My friend, Professor Pius Adesanmi, set the tone for what I'm about
to say in a recent Facebook update. If you have not read his update in which he
makes a forceful argument for holding the Buhari administration accountable for
the president's pre-election promises in the area of security and the effort
against Boko Haram, please go and read it without delay. It is a prescient and
timely intervention. Adesanmi was writing to bemoan the continued rampage of
Boko Haram in spite of Buhari's promise to take away their ability to continue
their murderous activities.
*Buhari
Adesanmi's
overarching arguments are 1) we should insist on Buhari fulfilling his promise
of securing the lives and property of citizens from the menace of Boko Haram, a
promise that the recent wave of bombings vitiate; 2) we should demand from this
administration a clear articulation of its strategy for ending Boko Haram; and
3) what we criticized and refused to accept when Jonathan was president, we
should not accept, rationalize, or fail to criticize in Buhari's
administration.
I want
to extend Adesanmi's treatise beyond the narrow domain of security. I want to
broaden his contention to the entire gamut of issues and challenges confronting
the country. I am arguing simply that, regardless of the issue involved, what
we didn't tolerate from Jonathan and roundly criticized in his administration,
we should also not tolerate from Buhari and should have the courage to
criticize. Here is a list of things we rightly criticized Jonathan for, but
which, for reasons I cannot fathom, we seem to have ignored or accepted in
Buhari's administration.
1. We
pilloried Jonathan's administration for maintaining a wasteful 12-aircraft
presidential fleet (enough to constitute a modest airline) despite the
deepening hardship and cash crunch in the country. In response to initial
misinformation from overzealous Buhari supporters about Buhari's decision to
sell off most of the aircraft, the administration came out and firmly denied
taking such a decision and has continued to maintain the same presidential
fleet. This inexplicable resolve to continue with what is universally regarded
as a symbol of executive profligacy is not attracting any critical attention
from otherwise skeptical citizens. And I don't want to hear the excuse that
Buhari didn't buy the aircraft, that he inherited them.
2.
Staying with the aircraft theme, the new Customs boss, Col. Hameed Ali, a key
Buhari appointee, travels around to conduct official business in a cozy private
jet, but he is being praised as a man of action instead of being criticized
with the same vehemence with which Mrs. Diezani Allison-Maduekwe, former
minister of petroleum, was criticized for doing the same thing.
*Jonathan
3. The
economy is reeling from Buhari's misguided, counterproductive, and
unsustainable policy of defending the naira at all cost by placing primitive
and economically unsound restrictions on access to foreign exchange. This
currency control has compounded a curious companion policy of decreeing bans on
certain imports (both raw materials an finished goods) and wishing that Nigeria would
magically begin producing them in spite of structural problems like poor
electricity, reliance on imported heavy machinery, expensive borrowing rates, a
general poverty of infrastructure, and a volatile policy environment. Our
reaction to this cluelessness has been either to stay silent or to praise
Buhari’s intentions, as though his lofty intentions outweigh the real damage
that this policy is doing to various sectors of the economy. The road to hell
they say is paved with good intentions, and we may very well be headed to a
figurative hell with the pronouncement by the CBN that Nigeria ’s
economy will enter recession next year. We scrutinized all of Jonathan's
economic policies, taking them apart when they did not make sense. But we seem
to have conceded to Buhari the right to make as many mistakes as he wants even
at the cost of inflicting serious harm on the economy at a time of low oil
prices and a resulting economic contraction. It's almost as if we think that
the old man knows best and have suspended our critical faculties as a result.
4.
Several bomb blasts rocked the northeastern states of Adamawa and Borno in the
course of two days, killing cores of our citizens and puncturing our already
fragile security. It took the presidency an entire day to acknowledge the
tragedy and offer words of comfort to a beleaguered and traumatized nation and
to the victims' families. When Jonathan displayed similar crass indifference to
the nihilist violence of Boko Haram and to the victims of the carnage, we
spared no outrage in criticizing him and his team. Today, we seem to have given
Buhari's government an open-ended benefit of the doubt on the same attitude.
5. When
Jonathan failed to articulate a coherent road map for defeating Boko Haram, we
rightly called him out on the failure. Buhari has not clued the nation into his
grand strategy for ending the insurgency, if one exists. Yet we have not
demanded that he communicate clearly with the nation on this.
6. When
Jonathan hired some South African mercenaries to help drive out the insurgents
from Nigerian's towns and villages, many of us saw that as a humiliating climb
down for our army and our country, a testament to the failure to equip and
motivate the army to fight at their maximum ability. Then candidate Buhari criticized
Jonathan for surrendering and violating Nigeria 's sovereignty, pride, and
status as a regional power. He said the Nigerian army was capable, by itself,
of routing the enemy if properly equipped and motivated. Several days ago,
however, we read news, still undenied, that the administration has done exactly
the same thing that candidate Buhari angrily condemned. They have quietly hired
South African mercenaries to help combat Boko Haram and to meet the December
deadline issued by the president. We are yet to hear any serious critique of
this decision to continue with a previously criticized Jonathan strategy.
7. When
Jonathan travelled to Chad
to try to enlist the help of Idris Deby in combating the insurgency, he was
mocked for being weak and for groveling before regional minnows. The
cantankerous Nasir el-Rufai even suggested in a tweet that the former president
had gone to Chad to confer with Deby on how to plan more attacks, an outrageous
nod to the conspiracy theories circulating in the north about Jonathan's
complicity in, if not sponsorship of, Boko Haram. Today, Buhari's most
discernible public gesture in the fight against Boko Haram is his travel around
the world and in our region begging for foreign help and corporation. And he
seems to have invested all his strategic permutations in the regional force
headquartered in Chad .
He is, in other words, doing what Jonathan did or tried to do. But the reaction
to his actions has been decidedly and radically different. While Jonathan was
widely condemned, Buhari is being praised for courting much needed alliances
for defeating Boko Haram.
8. When
Jonathan appointed (and defended) several people tainted by allegations and
revelations of corruption into his government, we rightly expressed our
disapproval in very strident language. Today, Buhari has appointed people
plagued by weighty and credible allegations of corruption into his cabinet and
into key roles in his administration. Instead of dusting up our anti-Jonathan
criticism and applying it to Buhari, we have now crafted a new argument for
rationalizing this brazen act of self-contradiction by an anti-corruption
president. We now argue that the appointees may have been corrupt but that,
serving under Buhari, they will not dare touch government money. That may be
so, given the personal example of incorruptibility from Buhari, but that does
not invalidate the truth that such appointments constitute a reward for
corruption — and a bad signal to corrupt officials. Those who should be
answering to allegations and revelations of corruption will instead be enjoying
the prestige and aura of high office in an administration purportedly anchored
on an anti-corruption ethos.
This
list is not exhaustive. You can add to it.
Obviously
contexts change and one must acknowledge that. Jonathan was criticized within a
wider matrix of issues. Moreover, in some cases, the contexts in which he took
some of his widely criticized decisions, or failed to take a decision, were
different from those that prevail today. We must therefore temper our critique
of Buhari’s young government with that caveat.
We must
also give Buhari a grace period for getting a handle on the many challenges of
the country. Perhaps, our criticism of his preservation of Jonathan’s many
policies and attitudes would be more justified after he has spent a year in
office and the texture and color of his presidency have emerged with clarity.
Even
so, it is never too early to emplace the parameters of vigilance and
accountability. Moreover, if we don’t begin to ask tough questions now and to
challenge brazen disregard for the anxieties and problems of citizens, Buhari
and his team will only take that as acquiescence and go further down the
familiar and failed path.
The
failure to criticize early, to lay down a marker of citizen skepticism, as well
as a willingness to offer a prolonged period of grace to a new government are
detrimental to both the said government and citizens. It is one of the reasons
that Jonathan strayed and was never able to course-correct.
In the
wake of the Yar’Adua debacle, Nigerians were willing to give Jonathan an
elastic latitude of action and inaction. Now, in the wake of Jonathan’s
disastrous government, we seem to be making the same mistake with Buhari and
setting him up for the tone-deaf indifference and disconnection that became the
defining signature of the Jonathan administration.
We need
to stop the rationalization of Buhari’s lethargic beginnings. The election is
over. Buhari is fully in charge. Forced excuses are no longer convincing. Body
language has an expiration date and has clearly run its course while serious
problems persist. It is time to demand concrete actions, plans, and outcomes
from this government.
The author can be reached at meochonu@gmail.com
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