One good thing from the two groups that had used the internet to talk about Buhari’s government is that nobody had lost hope in his promise to change the country.
To many observers of public affairs, comments in non-traditional mainstream media have become the most fertile site for externalisation of the political subconscious of citizens. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the social media platform has become the mainstream media of the era, as it has become clear that more people in the third world have more access to the social media than they do to the mother of traditional mode of mass communication, the newspaper. The Buhari government and the party that he used to rise to the presidency need to pay closer attention to the social media than the government they have succeeded.
Those citizens who believe more in the new media than in traditional mainstream media are already expressing frustration via the digital device. Young people have already written to Buhari’s daughter to share their frustrations with her father, with the threat to form a parallel government of ‘leaders of tomorrow.’ Older ones are also complaining about the slowness of the president and his decision to make fighting corruption his sole preoccupation among many problems calling for the attention of a government elected to change the content, style, and, if possible, form of the government that had been in vogue in the country to no avail for the past sixteen years.
Adult expression of frustration includes the following: President Buhari is imitating or repeating some of the problems of the Jonathan government, instead of showing some creativity or innovativeness. Like the PDP, he had sent names of nominees to the Senate without indicating which portfolio for which they should be screened or considered, thus encouraging a RORO-type of screening by senators. He had chosen to be silent over investigation into the rules used to elect officers of the Senate while also choosing to pack sensitive security and electoral positions with people from his backyard, as if he had forgotten that there are six regions in the country. The president had been accused of travelling out of the country in a Jonathan-manner in an era of economic austerity. Rise in electricity supply which signalled change in June has been going down by the day. And Buhari’s presidency, according to his critics, has been lukewarm about indiscipline and lack of cohesion in his party, thus risking the stability of the party and his presidency in which citizens had invested heavy psychological and political capital, etc.
Fortunately, there are other bloggers who are pleading for patience, stressing that the president had just started his four-year tenure and should be allowed to look through the mountains of papers he had inherited from a corrupt and non-performing government. His own sympathisers have reminded querulous Nigerians that it took sixteen years for the mess on ground to be created. Some fans of APC have also drawn the nation’s attention to the progress President Buhari has made in the fight against terrorism, drawing special attention to the government’s ability to put faces to Boko Haram by publishing photographs of 100 hitherto unknowable fanatics of the terrorist movement. On junketing abroad, Buhari’s friends on the internet have not failed to remind his critics of the president’s encouraging narrative of his administration in the foreign countries he had visited including India, where he warned Indian manufacturers to stop dumping substandard goods in Nigeria. His government has also advised the IMF to stop crying louder than the bereaved on the issue of denying foreign exchange to importers of items that any country worth its name should provide locally. They also reminded their readers of Buhari’s resolve to identify and punish looters of the country’s treasury. One good thing from the two groups that had used the internet to talk about Buhari’s government is that nobody had lost hope in his promise to change the country.
However, it is worth reminding the president and his party that the tenure of this government of change has only 42 months left, to give citizens a changed political and economic reality. APC and President Buhari need to be reminded that most citizens who voted for him and his party, voted against sixteen years of deception of the ruling party he had replaced. Citizens are worried about the long-term impact of failure of the APC government at the centre. Citizens are afraid that such failure may leave the electorate with a Hobson’s choice in 2019.
President Buhari, one-time military dictator and now one of Africa’s leading lights in democratic governance, needs to be reminded about common errors of the governments before his. Sweet-talking citizens by being long on promise and short on fulfilment has stopped working with the masses, hence their decision to vote for Buhari and APC despite intimidation of leaders and supporters of APC before the 2015 election. One promise from the president’s policy table is the decision to provide one free meal a day for school children. Now that his ministerial lists have been approved by the Senate, school children will find any excuse hard to accept if they still have to remain hungry while in school as from January.
While many citizens seem indifferent to removal of petroleum subsidy, many others, especially Labor leaders who make a living by showing that they care for the working class, are clear about the need to subsidise price of petroleum in the country. Although there was some kind of fact-finding about subsidy during the administration of Jonathan, it is important for citizens to know the whole truth about this monster that is hardly affected by the forces of the market in a global market economy. Citizens need to know from an anti-corruption government why it has been difficult for the price of imported fuel to go down, months after the price of crude petroleum had collapsed in the world market. The good start his government has in respect of bringing back the country’s refineries should be consummated. If some of the refineries have to be sold, there is no reason why they cannot be sold to labour leaders and workers to manage for the benefit of citizens, instead of being sold to politically connected men and women. There also will be nothing wrong with organising a referendum to find out the preference of majority of citizens about subsidy, in relation to other forms of citizen assistance.
Education has been for years one of the major sites of national failure for decades. Periodically, governments in the past had made token donations at the sector to convince citizens that the governments meant well. But no improvement had come to this sector for quite some time, if results of WAEC and NECO, are anything to go by. Not too long ago, federal ministers of education and finance were unequivocal in characterising most of the graduates from our universities unemployable. This sector requires immediate attention under Buhari’s presidency, not just with periodic infusion of funds but first with a thorough study by experts and actual stakeholders of what has gone wrong with education in a country that had produced the largest number of college students in Africa.
A trademark of PDP governments in the last sixteen years has been secrecy. Citizens have been kept in the dark about how they were governed. Now that some APC leaders are boasting that some thieves of the State are returning stolen funds in order to avoid prosecution and punishment, President Buhari should tell citizens if this is true and how much has been recovered so far. Corruption amnesty, if it has been adopted as one of the ways to fight corruption, does not require that citizens are kept in the dark about the identity of those given amnesty and how the government plans to spend recovered stolen funds.
Finally, the issue of oversize salaries and allowances paid to political office holders, particularly legislators, seems to have been off the radar, despite the public announcement of voluntary reduction of salary of the president and his deputy. The initial enthusiasm of the RMFAC on reviewing salaries and allowances in relation to the purse of the government has suddenly died down in the same manner that the talk between the police and the ministry of justice about report of investigation of forgery of rules in the Senate has gone mute. Impatient critics should be pleased that by next week the Buhari government will be fully formed as ministers will be on their seats to give details of where the country is heading. Change does not come easily and not without serious effort on the part of change agents and those who hope to benefit from change.
NATION
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