Rulers, here’s another 81 days’ notice

The first one hundred days of new administrations at the Federal and state levels was marked in Nigeria last week without fanfare. While some state governors did a broadcast to mark the occasion, a few others put out advertorials to list their achievements while many others refused to say what they did with 6.5% of […]

The first one hundred days of new administrations at the Federal and state levels was marked in Nigeria last week without fanfare. While some state governors did a broadcast to mark the occasion, a few others put out advertorials to list their achievements while many others refused to say what they did with 6.5% of their tenure. Officials of the Buhari Presidency however marked the occasion by denying the ownership of two key documents upon which the media tried to assess the administration’s progress.
The President’s Senior Special Assistant Malam Garba Shehu sensationally disowned two campaign documents that listed what President Muhammadu Buhari would do during his first 100 days in office. Even though the documents titled “One Hundred Things Buhari Will Do in 100 Days” and “My Covenant With Nigerians” are very well written and they gave APC a lot of mileage during the campaign, Shehu now says they did not emanate from official quarters and that Buhari probably never saw them.
APC’s National Publicity Secretary Lai Mohammed later said, even more sensationally, that “Buhari never promised to do anything in 100 days, that’s the honest truth. You see, when you are running a campaign, all kinds of literature will emerge from all sorts of groups but I came here and I said there are only just two documents that you can judge a party with, that is the constitution of the party and the manifesto of the party. Those are the only two documents that are registered with INEC that you can go to court on or hold a party accountable for.” If it was because of its constitution and manifesto, both of which bear striking resemblance to PDP’s, who in Nigeria would ever have voted for APC?
Governments at the federal and state levels that had trouble explaining to us what they did in 100 days cannot claim that they did not see it coming. I, for one, sufficiently warned all the new rulers back in May not only to have their programs of rule ready but to also break them down into time pieces. Otherwise, I said, if the media comes calling after 100 days and all you have are long term programs that will take a lifetime to mature, we will go to town with stories that you did not do anything in 100 days. We will create an image problem for you that you will find it difficult to recover from.
I think most of the new rulers dismissed my advice as the rantings of a frustrated newspaper columnist intent of pouring sand into their gari. The general feeling in the country last week was that most of the new rulers got off to a slow start, especially with respect to the appointment of key officials and the launching of key social and economic programs. Three state governors got round to appointing their Secretary to the State Government [SSG] only a week ago. They apparently took their cue from the President, who appointed the Secretary to the Government of the Federation [SGF] a week earlier. President Buhari is expected to appoint ministers before the end of this month so we expect most state governors to appoint their commissioners in October, with one tenth of their tenure already gone.
Let us stop agonising and organise, as our Pan-Africanist comrade Tajudeen Abdulraheem well advised. The Federal Government and all state governments are hereby reminded that the next scheduled date for media assessment of their performance is in three months’ time. Reporters will come around early in December seeking to know what you have done so far with your mandate. Anyone who did not make any promises the last time should better do so now because we will not accept lack of promises again as an excuse. A promise is already embedded in winning an election, just like a promise to cook food is embedded in an African marriage. A bride cannot arrive in your house and say it was never stated during the wedding contract that she will cook food. Nor can you tell us after six months that you are still studying the situation; can a student still be reading the question paper 30 minutes into a two hour exam?
My advice to some state governors is that they should stop copying some of the president’s style of rule when they do not seem to know his reason for doing so. The President says he is playing his cards very close to his chest in order not to make a mistake. Since many governors are not so averse to making mistakes, they should go ahead and appoint their key officials and if they later find out that they made mistakes, they should correct it by sacking the persons involved. That’s all.
Any ruler who does not yet have a plan of what he will do by December should better pick up a piece of paper and jot down something right now. I can imagine that many governors had trouble making plans because they inherited chaotic state governments last May, or what in today’s political jargon is called “rot.” The worst manifestation of “rot” is many months’ unpaid workers’ salaries. In some states, workers were paid their salaries but pensioners were not paid their dues, which was crueller. The President and many new governors also inherited what is called “an empty treasury.” I wondered at a point if a government treasury is supposed to be like an esusu, with money staying inside until the day it is ceremonially broken. 
Here’s the rub: inheriting rotten conditions does not spare a ruler from the chore of sitting down to plan for the future. As a matter of fact it doubles the imperative for planning. The first rule when you find yourself in a hole is, stop digging. If you inherit an empty treasury, your duty is not to sit down and mourn but to plan how to replenish it. If you inherited a wage bill that is higher than your earnings, the thing to do is not to go round bemoaning your fate at Ramadan lectures. Your duty is to plan either how to increase your revenue so that it overtakes your wage bill, or to plan how to bring down your wage bill so that it falls behind your revenue, hopefully with some change to spare for projects.
If you inherited a governance system that is inefficient your duty is to mend it, not to sit down and wail like a member of the Wailing Wailers. While working on a program for 181 days, a Nigerian ruler ought to be conscious of what “achievement” he can boast about and which one he must remain silent about, lest it backfires. For example, during their first 100 days, many state governors reduced the number of ministries, stopped sponsoring pilgrims to Mecca with government funds while one or two others stopped government sponsorship of Ramadan feeding. While I personally support all these measures, I will not advise any state governor to include them in the list of his achievements because people at the grassroots might have a different idea of what constitutes achievement.
Some other achievements are even more problematic than these ones. For example, demolition of houses by the Kaduna State Government in the name of reclaiming government schools and hospitals’ land encroached upon by private persons is a double-edged sword of an achievement. A ruler must answer for himself the question as to whether it is better to do the most painful things at the start of his tenure, when he is politically at his strongest, or to wait until sometime into his tenure. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair advised Buhari during the transition period to tackle difficult issues such as petrol subsidy very early on. Blair said Indonesian President Widodo successfully did so, but that model might not work here.
Whatever model you want to adopt, remember that reporters are coming again in three months’ time. Next time we will not listen to excuses that you never promised anything in the first place.