Debating Buhari’s speed By Idowu Akinlotan

•Buhari -             •Secondus

Barely one week into President Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, Nigerians have become embroiled in a debate over whether he is cautiously forging ahead or making haste slowly.  They want to see action, plenty of it, perhaps reminiscent of military regimes, the kind that came in those sentimental and impressionable days with ‘immediate effect and automatic alacrity.’ They want, by now, to see his list of ministers ready, even if it would not be presented for screening. They wanted to see his principal staff in place a day after he was sworn in, kicking and puffing with activities and thundering the resolve of a president high on energy and brimful with ideas. They want to see everyone, security agents and civilians alike, shaping up or preparing to ship out. Alas, barely one week into his presidency, the renewed and reinvented President Buhari has only managed to announce a few appointments, one of which even sounded like duplication.

The problem, it seems, is that during the campaigns, most of the voters, many of whom reached voting age long after President Buhari had ceased to be military head of state, did not actually know him. The voters took to heart the piffle dished out by PDP propagandists, some of whom, like Femi Fani-Kayode, Governor Ayo Fayose and Olisa Metuh, simply invented the APC candidate of their notorious fantasy. They sold him to the electorate as an ogre, brutal and impetuous, abrasive and unreflecting, and hasty, bigoted and inflexible. If he were all of these, those who voted for him in the northern part of the country couldn’t care less. They did not dispute the propagandists’ impressions, but they were unmoved by the extreme pejorative dismissal of a man they trust and had become instinctively attached to. Elsewhere, the propaganda was rather effective, with the Southwest voting for him by a close margin on account of their double-mindedness over his attributes; and the Southeast and South-South embracing his opponent, former president Goodluck Jonathan, to the hilt.

Otherwise, the real President Buhari is fundamentally different from the picture of him painted by the PDP during electioneering, a picture quite at variance with his personality and attributes. As head of state, he was never impulsive; he was instead methodical, unhurried, even long-suffering, reserved, surprisingly trusting, and eager to delegate responsibilities. Nothing said he was infallible in those days, and in fact made his fair share of mistakes. But he was then, and still now is, a man who quietly made up his mind and stuck with it for a considerable length of time. Nor did he suffer from any complex, a fact that made him indifferent to analysts describing his first coming contrapuntally as the Buhari/Idiagbon government. More importantly, those very close to him argue that the picture of him painted by his detractors is so far off the mark that it is difficult to redeem.

It is, therefore, unlikely that President Buhari can be moulded into someone he is not in a matter of few weeks or years simply because he had been invested with the mantle of leadership. From the look of things, given his reactions to the germane politics of his party, including last year’s primaries and keen jousting for influence and dominance in the APC, he will proceed more with the deliberateness the public can’t seem to recognise or appreciate than seek to please them. He will build a careful continental, and if need be, international, coalition against Boko Haram, examine all conceivable battle scenarios, assemble the troops and materials needed to wage an effective war, no matter how long, and then launch determinedly into the campaign. He is inflexible as his opponents say, but it seems more like the kind of inflexibility that makes him committed to a task for as long as it takes, notwithstanding the reverses.

It has also been suggested that he had all of six weeks to plan his first few actions once sworn in. Instead, it is said, he opened himself to interminable queues of visitors and well-wishers, while failing to pay attention to the exigent issues of the day. But notwithstanding the transition committees set up to make the handover seamless, President Buhari did not receive the Jonathan government’s handover notes until a day before inauguration. In a democracy, he needed to exercise more caution than in a military regime. Nor could he have ignored the stream of well-wishers to whom he owed his election, if not his present and future support. Five years of the Jonathan presidency might have hurt the country unbearably, but it is no excuse for expecting that in one week, the Buhari presidency would begin, without reflection or study, to launch recklessly into popular schemes and programmes.

It is expected that he will assemble a great team, reappraise his campaign promises and party manifesto in accordance with current reality , and after a few prefatory steps and troubleshooting measures, will in the many months ahead plan and execute uplifting and soaring projects. It is not clear how he will relate with the National Assembly, but he has his party and leading party strategists to help him navigate the warrens that both legislative chambers have become. He will in addition need to sharpen his wit and reflexes, for he will be confronted now and again by many urgent and debilitating national issues. In many instances, the opposition will attempt to blackmail him even as they enact and execute policies and programmes that undermine the rule of law and constitution. Ekiti and Rivers are examples.

Much more than what speed he is on, his main challenges will concern how to calibrate intelligent reactions to the selfish manoeuvring of the opposition, whether in Ekiti or elsewhere. Rather than re-programme their party scientifically as a sound alternative to the APC, the PDP seems to be confecting and perfecting a series of measures to blackmail the president and the rest of the country using the constitution and all other sentimental buncombe. All President Buhari needs to do is ensure great fidelity to the constitution. He should confront political chicanery firmly, promptly and courageously. He urgently needs to set the tone for the country, a tone that was neither in his campaign promises nor in his party manifesto. That tone will determine to a large extent whether he will be feared and respected like great world leaders, and therefore be successful, or he will be ignored and exploited like former president Goodluck Jonathan. President Buhari needs a disciplined, focused and ambitious country; only he can set the tone in the direction. This has nothing to do, at least so far, with the speed of his actions. It has instead everything to do with the brilliance and prescience of his actions.

Nigeria has the population, economy, skilled manpower, a dangerous mix of problems and challenges, as well as exists in very interesting times. All that is required to drag her out of stagnation and decay and turn her into a roaring success is an intuitive and courageous leader, one imbued with sound judgement and deep intellect. Will President Buhari be that man? Nothing guarantees he will be a success, or that he has all the qualities to make the difference. But there is nothing in him that predisposes him to failure either.

NATION

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