Buhari at the crossroads - wish list and harsh reality
It has been over two weeks since Muhammadu Buhari GCFR was sworn in as the President of Nigeria, by the chief justice of the Supreme Court Mahmoud Mohammed. The excited reactions to Buhari’s victory in various parts of the country attest to the hope he inspires in many. Unfortunately political honeymoons do not last long. Buhari has to start immediately to walk the talk.
Obsessed by the fact that the election was to some degree ‘fair and free’ and a ‘historic peaceful succession’ on the one hand, and comparing it with the worst tenure of the widely detested Good Luck Jonathan on the other hand, many analysts and writers seem to have become over excited and have exaggerated expectation of the new government. Commentators are predicting that during his term/s Buhari will bring ground - breaking changes on all major structural challenges facing Nigeria. The big questions are how will change occur; it will not happen simply with the change of the president.
Background
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with an estimated population of 174,507,539, is a federation of 36 states. Ethnically it has 250 different groups with the largest being: Hausa Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo, which account for almost a quarter of the country’s population. For the last 35 years, Nigeria has been governed through a power sharing agreement, ‘’to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity’’. This constitutional patronage has long been entrenched in the political DNA of the country. However instead of promoting unity as it intends originally, it has only provided to the Nigerian political freebooters an institutionalised inducement to build power on the foundation of exclusion and polarization.
Today, the conventional wisdom is calling for an inclusive strategy, freeing the nation from entrapment within vicious superficial ‘representative’ power rotation. Buhari’s election has come and needs to be seen within this political context.
The status quo
Nigeria is a country, which is suffering from corruption, crime and terrorism, unemployment, a degraded educational system, a polluted environment, ruined infrastructure and significant gender inequality. Recent Pew Research results show that 72% of Nigerians are concerned about Islamic extremism while more than eight in 10 feel that corruption (86%) and crime (88%) are “very big” problems. Reading the political trajectory from this disheartening perspective, one can easily observe the difficulty of Buhari’s responsibility to address these daunting conditions in the name of the people and the country on which he campaigned.
Battling Corruption
Corruption is at the core of Nigeria’s malfunction. Corruption takes many forms and penetrates all political, socio-economic sectors of Nigeria. Since the countries’ independence half a century ago, approx. $600 billion in oil revenue has flowed into the government coffers, yet an estimated $400 billion has been diverted or simply stolen. Just two years ago the President of the Central Bank, Mr Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, shocked the country by exposing a $20 billion fraud case within the country's notoriously opaque oil industry. President Goodluck Jonathan, rather than punishing the corrupted and rewarding the whistle blower, instead chose to condone the embezzlers and condemn the whistle-blower for his ‘impertinence’ at publicly hinting of government fraud. The message was clear ‘Join the financial recklessness or shut up’. But the people of Nigeria did not shut up; to the contrary the reality of this stolen revenue caused deep resentment and increased the cloud of suspicion that was hanging over Jonathan’s government and became one of the main factors that has cost him his job.
New Leadership – Responsible Vision
Mr Buhari has a reputation as selfless, honest and opposed corruption. In his first speech to the nation he vowed to battle against the evils of corruption. Without sounding too pessimistic though, the point is not whether Buhari wants to fight corruption - the question is how he can actually achieve his vision.
The strong signal of Buhari’s – capability – scepticism, so to speak, starts with Buhari’s closest comrades. The inner circles of the new system have already started to voice that they may resist any sweeping measures against corruption. Buhari himself has promised that he will not seek legal ‘revenge’’ by prosecuting the former President, Mr Goodluck Jonathan and his partners for their debilitating economic crimes.
That is still a bone of contention for the president whether to protect his close comrades from accountability or introduce tough measures in light of his promises to fight corruption. If Buhari chooses the former and corruption continues to be deeply rooted and institutionalized, if the country continues to rank 13th out of 174 in the global corruption list, then people of Nigeria will rightfully continue to voice their concern. If officials continue to be too busy lining their own pockets instead of governing effectively, It won’t be long before Nigerians start to weigh the big difference between merely casting their vote and realizing their ultimate aspiration for development, security and prosperity.
Fighting Terrorism
Another tough and urgent duty for the President and his government is beating the terrorist group Boko haram, officially known as Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'Awati Wal-Jihad, literally translated as "A Group of the People of Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad".
Boko haram, originally known as Yusifiyya, after its first leader, Mohammed Yusuf, is a notorious agent of destruction in Nigeria. In recent times Boko-haram has terrorized children and their families in Nigeria. They now use children for carrying out their evil motives of suicide bombing. Recent UNICEF statistics show that women and children carried out three-quarters of all 27 reported suicide attacks in the first five months of this year. The girls are aged between 7 and 17.
Identifying the urgency of the task, President Buhari has stated ‘Boko haram will soon know the strength of Nigeria’s collective will and commitment to rid the nation of terrorism and bring back peace’. Again the one million dollar question is how?
Re-institution of Nigerian Defence Forces
For President Buhari to ‘get rid of terrorism’, first and foremost he needs to whip into shape the army. Whilst metaphorically the ‘biggest army in the black Africa”, Nigeria Defence Force (NDF) –like most establishments of the nation, suffers from the absence of professionalism, morale and financial report - of course not because Nigeria lacks of resources but because corruption is rampant among the NDF.
What the army lacks is not only the resources but also the sense of national devotion and constitutional pride. Nigeria’s defence force has delegated its task of defending the sovereignty of the countries constitution to mercenaries. By doing so Nigeria has become one of the few countries that have privatized their sovereign constitutional obligation.
Buhari, being himself a charismatic military leader, has the leverage and credibility to keep united the army in fighting more competently. However the war against Boko haram will demand more than being a charming military leader. The general’s dedication in his heart will be more powerful than the 5 stars on his shoulder.
Equally Distributed National Development Plan: the way to sustainable solution
Nigeria must develop a National Security Strategy to crush Boko haram. As boko haram has links to international terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda, and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), fighting and defeating Boko-haram to curb future violence is not an option but a must, some thing that the President should not hesitate even for a fraction of second, but equally it needs to win the hearts and minds of the people of Nigeria. Any military and political strategy will only be sustainable if all , or at least some, of the root causes driving the problem are addressed. These include poverty and unemployment, driven by poor governance and corruption. Nigeria needs to invest highly in a long-term sustainable solution – development. It must design and cultivate a national prosperity strategy that is framed on a development oriented socio-economic and political solutions to the problem in northwest.
Such a strategy will deny Boko haram the fertile ground for cultivating terrorism and, humanizing their evil seeds. The national development plan should include: focusing on the community that for a very good reason felt alienated, getting closer to the people whom the previous government disengaged, and giving greater economic opportunities and better democratic representation to remote areas. The gap in the rate of development between the north and the south must be narrowed if not closed. Secular government institutions must also be firmly established in the place of the politically manipulated religious issues that dominate everyday poitics and social relations. To achieve the aforementioned objectives the new government should be to build trust between the government and the people by correcting the mistakes made by former governments that, among other things, have impulsively allowed sharia law in some parts of the country.
In the mean time President Buhari must personally ensure the presence of his new government in the relegated areas to address the severe underdevelopment and to stop the extreme religious ideologies seeded in the north. That is essentially what the 72% of Nigerians are concerned about and looking for an urgent solution. And the danger with such high expectations is they produce easily high and prompt disappointment, which puts immediate pressure on the president.
Realising Nigeria’s Dream
In the face of all Nigeria’s problems, winning the election for the President was perhaps the simplest task. His promises have resonated with the citizens frustrated by the endemic graft of corruption, radical terrorism, socioeconomic degradation and malfunction in both the public and private sector. If Buhari wants to maintain the respect of the crowd, who rose to their feet, dancing and singing his name in the hope that their futures will positively change, he has to implement the wish list he promised during his election campaign.
The cardinal pillar of strengthening democratic institutions is not having an election. It is not about the rightness of ‘peaceful power rotation’ either. It is people and their capabilities the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country. It is about key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to school and have a decent standard of living. It is about peace, prosperity and human rights of the ordinary people. It is about national growth, effective and popular framework. It is about how political national resource and revenue - which the Nigerians like to call it the ‘national cake’ - is distributed between Nigeria’s diverse regions.
Ethnicity and religion are not the driving force behind Nigeria conflicts but rather narratives politicised to mobilize a sub-national support for narrow economic, regional and political goals. Whilst the North-South, Muslim Christian dichotomy arguably make a much more nuanced picture; they are by far the most exploited society’s characteristics by the countries top echelon.
Once the foundation of economic and social imbalance between the underdeveloped region and the wealthy more industrialized region in Nigeria is addressed properly then any terrorist including Boko haram will not have the political oxygen to breath. Because evenly distributed development, gender equality and socio-economic growth will deny terrorists the capacity to exploit the divisions of the past.
Nigerians has responded in their millions to Buhari’s promise. Now, it’s Buhari’s turn to pay back. Simply put, Buhari has to put his hands where his mouth is.
