Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari arrived in New York last week against the background of a sad legal hoopla about having been “insulted” on television by a citizen.
And then he demonstrated why it is virtually impossible to insult him.
To begin with, speaking in the general debate on the morning of the first day, when those leaders lucky enough to obtain those speaking slots are the ones really heard globally, he made the most improbable case for African development, inviting the industrialised countries to come and do the job.
Buhari recalled that following the Second World War, the United States “decided to revive Europe through the Marshall Plan and uplift and restore Japan economically,” characterising it as a policy which would benefit all three sides.
“This example can be replicated with respect to Africa,” the Nigeria leaders said, adding that a developed Africa would not be antagonistic to industrialised countries but would become friends and partners in prosperity, security and development, while a poor Africa will be a drag on the rest of the world.
And he asked, “Is this what the international community wants?”
Appearing to hear a thunderous “God forbid!” he called for something he called a “coordinated multilateral effort.”
Its job description: “to utilise and maximise use of the enormous resources on the African continent for the benefit of all nations,” as current attempts “to help develop Africa by industrial countries (are) un-coordinated and plainly incremental.”
He said that Africa has the skills, the manpower and the natural resources, and only generally lacks “the capital,” which was the reason for his “plea for industrial countries to take a long-term view of Africa, come and partner with us to develop the continent for the benefit of all.”
Declared the Nigeria leader: “Africa charges you with the singular task of initiating the effort we are calling for. The United Nations has in place processes for promoting collective action to combat global threats. No threat is more potent than poverty and exclusion.”
It is important to say what follows very slowly, so everyone can follow. Africa needs development, but it is not the job of others. It is not a contract you award any other country or group of countries the way you award a road or airport contract, and certainly not at their expense: it is the job of African leaders such as Buhari himself.
That is: Africa cannot therefore contract or “charge” anyone with the job of coming to develop Africa. There is no calvary out there waiting to ride into Africa while African leaders sit on their hands or their thrones and in their mighty palaces marrying teenage brides and disbursing favours to friends and party officials.
Yes, the UN has processes for promoting multilateral action to promote global objectives, such as development. That is why, following the Millennium Summit exactly 19 years ago, world leaders put in place a 15-year action plan called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While many countries took advantage of it, Nigerian leaders squandered that opportunity and superintended the sharing of available resources.
Officials of the Nigerian government may remember that in 2015, the MDGs were succeeded by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Buhari himself committed to the SDGs that year, and he may wish to be reminded that under the new agenda, the world determined 2030 as the deadline for ending extreme poverty.
The 15-year plan conveniently fell into Buhari’s hands right after he took office. The UN did not invite a calvary: it put a plan in place.
That plan is the calvary Nigeria and other African nations need, and it is wonderful news that Buhari admits Africa has “the skills, the manpower and the natural resources.” A good cook, when he finds himself with the ingredients for a meal, does not wait for starvation. He does one of two things: uses his expertise to convert those ingredients into a dish ready to be served or gets out of the way for someone who knows how to cook.
Buhari should be in the kitchen, cooking. Nigeria does not lack the resources; what she has always lacked is the will: the good will and political will—alias commitment—of its leaders.
Think about it: the education, health and infrastructure sectors in Nigeria, for example, are collapsing under the weight of the incompetence and corruption of successive governments, particularly the present. Part of the reason is that the political elite would rather send their families abroad or to private hospitals and schools, than improve local ones.
President Buhari himself has no embarrassment obtaining his medical care abroad while local hospitals fall apart around him. Some of his closest party and government officials are so corrupt and complicit it takes years to build a mile of road or rail, and weeks to abandon some of them to brigands.
And yet Buhari told the UN, “The present Nigerian government is facing the challenges of corruption head-on.”
But that is not what the countries he is “charging” to come and develop Nigeria are seeing. They stare in disbelief and disdain. They sneer in repulsion and revulsion.
The calvary is not coming.
Buhari spoke glowingly of the rule of law, among others, affirming, “We will work tirelessly to uphold due process.”
At that very moment in Abuja, his government was in true character, as it has been since 2015, refusing to release political activist Omoyele Sowore as ordered by a court.
Some people appeared to be surprised. Not me. It is exactly one year ago that he told the world at a meeting of the Nigerian Bar Association that the same rule of law “must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest.”
Just days later, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Nigeria, Buhari swore that his administration will always uphold the sanctity of the rule of law.
But that was obviously for Merkel’s consumption. In February 2019, Babatunde Fashola, a lawyer and key minister in the administration, reaffirmed that evil is okay. “The right to free speech must be subordinated and subjugated to the right to national security,” he said.
The truth is that for Nigeria to advance, Nigerian leaders must humble themselves before the country, as neither democracy nor development admit of anything but complete commitment. It is your responsibility to bundle your country on your shoulders into a new day.
In that regard, it is just three months ago that Buhari announced a plan under which his government would lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years, adding that his government had been developing policies, measures and laws to that end.
How is the plan going to work? Who is monitoring it?
That is what he should have been telling the world last week, as such a policy thrust has elements of the SDGs, climate change, and even the troubled question of inclusion.
And Nigerians might have been spared the embarrassing spectacle of their leader awkwardly reading wrong answers from sheaves of written answers in a free-form discussion.
There is no calvary swooping in to save us. Cook, or step aside for someone who can.
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