We must help Buhari to succeed

As speeches go, I think President Muhammadu Buhari’s on May 29 was a good one. He touched on the most pressings issues germane to our survival as a nation. Interestingly, some do not think so and they have voiced their concerns at different levels. Having read it many times now, I think apart from the transition between paragraphs that could have been better, our president spoke to us genuinely in a heartfelt manner. Who could not have been impressed with that line – “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody?” Also, when last did we hear a Nigerian leader quoting Shakespeare in a speech to citizens? Perhaps, political communication is getting its due in our democratic journey.

But nice and wonderful speeches a good government do not make. After all, as a late governor of New York State, Mario Cuomo, said, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in praise.” The real work starts now and citizens’ expectations are humongous that an average person will be pardoned for saying thank God I’m not President Buhari. Last weekend, at Odo Iya Alaro vehicle Park in Ojota, Lagos, I was amazed at the political knowledge displayed by drivers and touts with their expectations for this government. It confirmed the words of one of my journalism professors that a journalist cannot adequately report a city or town without using public transportation facilities. They perhaps, more than any columnist, articulated what should be the business of this government. All eyes are on Buhari to turn our country into paradise within the shortest time as possible.

Most Revd. Joshua Idowu Fearon, Bishop of the Kaduna Diocese of the Anglican Communion aptly captured it when he said “The situation you are inheriting is so bad that you should not expect any period of honeymoon: security is not there; power supply is at its lowest level; queues at our filling stations hardly ever disappear in spite of the payment of subsidy to those importing fuel, and we hear that in some states and some Federal Government departments, salaries have not been paid for months.” Most Nigerians, however, seemingly have forgotten that God is the only miracle worker. They may not be blamed as our experience in the past 15 years of our democratic journey could surely have been better with more determined leaders at the helm of affairs. Nearly all Nigerians agree that time is running out for us to succeed as a nation and that’s why we must all ensure that the new government succeeds.

This government must work at a supersonic speed than what we have seen before. Good enough that the president’s integrity and avowed commitment remain his greatest asset, it is also good that he has enough goodwill with global leaders who are already looking forward to doing business with him. Ultimately though, making Nigeria great remains a collective responsibility of all Nigerians. That’s why we should be concerned at the pace of the Buhari government. Yes, it is still early days yet but it is strange that despite a 60-day waiting period between the presidential election of March 28 and the inauguration date some critical appointments that do not require National Assembly confirmation were yet to be made at the time of writing. Good enough that the spokesman (spokesmen) have been named and the protocol chief, one would have expected that with the security situation Nigeria is, a National Security Adviser should have been named by now. Painfully, Boko Haram terrorists have struck two or three times after the inauguration.

I hope too that it is not political permutation that has been the obstacle in the way of making necessary appointments. Hopefully our president will learn that politicking is an integral part of governance especially in a multiethnic society like ours and so his mantra that he is not interested in what happens in the National Assembly might not work in the long run. We also remember how the House of Representatives under Umar Ghali Na’aba constituted a formidable opposition to former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Nobody is asking Buhari to ride roughshod over the Senate and House of Representatives but knowing how to navigate the landmines in the National Assembly will be a great asset.

While we keep our president on his toes, one hopes that the Buhari-can-do-no-wrong group would not turn out to be the Achilles heel of their hero. This is important as the heat over the asset declaration by the president and his deputy is yet to settle. Conveniently forgetting the fact that Buhari explicitly said that he would declare his assets publicly together with his deputy and a minimum requirement for whoever will serve in his government, this group has called Nigerians who insisted on a fulfillment of a campaign promise names. This is uncalled of, an integral component of democracy is holding leaders to their words, and we must not fail in doing this.