At the height of the mass protests that heralded the obnoxious fuel subsidy policy of the Jonathan administration, most of the commentators speaking on behalf of government were harping on just one point: the need for Nigerians to trust this particular government. After all, Jonathan only inherited the problems of many years of bad governance and he should even be credited for his boldness in confronting the albatross of the cabal-dominated oil industry.
My anger with these kind of sycophantic analysis is its utter ignorance of the meaning of trust. As Fukuyama has argued recently, trust has a huge role to play in cementing non-kinship relationship especially within the ambit of the state. Yet, Nigeria has remained since the immediate postindependent period a low-trust country. The breakdown of the relationship between the anticolonial masses and the nationalists was essentially due to the lack of fulfilment of the promise of independence which required settling the social question.
From then, Nigerians have been waiting for Godot in terms of a government which will understand the critical role of trust in governance. This protracted expectation leads to some form of socio-economic impatience on the part of the people for instant manifestation of their desires-constant electricity, good roads, good healthcare system, social security service, etc. We have therefore been reduced to comparing one bad government with the other. Abacha even appears like some kind of hero to us in reptrospect!
The burden of trust lies with the government rather than with the people. The question is: why must it be the Nigerian people that get to pay that sacrifice of trust everytime? Every successive government in Nigeria has always been given what we can call the 'trust moment', an opportunity which can signal the government's intention to place its good intention in the public sphere for assessment. The Jonathan government came to power with a powerful campaign slogan that associate his rise to power with the luck that Nigerians feed on daily in their hope to survive the huge hopelessness called Nigeria where shoelessness is the norm. So, if the President never had shoes before, and he had been fortuitously blessed with countless billion naira shoes, why should we trust him?
Trust in government requires that those entrusted with the commonweal deal transparently with their stewardship. Jonathan has been provided with a serious trust moment in the form of the fuel subsidy report. It will amount to a serious difference if he disregard the imperatives of realpolitik and instead prosecute vigorously the offendersN no matter whose ox is gored, and even if he died-politically or physically in the process!
I suspect however that he is ignorant of the significance of this moment. Like other Nigerian presidents, he is essentially a captive of the office. How do you prosecute those who brought you to the office in the first place?
Once this moment passes, then the tragedy of Nigeria continues, unfortunately.
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
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