Democratic election of leaders, like business, relies more on voters’ calculation of relative probabilities than on trust. As even the smallest trader will tell you, there are no business deals over a handshake—you take calculated risks. Despite being an ardent, even though a late, supporter of Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential candidacy in April, the trade-off, what economists call opportunity cost, is already proving a high price to pay.
Democratic election of leaders, like business, relies more on voters’ calculation of relative probabilities than on trust. As even the smallest trader will tell you, there are no business deals over a handshake—you take calculated risks. Despite being an ardent, even though a late, supporter of Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential candidacy in April, the trade-off, what economists call opportunity cost, is already proving a high price to pay.
At the time, I believed that the urgency of a national democracy, amongst a number of other priorities, against the impune morass created by absolute power of the ruling oligarchy, was highest. Even though many Nigerians disagreed then and still do now, I believed our alternatives in the other contestants were much, much worse.
One must admit that the first lacklustre year of Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency did not inspire great expectations of his leadership but I believed that with the breakthrough of a democratic poll victory under his belt, Jonathan would shake his timid complex off and, as he himself promised, hit the ground running. Well, he has hit the ground all right but it seems he broke both legs in the process.
Only that could explain his less than crawling pace in dealing with extant issues as even the simple task of forming a cabinet, and emergent and more compelling issues as terror. I say more compelling because while the President has the prerogative to rule without a cabinet or with one full of thieves and incompetents, he has no right to serve up our lives to those who would kill us because we chose him (Jonathan) to be our President. Those who would kill us because we dare to exercise the same right they have, to worship whom we choose. Those who say we are stupid, even crazy, to allow our children to do compulsory national service in their communities.
If there has been any case of a Nigerian leader fiddling while the country burned, it is now. We have a president who is simply content to play political games and marking time, and judging by his telling body language of a second term, until the next (re)election campaign.
In the absence of a clear manifesto (admittedly, no political party in Nigeria has had one since 1979) of urgent tasks, President Goodluck Jonathan, true to his famous inadvertent nature, had his to-do list drawn up for him, albeit by terrorists and thieves. It is enough for a purposeful leader to roll his sleeves up and get cracking.
Instead, our President, with his now well-known inclination to business-as-usual, is engaging in another round of talk-shop panels, and committees, and empty grandstanding, horse-trading with disreputable politicians, while Nigerians are dying in their hundreds.
If his then tenuous hold on the Presidency contributed to the half-hearted manner with which he handled last year’s 1st of October bombers (believed to be Niger Deltans), there is no excuse for continuing that laid back response in the current bombing outrage. In fact, I dare to say that the practical letting-off of the Niger Delta bombers partly encouraged the current barbarity.
Officially, Boko Haram, a group of Moslem radicals, is held up as culprit but considering that the country recorded tremendous success against Islamic extremists in the past—Maitasine during the Shehu Shagari government and the Nigeria Taliban during Obasanjo’s presidency, for example—the truth must be somewhere beyond Boko Haram.
The Sultan of Sokoto, a highly credible leader and thoroughly progressive monarch, [on CNN] blames the terror on politicians capitalising on and employing religious elements. There are a number of usual and some likely suspects but apparently, our President simply lacks the pluck to go after them. The whole terror issue remains as clear as mud and it is growing worse by the day.
To be fair to the President on this terror issue, support from the ethnic nations of Nigeria has been scanty. This smug Gambari-killed-Fulani-who-cares attitude of southern leaders is not helping matters. Condemnation of the current bombings, from Igbo, Yoruba and other southern leaders is frequently mealy-mouthed and half-hearted, and centres mainly on the safety of their kith and kin living in the north. Who speaks for the dozens of innocent northerners killed daily in bomb incidents?
Talking about democratic progress, the message of Nigeria’s desire to break with the past could not have been clearer than the last elections but the President has so far refused to grab that mandate with both hands to strengthen the foundations. Instead, our President resorted to the usual narrow-minded ethnic sharing of positions, in the process resurrecting the zoning dragon that Nigerians already slew to make him President. In the final analysis ‘zoners’ of the Speakership to the south-west did not do the Yoruba any favours, as the seemingly preferred candidate of the party lost roundly. (To which you may add, considering the margin of the defeat, squarely and triangularly and what other shape takes your fancy)
The manner and outcome of that Speakership election nonetheless lend credence to accusation that the whole exercise was in the first place a cynical plot to deny the Yoruba the Speakership (zoning by exclusion), since Jonathan and his associates knew very well that such an order to legislators would provoke the predictable backlash it did. Contrary to the impression that acting Chairman Haliru Mohammed and Mr Fix It Anenih were in the house chamber on the day to ensure that PDP legislators vote for Mrs Akande-Adeola, their presence allegedly was actually to oversee Tambuwal’s victory. The immediate (some say pre-planned and orchestrated) visit of new Speaker Tambuwal and his deputy to the PDP secretariat, plus the swift ‘pardon’ granted them by the President and the hierarchy was, if not absurd, to that effect suspicious and do little to disprove the accusations.
Immediately after the elections, the President retired to the Obudu ranch, the press said, to rest and to put his ministerial team together. Our expectation that the President would come back with a cabinet ready and firing on all cylinders was roundly disappointed. Instead, the President is forever negotiating a dollar designated and weighted salary for a bureaucrat like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
National service involves sacrifice and only those that can make it are fit for purpose. I have never supported the idea that we need to scour the so-called diaspora for skilled individuals because I believe there are enough competent Nigerians within the country. If however we must, I would employ a hundred visionaries like Philip Emeagwali before touching one Okonjo-Iweala. I know Emeagwali has his critics (I am not one of them) but that is a topic for another time.
While the spirit of its objectives is set out in a government’s policies, the civil service is the machinery that ensures strict adherence to the letter. Organisations like the World Bank and IMF and others are, in that sense, the ultimate civil service. Even though many like Okonjo-Iweala are brilliant individuals, civil servants are not employed for their initiative. On the contrary, they swear to uphold and perpetuate bureaucracy. Having performed her briefs to the letter and to the sole benefit of her real employers, the last time around, it is not surprising the World Bank is eager to send Okonjo-Iweala back for a good topping on their cake. To think our President is even begging them for the ‘privilege’.
Interestingly, I cannot wait for the impending battle royal between Madam World Bank and our effective but rampaging Central Bank Governor who has so far managed to subordinate the ministries of Finance and Economic Planning and the offices of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, to his own.
When business turns bad, usually the trader cuts his losses and makes a run for it but Nigerians have no such luck because, with an elected President, we are stuck for four years. So, again and sooner than imagined, we have the task to make the best of a bad situation.
However, after much said but little done, I believe not all is lost. The President must start to run this term as if it is the only one possible. There is no place to hide, morally speaking. Aso Rock has its privileges but it carries enormous responsibilities too. As the Yoruba say, it is better not to ascend a throne than condone anarchy, saying the townspeople are uncontrollable.
People easily forget the performance of a security adviser, a finance minister or a central bank governor but they remember a good head of state or a bad one. The buck stops at the Presidency, not with overbearing party chieftains, or disgruntled political opponents. John F Kennedy, a progressive president if there was ever any, at a time had to tell his imperious father, “I am the one they elected President, not you!”
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