Hard for Buhari, harsh for Nigerians

Both President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, within a period of just about one week made statements which seemed to have indicated that they have started to perceive a declining public confidence in the almost one-year old administration in the country. By requesting Nigerians to sustain their hope in the government […]

Both President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, within a period of just about one week made statements which seemed to have indicated that they have started to perceive a declining public confidence in the almost one-year old administration in the country. By requesting Nigerians to sustain their hope in the government especially with regards to its highly-publicized Change Agenda, the president and the minister must have noticed something discomforting.
Their pleas were however clearly indicative of sensitivity to the feelings of the people and must have therefore elicited some favorable reactions. This kind of disposition will definitely always serve as an effective re-enforcement to the huge public goodwill that it has been enjoying since its inauguration on May 29, 2015
Almost all the factors that worked for Buhari, as the presidential flagbearer of All Progressives Congress (APC) are still there for him. The millions of Nigerians who enthusiastically advertised him because of some virtues which he appeared to have symbolized still believe he is the same man and therefore deserves much more understanding.
Although the APC campaigners, prior to the elections, took advantage of the sins of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to be boastful about not only the readiness but also the capacity of their party to turn the country around through the adoption of ‘hit-the-ground-running’ and ‘quick fix’ approach, majority of Nigerians were not unaware of the enormity of the challenges and were therefore not really expecting a sudden change. Many people, in fact, made it their duty to manufacture excuses, on behalf of the government, for the noticeable delay in the effective packaging and implementation of programmes.
President Buhari will perhaps continue to enjoy reasonable goodwill largely because he is Goodluck Jonathan’s immediate successor. The failure of Jonathan to satisfy the basic yearnings of most Nigerians which consequently turned him into a very bad news still remains a terrible disappointment.
Therefore the present government can continue to make a political capital out of Jonathan’s failure. A constant reference to the 16 years of PDP rule or, more precisely, the five years of Jonathan administration is a good strategy adopted by the ruling APC to remind Nigerians of the ugly past and at the same time urge them to continue to bear whichever hardships that they may be currently experiencing.
This strategy not only re-enforces the argument that Buhari’s assignment is a hard one but also seeks to prepare Nigerians for what can turn out to be the harsh effects of his approach to the job. People are, in fact, being repeatedly told that hardships in this kind of circumstance are a natural consequence of conscious effort towards re-construction which requires substantial endurance.
But even with the recognition of the twin facts that the job is characteristically hard and the government is still infant, there appears to be a high demand for the effective mitigation of the harsh effects of some of the policies of the government. Already, certain critical individuals and group have commenced agitation for either the reversal, review or acceleration of the processes that the government has so far initiated for the resolution of the crises in the various sectors of the national economy.
This clearly indicates that public sympathy and goodwill can not be permanently guaranteed for the APC government. Such gestures can only be as lasting as the measures adopted by the government to sustain them.
What is, meanwhile, noticeable and worthy of full appreciation by the government is the fact that majority of Nigerians are clearly not in a hurry to dismiss the historic change that the emergence of Buhari as President represents. This disposition is what makes every little explanation or clarification on issues by the government to sink in a lot of Nigerians.
But endless explanations and clarifications have their own negative implication for both the APC and the government that it has produced. They can easily create the impression that either the party has no clear and result-oriented programmes or the government lacks the capacity to implement them.
Certainly, no other impression, in the present circumstance, can be as devastating particularly considering the fact that the victory of APC was brought about by the desire of the people for a well-deserved relief. Having been subjected to insensitivity by the past PDP government, majority of Nigerians looked up to APC for immediate deliverance into an era of hope.
It is the context of this understandable desperation that some policies of the Buhari government are being analysed. While some of the analysts are arguing that the desperation is justifiable, others are insisting that huge expectations which have given birth to the desperation should be moderated.
What has reasonably come out of all those arguments are both the appreciation of the enormity of the challenge confronting the government and a clear expression of desire for more actions towards the provision of palliatives for the suffering Nigerians. Certain points being raised by those who appear to have concern for the ordinary citizens indicates a strong lamentation over the situation at the micro-economic level.
APC and Buhari are unarguably indebted to Nigerians and are therefore required to manifest the capacity and readiness to settle the debt. This will involve the provision of effective machinery that will both enable the president to execute what appears to be a hard job and reduce the harsh effects of some decisions of the government.
There are critical stakeholders in every sector who can be meaningfully engaged in any effort towards reform. If their participation in such efforts is facilitated and monitored they can be strong partners of the government in the implementation of the Change Agenda on the basis of which APC was overwhelmingly voted into power in 2015.

Gimi wrote this piece from Kaduna. He can be reached at [email protected]