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Jideofor Adibe

Now that Buhari has appointed his ministers...

Twitter: @JideoforAdibe

It is now just over two weeks since the President swore in his newly appointed ministers and assigned portfolios to them. With that , the six-month long wait for the constitution of the Federal Executive Council and the criticisms that trailed it came to a close. What next then for the regime? The common unsolicited advice to the new ministers is, to borrow the cliché, to hit the ground running. The problem some of us have with this advice however is where the ministers should be running to and what is pursuing them.

This is why I feel that the immediate challenge facing the Buhari regime following the appointment of ministers and the constitution of the Federal Executive Council is developing a grand philosophy – a roadmap if you like - that will guide the government and its functionaries. I don’t think there is anything wrong in tasking the new ministers to come up with such a grand philosophy in the light of present realities. In fact when the APC organized a two day Policy Dialogue (May 20-21 2015) that brought together leading experts in various walks of life from within and outside the country to determine the policy direction for the then incoming regime, many of us hailed it as an early indication that the incoming government was going to be hands-on. Unfortunately nothing more was heard about the Policy Dialogue or the resolutions from it. Rather the policy Dialogue proving the Buhari administration with a roadmap and policy desiderata, the nation was for six months ruled by the President’s body language.

Articulating a grand philosophy or mantra for the regime is not going to be as simple as it seems. Certainly it cannot be the APC’s current mantra of ‘change’ because such is usually the slogan of opposition parties angling to unseat a government or party in power. In 2008 ‘change’ was Obama’s slogan as his Democratic Party sought to unseat the Republicans. In the country’s Second Republic (1979-1983), the Unity Party of Nigeria, Nigerian People’s Party and a faction of the People’s Redemption Party sought to form an electoral alliance under the name of Progressive Parties Alliance with ‘change’ as its slogan. The collaborating parties were united by their desire to unseat the ruling National Party of Nigeria and the government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari at the centre. Since APC is now the ruling party, it will be an oxymoron to keep brandishing the ‘change’ mantra. Or is it calling on Nigerians to change it? This is besides the fact that a slogan does not necessarily equal to a guiding philosophy.

Though Buhari has said he would like to be remembered as a President who fought corruption to a standstill in Nigeria, I seriously doubt if he will succeed in this regard. There are a number of reasons for this: First, is that his government has not bothered to define what it means by ‘corruption’. In fact by the time we are through with the definitional problem and come to realize that corruption does not stop at embezzlement of public funds but also include issues of cronyism, cheating in exams, nepotism and even lying, our attitude to fighting corruption will have changed. Second, is that there is nothing to suggest that the government recognizes that corruption is merely a symptom of a more fundamental social malaise and not the main trouble with the country – as some people wrongly assume. If the government has realized this, it would have been seen in the sort of tools it wants to use to fight the ailment. Hopefully now that the ministers have been appointed, this will be addressed - starting with a proper definition of the problem. Since the incidence of corruption appears to be on the increase despite the fact that virtually every regime in the country has made fighting corruption one of the cornerstones of its policies, we can surmise that previous strategies or tools for fighting the ailment have failed and that we need something new.

My suspicion is that the fear of sanction that Buhari’s body language engenders among public officials will be successful in driving impunity – as opposed to corruption- underground but cannot defeat either impunity or corruption - unless the regime recognizes that corruption is merely the symptom of a more fundamental social malaise. I think the government will be boxing itself into a tight corner if it wants to be assessed only or largely on how far it has fought corruption. Corruption is so endemic in the country and manifests in diverse ways that it can only be a generational fight. Therefore the President needs a broader philosophy under which it can subsume the current wars against both corruption and terrorism, (which I also do not believe can be won within the short frame the President has set for it). It is important to bear in mind that modern terrorism has been with us since the 19th century when Anarchists embarked on a murdering spree of several Western leaders, including the assassination of the American President William McKinley in September 1901. Terrorism has undergone several mutations before its current religion-inspired phase which started in 1979. Each phase has lasted about 40 years.

One advantage of the regime developing a broader philosophy is that it will leave room for it to be assessed favourably in areas it may leave a positive mark. No government succeeds in all sectors when objective metrics are used to assess it.

My suggestion is that whatever grand philosophy the government will articulate as its roadmap must include reconciliation of Nigerians across the fault lines and reaching out to the various groups and individuals that have become alienated from the Nigerian state and have consequently de-linked from it into various primordial identities, often regarding the state as an enemy. Unless faith in the Nigeria project is deliberately recreated using state instruments, any solution thrown at the country’s numerous problems will only politicize existing fault lines and exacerbate the problems they were meant to solve. And it is unhelpful for ‘situational patriots’ to accuse anyone who complains of being unpatriotic.

Between Lai Mohamed and Dan-Ali

The new Information Minister Alhaji Lai Mohammed reportedly reminded government-owned media organizations – NTA, FRCN and NAN- which always complained of financial woes, of the link between credibility and profitability. The minister reportedly accused them of throwing professionalism to the wind and showing utter disregard for editorial independence in their media coverage. If by these admonitions, the new Minister is serving a notice that under him professionalism will be restored to these entities and that all political parties – both opposition and the ruling party – will be given equal media coverage, it will be a most welcome development. Hopefully the Minister was not just referring to the way he felt these public media outlets treated his party, the APC, when it was the opposition party.

In another meeting with social media influencers, Lai Mohamed reportedly promised that the government would not tamper with the freedom of the social media – even as he tasked them to be self-regulating. Another good start for a Minister some of us feared might be too combative to a Minister.

In contrast to what one would call a promising start by Lai Mohammed, the new Minister of Defence Brigadier General (rtd) Monsur Dan-Ali chose to start on a rather controversial note by re-opening old wounds concerning Buhari’s certificate, which the PDP made a campaign issue during the elections. Speaking to officers of the Ministry of Defence Dan-Ali reportedly blamed the immediate past Chief of Army Staff (CoAS), Lt-Gen. Kenneth Minimah (rtd) and the Nigerian Army under him for allegedly not showing respect to President Muhammadu Buhari during his WAEC certificate controversy. One hopes that this rather disappointing start by the new Defence Minister will not be a signal to a witch-hunt. It is not for nothing that some people have called election campaigns “war without bullets. In the USA, there are groups who still passionately argue that Obama was not born as an American citizen and therefore was not qualified to contest for the country’s presidency – despite the fact that Obama had publicly displayed his birth certificates that showed he was born in Hawaii.