For everybody and for nobody

This is not to mention the speech of Federal Commissioner for Special Duties and FESTAC President Rear Admiral Promise Fingesi at the opening ceremony of FESTAC in January 1977, which lasted nearly two hours. Let us hope that Buhari’s short speech becomes one of the change elements in Nigerian public life where some rulers run […]

This is not to mention the speech of Federal Commissioner for Special Duties and FESTAC President Rear Admiral Promise Fingesi at the opening ceremony of FESTAC in January 1977, which lasted nearly two hours. Let us hope that Buhari’s short speech becomes one of the change elements in Nigerian public life where some rulers run verbally amok when they see a microphone. [If anyone says that I am referring to a governor who just left office, it is not true].
The statement in President Buhari’s speech that will be remembered for a long time is his pledge that he will belong to everybody and that simultaneously he will belong to nobody. The audience cheered loudly when the new president uttered those words. I was wondering; which part of the statement were they cheering? Was it the part about belonging to everybody or the part about belonging to nobody? Buhari’s pledge to belong to everybody excited PDP members, many of whom thronged Eagle Square that day in the hope of a political metamorphosis. It also excited citizens from the two geopolitical zones of the country that awarded most of their votes to PDP. A Nigerian ruler that treats his party members and opposition party members equally will be a real novelty and PDP members must be hoping that this equal treatment will extend to appointments and contracts.
On the other hand, many people who cheered the statement were more excited by the part about belonging to nobody. To nobody including Bola Tinubu, Rotimi Amaechi, John Oyegun, Ogbonnaya Onu, Rochas Okorocha and Nasiru el-Rufa’i who Buhari himself said was instrumental in bringing him back into political contest after his tearful 2011 pledge not to run again? Buhari’s statement must have sent a chill down the spines of APC bigwigs. They however joined in the cheering in the hope that as usual the devil is in the details. Indeed there is room for hope because only recently the president-elect was reported as saying that PDP members who flocked into APC after the election would not be considered for appointments ahead of original APC members.
Now, the very choice of this phrase and the decision to make it the cornerstone phrase of the inauguration speech must have entailed some debate in the president’s inner circle of advisers and speechwriters. John Kennedy’s old speechwriter Ted Sorensen revealed in a book how the phrase “think not what your country can do for you; think of what you can do for your country” made it into Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration speech. One day, hopefully, we will read in someone’s memoirs how this phrase made it into Buhari’s speech and who coined it.
Deciding to use it was a risk. I say so because there is an old Nigerian adage that says “everybody’s business is nobody’s business.” That adage appears to be the governing ethic of Nigerian public life; no one sees government property as his own because it belongs to everybody and therefore to nobody. No one bats an eyelid when a driver recklessly drives a government car, for example. I often think that the reason why corruption is so pervasive in Nigerian public life is because no one really thinks of public funds as his own, mostly due to the non-personal tax source of these funds. Those who have been advocating high taxation have a point. If Nigerians pay taxes through their noses they will show greater concern when they read in the newspapers that someone stole a billion naira. I often contrast that with a story I read in Readers’ Digest more than 30 years ago, where it was said that “in North Korea, people go to extraordinary lengths to protect public property.”
There is the added problem that APC chieftains will be puzzled by Buhari’s pledge. In this wise I recall a discussion I had ten years ago with the Kebbi APC politician Alhaji Garba Dandiga, who is brimming with local political wisdom. I said back then that once a governor is elected he should not discriminate between politicians but should embrace all as his own. To which Dandiga said, “The person who is himself indebted, how can he extend credit? You are already indebted to the people who helped you to attain the position. No matter how hard you try, you cannot repay that debt so which facility do you have to go about extending credit to other people?”
However, in using this phrase President Buhari obviously intends to turn the old adage on its head and turn the meaning from a negative one into a very positive one. This can be done, but it will take some doing. The best places to apply the concept of belonging to everybody and to nobody are with respect to region, tribe and religion.
Over the years many a Nigerian ruler had strived, sometimes clandestinely and sometimes fairly openly, to confer political, infrastructural and financial advantages to his own section of the country. While in most cases this was done by awarding the juiciest posts and the juiciest contracts to home elements, former President Jonathan carried it further by skewing the location of Federal capital projects in favour of his home region. He followed this up by hastily convening a national conference at the urging of some sectionalist groups and tried to rewrite the Constitution to give them some advantage.
Now, the two groups that most urged Jonathan along that line were Prof Ben Nwabueze’s, supposedly in the Igbo interest, and the Afenifere group, supposedly in the Yoruba interest. Yet, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has conclusively proved to Afenifere chieftains stuck in agitation history that it is adroit politics, rather than agitations for true federalism or sovereign conference that could bring quick political advantages to a region. After Obasanjo’s eight year presidency everyone thought that the Yoruba will stay away from the presidency for 30 years but here they are, within a breathing distance of it after only eight years.
The belonging to everybody principle will be best demonstrated if capital projects are shared based on the formula of national planning that was once in use in this country. The old National Development Plans, now jettisoned, identified projects of the most urgent need and also those that promoted rapid and even development of the whole country. The politicians however turned this around and began to allocate projects as personal favour to places and persons that support them.
Even before we get to projects however, there is the small matter of regional, religious, generational and gender balance in appointments. Many a modern fellow will say that zoning and balancing are archaic, as indeed they are, but nothing will erode President Buhari’s pledge to belong to everybody as the perception that his appointments are not balanced, especially with respect to region and religion.
There are many small things that take place behind closed Aso Rock doors that could help or hinder the sense of belonging to everybody. For example, if an Arewa Consultative Forum delegation comes to see the president, he could have the vice president sit in the meeting. Major General Alexander Madiebo said in his book that in the charged atmosphere of 1966, General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi tried to address such feelings by getting the Military Governor of Lagos State, Major Mobolaji Johnson to sit in his office whenever he met with an Igbo officer. Of course it didn’t save Aguiyi-Ironsi from Northern officers’ counter coup. Things are not that bad today. Still, if the president grants a private favour say to Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, he could quickly call CAN and grant them the same favour before they even know about it. In time the culture will be built in Nigeria that it does not really matter who is the president because all sections will get the same treatment. That will be a heck better than having the CAN president take up permanent station in Aso Rock because the president happens to be a Christian.