If the immediate appointment of ministers on assumption of office by any Nigerian president is tantamount to hard work, a fast track event or hitting the ground running, President Muhammadu Buhari could have done that by submitting the list of his aides on the first day of assuming office.
The president has not done that after a month of assumption, for an obvious reason. Not only is he clearing the rot of the past administration, as he has said, but avoiding the accompanying PDP’s landmines which can only be discerned by adept calculations, maturity and the discipline of a time-tested leader.
The president has chosen to be methodical. He intuitionally changed his strategy to avoid such numerous ‘landmines’ laid to derail APC, by the past government that was run and ruined by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
One of such landmines is for the incoming government to be so occupied with ministerial appointments that it would not have enough time to adequately scrutinize, right from the onset, heaps of corruption piled by the last government.
It was not out of patriotism, loyalty or love of country that made the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to submit its handover notes four days to the inauguration of the incoming government. It was deliberately done to ensure that the notes were not studied painstakingly due to the anticipated rush and pressing need to form a cabinet and take off immediately.
For a man who is conversant with governance, the president is aware that Nigeria is not bereft of eggheads who could be assembled immediately, and who can effectively handle the affairs in government whenever they are called upon.
Consider also this scenario: many people had expected that on the first working day after being sworn in, Buhari would hide somewhere at the Federal .Secretariat to catch latecomers, or be at the Aso Rock gate early enough to turn back latecomers.
Spin doctors could have begun their lambasting. His detractors who have for the umpteenth time said his leopard cannot change spot, referring to his style of governance as military head of state, were dumbfounded at the mode of a born-again democrat.
The fact that people reportedly came early to work on that day is a testimony of the beginning of the expected change, against the backdrop of the coercive war against indiscipline which made late-coming punishable instantly when Buhari was a military ruler and the lackadaisical attitude to work exhibited by many civil servants in the last administration.
That episode went away hardly unnoticed and as simplistic as this may be, it is very instructive. The President’s strategic movement since assumption of office, slow as it may be, and the majestic emergence into his office afterwards has diffused the first landmine, ostensibly planted by the opposition that has been judgemental all along.
Already, the Buhari factor is resurrecting in the civil service, the military, and in foreign and diplomatic circles. Even, the president’s body language has woken up the EFCC from its slumber. Who remembered the last time when the anti-graft agency arrested suspects or went to court under Jonathan? The agency could not because there was only pervasive corruption in the nation, but no thieves, the preferred nomenclature of such depravity under PDP.
And perhaps, the President could have been seen to be performing, if he had been boisterous, loud and cow-boyish, putting on hold all rushed and questionable appointments made by Jonathan in his last days or establishing special tribunal to summarily try debased officials, or adopting the style of Rivers Governor.
If he had rounded up illegal land grabbers in Abuja and had smashed the syndicate of oil cabals wherever they are, he would have hit the ground running.
The rot left by the PDP is so colossal that if the President has his way, probably by now all the Nigerian prisons would have been brimming over with convicted looters. The president even alluded to the scale of corruption, with pains in his tone, that never has the country witnessed such profligacy and plundering.
Nigerians who voted in the new government are, nonetheless, impatient, and it is understandable. They had been so ravaged, through injustice, disequilibrium in resource-sharing in the land, and turned into Internally Displaced Persons in the enlarged Nigerian camp in the hands of PDP in the last 16 years. Waiting a day longer to see a palpable change amounts to added injustice.
Slow as the movement may be, the steps are measured, steady and achieving results. Within 30 days of assumption in office, the President has travelled to Chad and Niger Republic, and then hosted a summit of the Lake Chad Basin Commission comprising Cameroon, Chad and Niger, to enlist their firmer support against insurgency.
The result, as trumpeted by the President’s party, the APC, is the decision to deploy the Multi National Joint Task Force, with headquarters in Chad, to step up the blitz against Boko Haram. President Buhari has also rallied the Economic Community of West African States and the Economic Community of Central African States to work with Nigeria in battling the Boko Haram insurgency.
The president has travelled to Germany to meet with G7 leaders to extract their commitment in the battle against Boko Haram. The U.S. Government has announced a $5 million assistance in the fight against the terrorists. Added to this is the relocation by the Nigerian military of the command centre to Maiduguri.
The slow race has also brought about tangible results from the Summit as some Western nations have now assured the Buhari Administration of all possible assistance in its efforts to recover the billions of money that was spirited away from the public till by public officers who abused their office during the immediate past administration.
The president’s ‘dragging’ has also uncovered stolen money, to the tune of billions of dollars and the enormity of the sleaze will become more vivid when such money is returned into the national treasury.
These are impossibilities under the Jonathan administration which ‘ran’ like a Cheetah to plunge the nation into the abyss, and the PDP, which moved in the opposite direction in the last 16 years. If Buhari had not hit the ground running in PDP’s estimation, who else has?
The APC has rightly noted that any government that is truly desirous of bringing about real change will not act hastily and without the necessary understanding of what is on ground.
The wranglings at the National Assembly are known to almost every citizen since the crisis began on June 9. Although there have been fence-mending measures to put APC back on track, the landmine laid by PDP in that regard could have been diffused if wisdom and patriotism had prevailed in contrast to over-ambition, arrogance and selflessness that pervaded.
Unfortunately, the spin-off of the Assembly rancour is obviously rubbing on the Executive. Real time which could have been spent on productive ventures is being dissipated on attending party meetings.
If PDP is not setting traps, it busies itself with non-issues if only to distract and merely be quoted. The party had been in stupendous comfort and ruling with impunity for almost two decades. Being in opposition with constructive criticisms is not its style. This is where a tutorial from the APC is imperative.
The party put the President’s performance in the first 30 days under searchlight, concluding that it had been a motion without movement. However, it is on record that ex-President Jonathan, who transited from his party and government to the same party and government, never thought of raising his cabinet in 30 days in office in 2007, talk less of achieving tangible results.
As it stands, the booby-trap setting by PDP has just begun, more traps are being set, and more pits are being dug, but it is a forewarn for the ruling party to peep before it leaps. The party is fortunate that its crisis set in early enough, giving it an opportunity to identify true members as well as to excogitate and deal with traitors, for a focused alignment.
The APC can not afford the crisis to linger, having successfully crawled out of the trenches to Aso Rock and having almost surmounted the first baptism of fire. It is time to move, full blast. In true democracy, there will be quarrels, but the outcome of such misunderstandings distinguish true democrats.
*Adeoye is a public affairs analyst
