Buhari: Before the 2nd coming

General Muhammadu Buhari is not one to seek the peoples’ mandate and get it at a difficult third attempt, without a studied definite course of action for the country’s well known problems. We give it to him. He is tried, tested, and since Murtala Mohammed, no politician has commanded his type of following. None can […]

General Muhammadu Buhari is not one to seek the peoples’ mandate and get it at a difficult third attempt, without a studied definite course of action for the country’s well known problems. We give it to him. He is tried, tested, and since Murtala Mohammed, no politician has commanded his type of following. None can lay claim to his incontestable charisma. Yet it is a fact that Nigerians have no confidence that Buhari can affect the nation with his stoicism and impeccable credentials of selflessness, decency and patriotism given the system that gave berthed his victory this time.
Without any doubt, most importantly, the nation awaits the revelation of the company the new leader will surround himself with and keep.  In African leadership, the kept company makes the difference, our bane being impunity and abuse of trust. It matters to know those who Buhari will trust. The Hausa put it succinctly, “Ba a mu gun sarki, sai da mugun bafade”, I have tinkered with it the way we the Bachama people understand it. You cannot have a wicked king unless there are wicked courtiers.
Nigerians pray that the President they voted en masse for does not get overwhelmed by the cacophony of demands from all corners including men and women from just yesterday’s epoch, to the point of losing touch with fundamental realities. There is a boiling national frustration with the incessant recycling of the known same old hands and faces and there is a burden on President-elect Buhari to live up the promised change in real terms. There is a yearning for diligent new faces, and a departure from aberration. This is not a cry against what os generally referred to as old politicians, old guard, or old brigade. It is a highlighting of the public want of change, hope and a chance for the future leaders called so since they were youth until now that some of them are even grandparents.
There is a lesson to learn from President Olusegun Obasanjo who “discovered” for Nigeria, young “Turks” such as Nuhu Ribadu, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Oby Ezekwesili, Dora Akunyili, Nasir el Rufa’i, Olusegun Aganga, Akinwunmi Adesina to name only a few in no particular order. It is notable that these new political names made the difference in the immediate past and indeed current dispensation, at least before the system compromised some of them. Looking up to President Olusegun Obasanjo, they gave their demanded best and in time took Nigeria out of the world’s bad books of corrupt and debtor nations, giving the country a refined face for global acceptance. Alas, we have back-stepped from this laudable milestone under President Goodluck Jonathan. If we must come out of the depreciation since the departure of President Obasanjo, we truly would do well to improve on his infusion of new blood representing Nigeria of modern times. A government that hopes to move the nation forward must be made of people with knowledge, competence and decidedly a future – not a past, pedigree or the fact of having been around all the while.
Fortunately, Muhammadu Buhari has his stint at the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund to refer to. The technocrats who got under that yoke of an intervention fund helped achieve a delivery on the mandate were young Nigerians distinguished by their expertise, competence and Buhari-inspired selflessness. There is now an even better class of such in the polity.
The Nigerian predicament is well known. The political experience of the last few years opened cracks on the polity along its traditional fault lines. The politics that led to the elections were based on regionalism, ethnicity, religion, and patronage from the national assets, to an extent that even our oneness became mutually a debatable issue by all the divides. Yet what should have guided the decision of voters, and not talked about, needed to be the economy, nose-dived due to the cocktail of vagaries namely the Boko Haram induced insecurity, dwindling fortunes from oil export, unbridled corruption, and poor capacity of human capital, decayed infrastructure and general morass.
Nigerians expect that President Buhari will face and deal with the challenges being enumerated.  The crisis is systemic. To my mind, the war will be lost if the retired general after his inauguration, does not get his formation right. Will he succumb to status quo pressures for a large and unwieldy Government of politicians or will he settle for a slim and efficiently functional administration that fulfils the change elements in the nation’s desires? This is where success or failure will be determined.
A recall of the time when, I as a young television journalist; witnessed when Buhari, as an army General, seized power from 2nd Republic President Shehu Shagari. His appointments of Governors and the Federal cabinet were of the old brigade in a nation full of young officers and emerging elite, and this triggered murmuring from the young officers who easily became handy for the truncation of that regime in spite of its glowing promise. In most of the States, Governors took a cue from the Head of State and simply dropped down their “altitude” from 1984 to 1976, restoring established or retired public officers and thus instead of move forward, seemed to have moved backwards in time. The frustration of those with a future by those with a past made the Ibrahim Babangida coup more easily acceptable. This mistake must not be repeated.
The future of the new admi-nistration begins now! President-elect Buhari must give the change he promised, which his unquestionable mass appeal and support the derived from.