Tough nuts on PMB’s desk
Three days since his return to the country, to a tumultuous welcome in some places and to mooted sulking in other quarters, President Muhammadu Buhari is expected to send another letter to the National Assembly today, his third since January. He will tell MPs that he is back in the country, which they already know […]
Three days since his return to the country, to a tumultuous welcome in some places and to mooted sulking in other quarters, President Muhammadu Buhari is expected to send another letter to the National Assembly today, his third since January. He will tell MPs that he is back in the country, which they already know if they ever watch television. He will then say one of two things. Either he will ask for a little more time to rest and recuperate, or he will straight away say he is resuming his duties as President of the Federal Republic and Commander in Chief.
If he chooses to resume duty immediately, President Buhari will walk from the family quarters to his desk and find that it is very neatly polished, except for ten tough nuts that he will find neatly arranged in one corner. For all his acclaimed dynamism as Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo did not crack those nuts. The State House head cleaner cannot remove them from Buhari’s desk, neither can the Chief of Staff. The President must crack these nuts himself, and he cannot plead jetlag due to the long plane, helicopter and limousine travel from London to Kaduna to State House’s helipad and on to the residence.
Tough nut number one, the President must try to avert the looming confrontation on Wednesday between the Senate and one of his closest aides, Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, retired Colonel Hameed Ibrahim Ali. This dispute threatens to overshadow Buhari’s first full week in office since his return. He must either get the Senate to back down and withdraw its insistence that Colonel Ali appears before it’s plenary in full Customs uniform, a very difficult task, or he must get Ali to quickly sew a uniform, wear it to Senate and consequently shave his grey beard as well, which is next to impossible.
The second tough nut is Ibrahim Magu’s confirmation as EFCC Chairman. Senate did not act on Magu’s nomination during the president’s long absence and from all indications it does not intend to. Acting President Osinbajo met with their leaders several times and apparently urged them to confirm Magu, but to no avail. Buhari must now decide if he wishes to push ahead with this showdown or to silently back away and nominate another EFCC chairman. The third tough nut to crack is the “grass cutter” case. It was in abeyance during Buhari’s absence but he must now decide if he must retain Babachir David Lawal as Secretary to the Government of the Federation. The Presidential Committee on the North East Initiative [PCNI] worsened matters during Buhari’s absence when it took a 2017 budget proposal to the National Assembly that included more grass cutting.
The Federal Government’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, approved by Federal Executive Council while Buhari was away, is the fourth tough nut to crack. It includes a plan to allow the naira to float freely and have its exchange rate to major currencies determined by “market forces.” Buhari is not comfortable with the nitty-gritty of economic policy but up until last May, he was arguing against naira devaluation. In June however, he looked the other way while CBN adopted a “flexible exchange rate mechanism.” This move increased the amount of naira in the Federation Account and wiped away the problem of state governments’ inability to pay salaries, even though it fuelled inflation. Buhari must decide whether to go ahead with the naira floating plan or not.
The fifth tough nut that no one can crack for Buhari is a possible Cabinet shake up. Every Nigerian ruler bought time with a cabinet reshuffle. Buhari’s cabinet has many quality people in it but it is now clear, to me at least, that five or six ministers can do with more challenging portfolios. I will not mention their names because an old Army General like PMB does not want to be told what to do by a newspaper columnist. One mega ministry looks like it can do with a split; and one unit of a ministry, Aviation, looks like it needs upgrading, given all that happened recently.
The sixth tough nut to crack is that the tumultuous welcome that Buhari’s return elicited in the Northern cities of Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Bauchi, Jos and Maiduguri was visibly not matched by similar tumult in Enugu, Benin, Ibadan, Port Harcourt and Lagos. I take note of the stray rally in Awka that was more about Igbo presidency in 2023 than Buhari’s return. This is worrisome. Either the two halves of the country have totally different measurements of the Buhari administration’s achievements, or Northerners are trying too hard to lay claim to Buhari. PMB needs to find the formula to balance the equation in order to solidify his place in history as a pan-Nigerian hero figure.
The seventh tough nut that PMB will find on his desk is the anti-corruption crusade. Even during his absence it made some strides with the discovery of $10m hidden in a Kaduna slum. PMB’s helicopter probably flew over the scene on his way to Abuja last Friday. Going forward, he must reassert his moral authority and prove that the war has no double standards, the Achilles’ heel of all moral crusades. Tough nut number eight is about the Acting President. By all accounts Prof Yemi Osinbajo handled matters wisely, dynamically and sensitively during his Acting Presidency. As Buhari himself said last Friday, Osinbajo has the benefit of relative youth and book knowledge while PMB is a bag of military toughness, political heft and the wisdom of older age. Both bodies of virtues should be amalgamated to the fullest and the president can conserve energy by making better use of his slight and fleet deputy.
Tough nut number nine, which Buhari will also find on his desk, is that APC has half heartedly fixed a convention for next month. I say half heartedly because the party said there will be no election at the convention, even though it is clear that the present party leadership is feckless. PMB shares some of the blame because his body language suggested that he had no use for the party and he sees it as a collection of strange, ambitious bedfellows who don’t share his vision for Nigeria. Well, it is time to fish or cut bait. He should either revive APC or he should let it fall apart and recreate CPC.
A day before Buhari returned to Nigeria, INEC fixed a date for the 2019 presidential election and thereby added a tough nut to his desk. Every politician in Nigeria quickly glanced at the calendar when he heard the date. Some ambitious ones probably sat down and counted the number of days remaining until February 16, 2019. Announcing an election date so early is very destabilising to incumbents. Even if PMB is no longer interested in 2019, he cannot admit it at this point because his administration would immediately become a lame duck. He must crack the tough tenth nut by finding a way to fend off the scramble for 2019 for another year at least. Welcome back, Mr. President. You need the beak of a parrot to crack these ten tough nuts.