3rd September, 2015
By: Amir
Abdulazeez
he idea
of periodically assessing the achievements, actions and or leadership style of
executive office holders was conceptualized and popularized in the American
political system. Presidents and sometimes governors are assessed after 100
days, 200-days and 1-year in office, and based on that they are either
celebrated or castigated as the case may be. According to University of Cambridge
historian, Anthony Badger, the 100-day mark yardstick for measuring
presidential success was conceptualized by 32nd US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt
in 1933.
Roosevelt
was faced with the calamity of the great depression of the 1930s and he moved
with unprecedented dispatch to address the problem within his first 100 days in
office in which he pushed 15 major bills through congress. Buhari, just like
Roosevelt inherited probably the most fragile and unstable Nigeria in recent
history and most Nigerians are not even patient enough to wait for 100 days
before they start seeing concrete results.
The
100-day standard is not a perfect measure, but it is a useful one because it is
a period when the peoples’ goodwill to a president or governor is still at its
peak and the leader himself is still fresh and new without the attendant
burdens of scandals that are associated with mostly every tenure of public
office. The 100 days of a president are too early for any meaningful judgement
for a four-year presidency, but they are enough to give a clear direction on
where a leader is heading to.
President
Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in on 29th May, 2015 and on 6th
September, 2015, he attained 100 full days in office. In Nigeria, the first 100
days are mostly seen by many as an opportunity for political associates to celebrate
a leader through exorbitant media adverts. Other Nigerians with high
expectations may like to see some visible and tangible achievements especially
infrastructural that a president will show for his 100 days in power;
unfortunately it’s not always possible to make much significant physical within
this period.
This is
not an attempt to assess Buhari’s achievements, but rather an analysis of
events bordering on politics, policies, incidents, expectations,
interpretations and speculations over the President’s 100 days in office. There
are many things we learnt from Buhari’s 100 days in power; here are some of
them;
Everyone should Probe his Predecessor;
With the general
belief among Nigerians that every public officer is a wrong doer, they expect
him to be probed by his successor after leaving office. Buhari had promised on several
occasions during the campaigns to draw a line and move forward, but may be the
level of ‘rot’ he saw when he took over may have ‘forced’ him to change his
mind or may be the line-drawing theory was just politics in the first place.
Anyway many Nigerians are in support of probes and a handful of them voted
Buhari specifically to carry out probes, so he can just carry on. The only
problem with the Buhari probes is that they are limited to the Jonathan’s
regime; the probes would have been more credible if it included at least the
Obasanjo’s regime.
Nevertheless,
what we learnt from Buhari is that everyone has a duty to probe his
predecessor. In 1984 Buhari probed Shagari, Abdussalami and Obasanjo probed
Abacha, why didn’t ‘Yaradaua and Jonathan probed Obasanjo?
30 Years out of Business is no fluke;
In the
last 100 days, we have seen decisions rescinded almost immediately after they
have been made by the presidency. We have seen contradictions, unclarified
statements and sometimes even ambiguous orders from the presidency. For the
early part of the 100 days, two presidential spokesmen gave us contradicting
information about same events and the president. The president himself has made
many gaffes, especially the (in)famous ‘West Germany’ gaffe in public.
Some
attributed these problems to Buhari’s failure to timely appoint key government
officials like the SGF, CoS and advisers, the opposition attributed it to his old
age and what they termed ‘unpreparedness’ for the job. Recently, the media
commemorated 30 years after the overthrow of Dictator Buhari from power by
Dictator Babangida and even though he had a stint as PTF Chairman, that may not
be enough to make him adequately equipped for modern governance. Whatever the
case, 30 years out of business is a serious gap to contend with and it isn’t
unnatural when you show some signs of ‘cluelessness’ in your first 100 days.
Change is not a Destination; it’s a Gradual Process;
Many
Nigerians consciously and subconsciously voted Buhari with the expectation of
seeing things getting fixed almost automatically within a very short period of
time. Over the last 100 days we have understood that the truth however is,
things can only be fixed gradually and there would be no time when we can claim
to have achieved all the achievables, we can only keep improving. Some folks
have often used the word ‘change’ itself in a confusing and misleading way to
mean the occurrence of something instant. President Buhari may have started the
job but he cannot finish it, what he can only do is to lay a solid foundation
for someone to continue.
APC
campaigned on the slogan of change over four years and not 4 weeks or 4 months
and we want to believe that under Buhari, they are on the process of providing
that change. The only problem we have is that APC is now jam-packed with the
same PDP people whose ‘misdeeds’ necessitated the clamour for change in the
first place. However, this only becomes a problem when we perceive change as a
destination and not a process or when we want it to occur instantly and not
gradually. Nigeria have taken the first major step of actualizing the dream of
changing a sitting government through the ballot, the next is to start
focussing on individuals and not political parties. Gradually, bad politicians
would have nowhere to hide, hopefully by 2019.
PDP Cannot Provide Quality Opposition;
The PDP
have spent much of the last 100 days pointing accusing fingers and advancing
reasons why it lost the 2015 presidential elections rather than providing
quality opposition – something that even prior to PDP has been lacking in
Nigerian politics. Notable PDP big-wigs have taken turns to open up on why the
PDP lost power. The latest to do so was the current Acting BOT Chairman of the
party and former Minister of Defence, Alhaji Bello Halliru. Halliru while addressing
the Senator Ike Ekweremadu-led PDP revamping committee said the party lost
because it violated its zoning policy in 2011. This is indirectly saying, PDP
lost because it fielded Jonathan. Many PDP stalwarts have confessed that the
party lost because of either Patience Jonathan, Jonathan campaign handlers or
Jonathan himself. So PDP knew what was right but refused to do it; they knew
fielding Jonathan was suicide, but they went ahead and did it?
Many
pundits believe that the real issues for debates and opposition to Buhari’s
government will begin after he might have achieved 6 months to 1 year in
office. Unfortunately PDP had spent a substantial part of its energy on trivial
issues, one wonders how much of its energy will be left when the real issues
begin. The party had ruled for 16 years and it may spend the next 16 years as
an opposition party if it survives that long.
Buhari has no Plan to Unite Nigerians
The major
problem with Nigeria has been disunity and hatred among its citizenry. This
religiously and ethnically motivated hatred reached its peak in the build-up to
the 2015 elections and it continued after the elections and even up to this moment.
Many expected Buhari first and foremost to roll out a deliberate and
comprehensive healing and unification programme of all Nigerians immediately
after assuming office. Unfortunately, there was none and nothing in the last
100 days suggests there will be any.
In the
absence of that, the wounds of the 2015 elections are continue to deteriorate and
unless something is done quickly, Buhari will likely preside over the most
divided Nigeria in recent history. In another development, Buhari’s appointments
which are seen by many to be lopsided and widely tilted towards his Northern constituency
have compounded issues. His 99% versus 1% comment in the United States some
weeks ago also did not help matters. Although, the president had assured time
and again that he is for everybody and not for anybody, some of his actions
give a contrary impression and he had continued to commit what some people
called ‘unforced errors’ that has continued to unbalance an already
‘unbalanceable’ country.
If Governance is about Action and Inaction then
Leadership is about Discipline and Indiscipline;
Many
things began ‘fixing’ themselves almost immediately after Buhari was sworn into
office. The level of performance of different government institutions and
public officers suddenly improved in unimaginable proportions. The riot acts
constantly read by heads of security personnel to their subordinates, the
sudden and rapid resurgence of the EFCC, the sanitization of the oil and gas
industry, the blockage of leakages are all testimonies to this fact. The
importance of attitudinal and disciplinary leadership cannot be overemphasized.
On the active side, Buhari has made some progress also, most notable of which
is the Federal Government’s bailout plan to rescue some states with backlog of
salaries and debts.
Common sense
demands that we give credit to Jonathan for some recent gigantic projects like
the repair of our refineries and the improvement in electricity generation,
however these things would never have materialized as early as now to make any
impact if not for the new discipline injected into leadership by Buhari. During
the campaign, Buhari have said on several occasions that the fish gets rotten
from the head. The fish now has a new head which is expected to stop the
rottening of the body.
The Legislature can Keep Fighting while their
Relevance Keep Dwindling;
When you
ask a typical Nigerian on the street about how categorically the government
affects his life, he will talk about the executive arm and probably the
judiciary and hardly the legislature. Average Nigerians do not discuss the
legislature except of course when it is about their ‘jumbo’ pay. May be this is
due to ignorance or may be the legislatures have in the last 16 years not
really proven their effectiveness to the masses. Only God knows how many
impeachable offices the Nigerian Presidents between 1999 to date have
committed, but the National Assembly allowed them to walk away scot-free.
Nothing
in the last 100 days have shown that anything has change as this 8th
National Assembly made the worst possible start one can think of. They have
spent most of the last 3 months fighting over leadership positions without
initiating or debating a single bill; Buhari himself is yet to seriously need
their help. Save for the few communications between him and the Senate and some
interventions for reconciliation, the legislature had not feature significantly
in Buhari’s activities in the last 100 days in office. Whether the National
Assembly will redeem itself early enough to make any impact in this
dispensation or we may have to look up to only the Executives and Judiciary,
time will tell. Perhaps its time we have one strong unicameral legislature
instead of a highly expensive and indecisive bi-cameral one.
The Western World’s Attention is on Nigeria Again;
Buhari
was barely a week in office when he left with a wish-list for the G-7 Summit in
Germany, he later visited the United States and it could be recalled that just
before his inauguration, he visited the UK to see the British Prime Minister.
From the sweet and confidence-bestowing words we hear from the western leaders
and the Presidency to the tonnes of promises made in meetings, we have reason
to believe that they mean well for our country.
The West
may fulfil the entire item on our wish-list but there may be a time when they
might want you tpo attend to their own wish-list. It’s been long since the West
has shown some keen interest on Nigerian affairs, but anytime it does so, it
comes with consequences. We look to have escaped the same-sex marriage imbroglio,
what of when IMF and the World Bank come calling with their policies?
The Boko Haram Conspiracy Theorists would have to come
up with Something Else;
When Jonathan
was in office, we had two groups of conspiracy theorists; those who directly
link Jonathan with Boko Haram sponsorship in his mission to destroy the North
and those who link Buhari and the Northern Oligarchy with Boko Haram
sponsorship to make the country ungovernable for Jonathan. Now that Boko Haram
has refused to vanish after Buhari’s 100 days in office as ignorantly but
popularly expected, what else would the conspiracy theorists come up with? May
be Boko Haram themselves intensified their attacks immediately after Buhari
took office to prove a point.
Buhari
has boasted during his campaigns that the sect is no match an enemy for the
Nigerian Army if there was a competent Commander-in-Chief. Now that his actions
in the last 100 days have shown commitment but have not being adequate yet,
what more should we expect before the next 100 days? We are keenly and
prayerfully watching.
Never Make Too Many Promises during Your Campaigns;
Buhari
and APC had made so much promises that it is almost certain they can’t deliver
on a substantial number of them. That may not be a problem if they are able to
eventually deliver on the giant ones; security, corruption and economy. The
Buhari promises are well documented and there will be no room for escapism,
although President’s Media Adviser, Mr. Femi Adesina was recently reported by
some media outlets denying that his boss promised to publicly declare his
assets.
Buhari
has made so many unnecessary promises during the campaigns, some of which have
started making him uncomfortable. For example, his promise not to have a First
Lady was needless and it has already created avoidable dilemma for him. Another
is his promise to obey traffic rules, something very dangerous.
Buhari
took political promise making in Nigeria to new heights when he articulated
many things we will execute within his first 100 days in documents like ‘100
things Buhari Will do in 100 Days’ and ‘My Covenant with Nigerians’, although Mallam
Garba Shehu, the President’s Media Assistant, in a recent article had disowned
these documents as unauthorized by the Buhari Campaign Organization, but it’s
surprising that he didn’t do so during the campaigns. With or without the 100
day promises, already the other promises are well-documented and whether Buhari
can fulfil them or not, we shall leave that to time and rely on the analysts
for real time updates.
