Buhari: Steps to a successful administration
How about this one, BUHARI, a former military general, contested elections four consecutive times, a core Muslim, core disciplinarian, about the same age with Nelson Mandela when he took over government from the whites; so difficult not to digress a little, we are still talking about the rise of interactive media as the provider of […]
How about this one, BUHARI, a former military general, contested elections four consecutive times, a core Muslim, core disciplinarian, about the same age with Nelson Mandela when he took over government from the whites; so difficult not to digress a little, we are still talking about the rise of interactive media as the provider of a new metaphors for cooperation, new faith in the power of networked activity and new evidence of our ability to participate actively in the authorship of our collective destiny. We can’t help but use narratives to understand the events that occur around us.
As different people and groups compete for authority, narratives began to be used to gain advantage, and stories were no longer used simply to predict the patterns of nature, but to describe and influence the courses of politics, economics, culture and power. Developing events of the last 5 years can be liken to a typical ASPIRIN commercials back in 1955, as we all sat back watching from our old console television set, even when we suspected that this commercial was designed to put us in a state of anxiety, but in order to change the channel and remove ourselves from the externally imposed tension, we would have to push up from our relaxed position take a walk across the living room to where the television is positioned on a small table, bend over, exert some reasonable amount of force to turn the knob back and forth, fine-tune another knob for clearer view of another channel, our lazing brain processed the amount of human energy it will take to carry out this exercise of changing a TV channel, oh no, we decided to stay through the whole commercials; it continues, a man is at work when the wife calls to tell him she has just crashed the car, the boss comes in to tell him he just lost a big account, his bank statement shows he is in the red and his secretary quits. Now his head hurts, sitting in our watching position, we can feel the character’s pain, what can he do? He opens the desk drawer and finds a bottle of ASPIRIN brand of a pain reliever and swallows the pills while an awe-inspiring hi-tech animation demonstrates how the pill passes through the body, he and us, are released from our torture.
Fast forward from 1955 to 2015 a remote control in our hands in a split of a second the channel is changed; the remote control gives viewers the power to remove themselves from the storyteller’s spell effortlessly. We sit back watch all the way through the tortuous route of power outages, poor education, fuel scarcity, insecurity, inflation, treasury plundering, unemployment, poor infrastructures, the pains continue, the anxiety increased, the nation began to slide gradually to an obvious state of anarchy. The emergence of technology in our politics has rendered transparent many of the agendas implicit in our political and cultural narratives. Meanwhile, the technologies empower individuals to take part in the creation of new narratives. Thus in an era when acute perversion of populism, and exaggerated calls for national security, threaten the very fabric of representational democracy and free discourse, interactive technologies offer us a ray of hope for a renewed spirit of genuine civic engagement.
While this paradigm shift was being orchestrated, fortunately though, our elites, political stalwarts, ruling cronies were distracted as usual with thieving their own money away to a richer and more stable economy, and preparing again to render ineffective the very essence of democracy, the voting power. Irrespective of our unique pattern of this narrative, we will definitely bring to you the revelation of the top secret or top in the agenda of the incoming administration, and this is most necessary to prepare your mind for the unforeseen and the most dreaded orientation that have eluded us the past several decades. Election date was fixed, agreement reached by all stakeholders, and again the political clairvoyance warned the ruling cronies that the fixed date was not attune with the symbol of winning, the date was changed, again technology proved more powerful, Jega insisted PVC or no election, the die was cast, there was no going back, it was in our hands, the remote control, to decide either to sit back and watch until the main character reach out to the ASPRIN brand of the pain reliever, how much more time will this take? Another 4 years, I could hear a resounding N-E-V-E-R! The next number was pressed on the remote control, click to CHANGE! done, just a week later you can feel the pains going away – the dramatic fall of the dollar, the stock exchange started making the rise, beehive of activities return to the capital city. What do you think?
A lot happened after, the incumbent is the first to benefit from the CHANGE as we predicted; meet your current National Hero Goodluck Jonathan, why? They said he conducted a free and fair election, the first incumbent to lose election-confirming the elections to be free and fair, he called to congratulate the winner, these feats averted chaos and violence from breaking out. This is HEROIC? How naïve! As we added the figures of the last minute spending from our already depleted lean resources, my heart skipped a dangerous beat, more money than you can ever imagine, this money was spent in a manner that portrays the election to be a do or die affair, everything that needed not to be done was done, but he was only a lead character in a TV commercials, the remote was handed to the people, thanks to technology and a sharp turn from politics of sentiments, sectionalism, culture and all that nonsense.
Uloh-Edumoh is of Integrated Business Network International Limited, Abuja