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Nigeria has elected and sworn a new president into office. Your sense of apprehension is justified for n the country for god historical reasons. Nigeria has travelled this road so many times before that the drama that unfolded Friday May 29, in Abuja has assumed the status of a near meaningless transition ritual. Past expectations and promises were not realized. The hope is that this one will be different.
Many of the personalities seated in the front rows on the day are the usual fixtures at such events. They are mostly economic adventurers and political traders perennially scheming to and ready to prey on the president and senior government officials. They manage to frustrate, derail, or dis-effectuate whatever good and workable plans government may have to reduce the acts, and lesson the burden of misgovernance on the long suffering majority of Nigerians.
Buhari is well advised to not listen to any of them. They are the same people who have ceaselessly looted Nigeria's treasuries, and crippled Nigerians. Buhari, given his antecedents knows Nigeria at least as well as any of the said rampaging marauders, masquerading as patriots and advisers. They have mostly had their day. They always left Nigeria worse than they found her. They were the primary drivers and instruments of Nigeria's impoverishment and underdevelopment. They are mostly to blame for Nigeria's seemingly determined chase of national uncompetitiveness and underdevelopment. They have disingenuously, used public policy development and actions on every possible occasion, to create all manners of opportunities to enrich themselves and their cronies at the expense of Nigeria and Nigerians.
These are the same people who were at different times, members of Jonathan's first or other stream of advisers and political operators. While some of these people may be Buhari's longtime friends and military superiors, Buhari, this late in his life, should know that loyalty to his country should outplay his loyalty to friends and former bosses if he is truly concerned about his country and his legacy. These people have been bad for Nigeria's past and present. Why should anyone believe that they could be good for Nigeria's future? Buhari should know that there is not much that is good for Nigeria that he could learn from them. Buhari should respectfully distance himself from all of them. He should respectfully make a clean break from these charlatans who have become the recurring decimals in Nigeria's underdevelopment math. He should surgically remove them from both his inner and outer circles if he is to have a better than average chance to deliver on his campaign promises to Nigerians, and not make forlorn yet again, their expectations of and their hope in their president.
Buhari should seek and find a new core of technocrats and leaders for Nigeria's next century. He knows that Nigeria has experimented for many years now with economic teams largely drawn from international financial institutions. Buhari should seek and find home grown and other talent without international financial institutions' affiliation. The institutions' economics is development economics for some countries and under-development economics for other countries including Nigeria. He should think local for the most part. He has an enviable pool of talent to tap into. He must know by now that development is more likely to be real and enduring if it is home-grown and mostly organic. Imported development is usually seldom better than skin deep. He should model his government after Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad for example.
If Nigerians expect one result from Buhari's presidency, I feel confident to guess that it is that he does not do business as usual. He should be faithful to the constitution and expect all members of the other arms of government to do the same. He should respect the separation of powers enshrined in that constitution and encourage all branches of government to do the same, and call them out for not doing the same.
Leadership was not served on Buhari on a silver platter as it was on Jonathan. He wanted it. He fought hard for it. He won it. He must not be an unsure footed leader. He must be a determined and willing leader. He must have the fortitude to take informed risks. Will he be an able leader? That is the question. The call of circumstance is that he be a transformational leader. He has taken the bait- he ran for the office of president and won. Will he answer the call? That is another question.
I believe that Nigerians will be ever grateful to Buhari if he sets Nigeria on a new, clear and solid, path to overdue, long-term respectable greatness. He will need to be genuinely thoughtful, sincerely purposeful, efficiently productive, and also do especially important things well and on time. Only he can stop himself from doing what is clearly possible to do by him, and has been done by less prepared leaders at different times in different countries. Nigerians are willing him to succeed.
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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2015 6:21 AM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A New Nigeria?
A NEW NIGERIA? I sat right in front of the television and watched the inauguration. I am actually not a ceremony person but this one fascinated me. Why? It is a transition. And all transitions are pregnant with possibilities. All inaugurals speak of new beginning and new directions. So I sat stonily and watched with a staccato beat of my heart in a cacophony of anxiety mixed with hope and expectations. I guess at this point in time, there is truly a communion of expectations across Nigeria. My heart beats in errant pace; I could also detect a sceptical intrusion. I just came in from the long fuel queue. And I wake up regularly from a sweat-drenched and fitful sleep...my fan had been on holiday! My University has also decreed a two-week break from academic business because Nigeria intruded in our normal service. And I ask: what good does a continually abbreviated semester bode for students whose future is already compromised? I am still gazing at the screen but my wondering mind projects its own visual imaginaries on the unfolding ceremony. What will come out of all this? The cameras panned the crowd and the compere intoned the names of the old guards Atiku Obasanjo Abubakar Mark Tinubu politicians the intellectuals the priests the imams the pastors the press the masses and on and on I'm not sure I could decipher the faces of the new Nigeria in the ecstatic crowd. But my gaze kept fastening on Buhari's face...well, not his face but his dark spectacles. Someone once said "no object is mysterious. The mystery is in your eyes." Is he going to look Nigeria straight in the eye? What was Buhari seeing behind the dark goggle? Is the goggle going to project a specific vision? Has his national adrenalin reached a critical energy mass that propels the optimal force of performance? And then he mounted the podium...tall and regal. Head above all; alternating between sterness, expressionlessness and brief smiles. "I, Muhammadu Buhari, do solemnly swear..." Nigeria needs solemnity at this national juncture. We really.need to disoense with business as usual! Nation building isn't ceremonial...the next four years will be tough. "We can fix our challenges..." Yes, we can! But who are the people to help us? What is going to be the shape of the Cabinet? Will politics again trump purpose and focus? Can we again afford sit-tight principalities and powers? What is the plan to unravel Boko Haram, electricity, medicare, education, public services, etc.? I sincerely felt like joining the ecstatic crowd waving the symbolic brooms and jogging round the Eagle Square. I sincerely felt like holding up my hands in supplication, like the woman caught on camera silently intoning a prayer as Buhari took the oath. It seems that the best I can do, for now, is not to rejoice. I will rather retreat into that communion of hope while I await the call to action from my Commander-in-Chief. We should await the circumference of our collective expectations. It's time to take the opportunities that we have. I wish us all a new Nigeria! Adeshina Afolayan Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android |
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