PMB- 7 and half minutes gone

On Sunday 29th November 2015 President Muhammadu Buhari clocked six months since taking over the reigns of government in a mandate that, in the first instance, is four years long. However, long before this date, critics (and not a few admirers) have wondered aloud at what appears to them to be the snail speed at […]

On Sunday 29th November 2015 President Muhammadu Buhari clocked six months since taking over the reigns of government in a mandate that, in the first instance, is four years long. However, long before this date, critics (and not a few admirers) have wondered aloud at what appears to them to be the snail speed at which the president was piloting the affairs of the country. Instead of the supersonic speed many of his supporters had mistakenly thought President Buhari would take once he mounts the cockpit, the president was paddling the ship of state at a leisurely, unhurried pace; a style that earned him the sobriquet “Baba Go-Slow”, as he himself humorously disclosed during a visit to the United States.
Critics were of the view that President Buhari and his party the All Progressives Congress, APC, lacked the capacity to deliver the change that they promised Nigerians. They pointed to the non-constitution of a federal cabinet early in the life of the administration and nothing to show at the traditionally symbolic “100 hundred days in office” landmark. President Buhari was unperturbed. He refused all attempts to stampede him into taking any precipitate action, especially one designed to elicit a few cheers. He bided his time, steeped in the knowledge that soldiers go into battle only after they had undertaken a reconnaissance, marshalling all the necessary information and sufficiently equipping themselves for what lay ahead of them.
It was this preparation, a girding of the loins – if you will, that has taken President Buhari all of six months. During the period the president was briefed by permanent secretaries of federal ministries, heads of the armed and paramilitary services, chief executives of key agencies and departments, as well as the national security adviser. Such briefings ensured that, today, President Buhari is the most informed and the most knowledgeable person about the workings of the federal government in all of Nigeria. The president also used the six months to pore over the detailed but voluminous submission from his transition team which helped uncover the hidden mines and traps that were laid for the incoming administration by its predecessor.
Any other person would have been overwhelmed by the scandalously salacious discoveries that were unearthed by the various committees that the president set-up, incidences of plunder and malfeasance at the highest echelons of government, committed by people for whom the word conscience does not exist. Mind-numbing as the discoveries were, that did not stop President Buhari from reaching out to friendly nations in an attempt at getting them to support Nigeria’s resolve, under the new leadership, to strengthen ties, restore trust, mend broken relations and reassert the preeminent place of Nigeria as a global player. Thanks to his pedigree as a committed nationalist imbued with patriotic fervor, whose words are his bond, President Buhari has succeeded in reclaiming for the Nigerian his pride anywhere he or she goes.
Yet some say it was a wasted six months.
Let us contextualize it. President Buhari has a four-year or 48 months mandate, out of which six months have gone. Assuming President Buhari to be a student sitting an examination for which he had an hour or 60 minutes, six months would be the equivalent of seven minutes, thirty seconds. Both examiners and students know that a 60 minutes paper is meant to be conveniently tackled within 45 minutes. Thus, a good student would plan and divide his time into three – the initial reading of the question(s) with a view to comprehending what it was the examiner wanted, the actual writing of the answer(s), and the going over of the answer(s) before submission at the end of the examination.
President Buhari has spent seven and a half minutes reading over the questions, noting the instructions, deciphering the nuances embedded in the questions, writing out in the inside back cover of his script the key points for the questions he had elected to answer, and sketching an outline for each of the questions. He was busy all of those seven and a half minutes, he was not looking up to the sky for answers, he knew what the answers were and he was just organizing his thoughts in a coherent manner. He was glad the questions were not of the fill-in-the-blank or objective type, because many before him had had such types of questions and depended on their good luck not their preparedness and plodded on with disastrous consequences for them, but more importantly the nation – which can ill-afford the luxury of being piloted by charlatans masquerading as of enlightened minds.
President Buhari has 52 minutes 30 seconds to answer the questions before him. He will do well to allot 15 minutes to each of the three questions, thus spending 45 minutes, and use the balance of the time on revision. The president may also decide to spend 20 minutes on question one on security, 15 minutes on economy and employment generation, and 15 minutes on combatting corruption. Two and half minutes can be used to tie up any loose ends, and for crossing the t’s and dotting of the I’s.  
Unless we have all become neurotic – from 192 months of Peoples Democratic Party (mis)rule – it is too early in the day to begin telling Buhari that seven and a half minutes are gone!
Nu’uman Mohammed Habib, Ph.D.  [email protected]