sound and fury signifying nothing.
Making a difference means ending the petrol shortage. It
means increasing electricity generation and distribution. It
means providing jobs for unemployed youths. It means
providing social security for the teeming poor. In these
practical decibels of government, the APC is at sea. It
simply has no idea what to do.
Running against time
Buhari has just 100 days to make a difference. After that, all
bets are off. With the same measure the APC used, it will be
measured back to it. APC used social media masterfully to
defeat PDP. They will now come to understand what it
means to govern in the age of social media. They called
Jonathan “clueless.” They must know that new names are
in the offing for Buhari. Some are already going viral. But I
leave it to others to conduct the naming-ceremony.
Complaints about how bad things are will just not cut it.
Buhari cannot expect to get any sympathy from Nigerians.
He showed no sympathy for the plight of Goodluck
Jonathan. He deserves none in return. If the economy is in
bad shape as a result of the drastic drop in oil prices, that
fact was known before the election. Nevertheless, he asked
for the job. No point in telling us now what is wrong with
the job or how difficult it is. You were elected to overcome
the difficulties.
In my youth, I used to sing a popular Yoruba song. It says:
“Omo n’wase, o ri’se. Ise to wa lo ri.” It means: “the chap
looking for a job, got a job. You got the job you were
looking for.” Buhari wanted to be president. He ran for
president four times. He is finally the president-elect. But
one week to his inauguration, he runs away to London. He
is already tired, even before the job begins.
Is he sick? Does he need regular medical attention? The
General talks a lot about the need for transparency in
government. However, he does not seem to understand
that this must also apply to his personal life as a public
official.
In order to achieve anything meaningful as president within
the first 100 days, General Buhari is going to need all the
good luck he can get. However, Goodluck will be leaving
Aso Rock unfailingly on 29th May, 2015.
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