On Saturday before last, Saturday Punch carried a noteworthy interview of Senator Femi Okurounmu regarding President Muhammadu Buhari’s performance. Okurounmu’s views were expectedly partisan. What would one expect of a Peoples Democratic Party loyalist and an Afenifere chieftain?
But partisanship aside, there is much for the Buhari administration to ponder about Okurounmu’s unflinching critique. The views the senator expressed are actually widespread, but they are of heightened gravity coming from him. More about this later.
First some issues with Okurounmu’s declarations. When commenting on Buhari’s performance on the economy, he repeated the misguided view that the new administration is somehow responsible for the drastic downturn in the economy.
“Even for those who supported him, they are all disappointed and disillusioned, because many of them when they listened to the mantra of change, they expected change for the better and not for the worse,” Okurounmu said. “But what has happened in the last 12 months? The lives of Nigerians have gone from bad to worse under President MuhammaduBuhari.”
In personal conversations, I have refuted the stated or implied blame repeatedly. Certainly, the esteemed senator knows that the precipitous fall in the price of oil, a product on which the government perilously depends for revenue, is to blame for the economic woes. Such political rhetoric unnecessarily cultivates anger and resentment. Its ethnic dimension is what spurs political violence and even civil wars.
Of course, it is reasonable to question whether the Buhari administration has done all it could have done to alleviate the deepening hardship. For one thing, the administration has fiddled while Nigerians burned — in the stomach, that is. In the name of being deliberative, the president dithered on everything from the appointment of a cabinet to the passage of a budget. And so urgent administrative actions were delayed. It is analogous to an emergency room physician acting like a family doctor.
But this all has to do with failure to alleviate the hardship, not responsibility for its onset.
Incidentally, the Buhari administration has not done itself much favour in its explanation of the economic woes. Rather than stressing the impact of the collapse of oil prices, it has preferred making political hay by blaming everything on the Jonathan administration. It is the Snowball phenomenon, as in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”
Talking of blaming the past, Okurounmu also didn’t do Nigeria any favours in dredging up some inflammatory issues. In blaming Buhari for aggravating the country’s ethnic tensions through lopsided appointments, Okurounmu saw fit to link it all to the Fulani’s alleged hegemonic ambitions. Among other things, he cited their alleged role in fomenting the disastrous Awolowo-Akintola feud of the 1960s. And he quoted the infamous assertion by the independence-era Sardauna of Sokoto that the Fulani would rule Nigeria forever.
Whatever may have been the seriousness of the assertion then, it is hackneyed today in analysing Nigeria’s politics. Before the Buhari presidency, Southerners held the office for about 14 years. And it was in collaboration with Fulani leaders against Fulani contenders. That is enough to put the Fulani-hegemony argument on the shelf — at least for a while.
Case against Buhari
Okurounmu’s inflammatory invocation of history actually detracts from the cogency of the serious issues he raises about Buhari’s leadership. His strongest indictment of Buhariis that his administration has exacerbated ethnic resentment, especially among the Igbo. That indictment is most cogently placed on Buhari’s square shoulders and not on history.
“After the Biafra war, the Igbo have been struggling to integrate themselves back into Nigeria as equal citizens with every other Nigerian,” Okurounmu said.
“Successive regimes have done their best to reintegrate them back, but Buhari’s administration has re-opened their wounds by extremely marginalising Igbos simply because they did not vote for him.”
Okurounmu did not need to turn to history to buttress this argument. His use of numbers to contrast Buhari’s rhetoric with his record speaks for itself.
“The President in his speech on May 29, 2015 said he belonged to nobody but to everybody, which means he will treat everybody equally,” Okurounmu said. “But the same Buhari later contradicted himself, by saying he could not treat people who gave him 93 per cent of their votes the same way he would treat those who gave him five per cent.
“Recently, we looked at the 59 appointments which he had made, only three came from the South-East whereas the North-West, the zone from where Buhari comes from, had 26. So where is the justice? Why will the Igbos not feel marginalised?”
Okurounmu also criticised Buhari for failing to implement the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference. It is a matter about which he has much competence and vested interest, having served as the chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee. Among the specifics he cited are the transfer of resource control to states, latitude for states in creating local governments, and the establishment of state and local police. The overall goal is to strengthen Nigeria’s federalism politically and economically.
“Unless we restructure this country, Nigeria will not know peace,” Okurounmu said. “We must have a country where everyone is first class citizen….If Buhari had embarked on the process of implementing the report of the 2014 National Conference, a lot of the present agitation would not have arisen.”
Okurounmu has a point, of course. The recommendations of the National Conference do indeed address some festering grievances. And it behooves Buhari to act on the report, even if it means implementing it in parts.
Still, in suggesting that the report is a panacea for Nigeria’s political problems, Okurounmu over-simplifies. In all likelihood its implementation will yield new issues that have to be contended with. Chief Obafemi Awolowo — presumably Okurounmu’s political hero — once said that Nigerians will find something to wrangle about even if the good Lord sends his angels down to take away all our existing problems.
The point again is that the people would be best served if political leaders analyse the country’s problems and proffer solutions with temperance as their motto and realism as their guide. That applies as much to government officials as it does to their critics.
PUNCH
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