Major agenda for Buhari

After voting the All Progressives Congress (APC) into office on March 28, Nigerians will not be able to resist the urge to set agenda for the in-coming government of Muhammadu Buhari. There will indeed be dozens of items on the collective agenda, many of them argued vigorously and persuasively to make them rank high on the president-elect’s priorities. Given the mess made of the country in the past one decade and more, and especially in the past two or three years, everyone will be justified to focus on those critical areas of national life that have become a nightmare for the country. Gen Buhari himself has zeroed in on about four priorities: insecurity, economy/unemployment, corruption, and power. There is little doubt that if he accomplishes these priorities, he will be an instant hero.

A few analysts may go ahead to proffer ways and methods by which the new government could resolve the mess, and they will be right to feel concerned that while there may be a consensus on the problems, it is unlikely there will be a consensus on how best or how less painful the agreed goals can be achieved. In fact, as a columnist with this newspaper observed, in voting Gen Buhari, it is not clear whether the electorate knew what they were doing, or what to expect from him, or how far his abrasiveness could impinge or grate on their worldview, whether political or social. The scale of the mess is truly staggering, and everyone is waiting with bated breath to see which way the Buhari cat will jump.

The aroma of change wafts enticingly in the air, and everyone, not the least the president-elect himself and his All Progressives Congress (APC) party, is giddy with excitement over the dramatic political earthquake that occurred during the last polls. Gen Buhari knows that when he hunkers down to begin the massive work of regeneration and renewal, he will step on huge toes, and his popularity, which is sky-high at the moment, will take a tumble depending on how suavely the new ruling party and its leaders execute their goals.

Gen Buhari’s agenda are consistent and logical spinoffs from his party’s programmes and manifesto. The general in turn also acknowledges huge public expectations, a significant part of which is simple and moderately ambitious. And should president-elect meet these simple expectations, and in ways that neither provoke the poor to irritation and irrationality nor instigate the rich to exasperation and desperation, he will reinforce his image as the man for the times, solidify his party’s change mantra, and enrich and nurture democracy in Nigeria on a truly stupendous scale. However, if he and his party have their eyes on history, if they wish to make their achievements sustainable in the long term and hope that from their efforts world-class governance and democracy would emerge and develop great tap roots, they will have to soar beyond the atmosphere of ordinariness and predictability to the ethereal world of the idealistic and the philosophical. How successfully they manage this greater and more demanding objective will determine how high they climb in public esteem and the lasting impression they will make on Nigeria and the wider world.

Gen Buhari will be confronted with arguments on the need to moderate his ambition for the country on account of the low level of sophistication of Nigerians. They will tell him that if he accomplishes his three or four main goals, not only will the people be satisfied and reassured of a great future, he will be applauded for laying solid foundation for the growth, stability and future greatness of the country. This line of argument is sincere and plausible, and any president wary of the complexities of idealistic undertakings, such as this column is proffering, will yield to its persuasiveness. If Gen Buhari plays safe, as he seems inclined to do by limiting himself to the understandable and the uncomplicated, he will have done well, that is assuming he manages his safe goals successfully. But if he takes the deeper and more difficult road, that is, the obviously more complex, perhaps even philosophical and encompassing alternative, it will be assumed he understands its many nuances, and is capable of midwifing the dream, and summoning the courage and the discipline to stick with it against all odds.

This column therefore offers the president-elect this complex option as a non-binding alternative, for travelling that road requires both profundity and vision. It also must come from deep, intuitive conviction, eliciting great passion and commitment. That alternative road does not preclude Gen Buhari’s priority programmes; indeed, the complex option feeds on them. The priority programmes are the ammunition needed to channel the country’s energies to a lofty and philosophical end, far beyond the commonplace existentialism that traps many nations in either ordinariness, if they are yet to achieve greatness, or decay and decline, if they are already great. This lofty alternative road must inspire the president-elect to recognise that his priorities, which are also invariably our priorities, must be seen as means to an end.

It is not enough to achieve the set goals of fighting corruption, creating employment, and battling insecurity, among other things. These goals are laudable, but their full potentials will not be realised if they are not integrated right from the beginning into the visionary dynamics of developing a great and powerful nation, rivalling some of the best countries around sociologically, politically, technologically and economically. If that template or superstructure of a great and powerful country is not envisioned right from the beginning, it will mean that there will be no enduring and consistent frameworks for today’s and tomorrow’s leaders to apply as models for the task ahead. (Compare and contrast France and Italy after World War II). It will mean that present and future elections will be conducted merely routinely in consonance with the amorphous, conflicting and inconsequential yearnings of the electorate. It will mean tolerating rulers like former president Olusegun Obasanjo who lacked vision and depth, and others like President Jonathan to whom the ordinary art of governance proved inaccessible. It will reawaken the debate on what the purpose of government is, using the Singaporean and American models as examples. Finally, it will also mean that for a long time to come, Nigeria will be satisfied with rudimentary and existential objectives.

The APC and Gen Buhari have done well to articulate their redemptive programmes for the country, but it is not certain how high their ambition is, which great countries or empires serve as their role model, whether their ambitions have irredentist components, if not spatially, at least ideationally, whether all they aspire to is just to copy one country or the other, with all their limiting attributes, or whether in their study and understanding of empires and empire builders, from Pax Romana to Pax Brittanica and to Pax Americana, and from Julius and Augustus Caesar to Genghis Khan, they see themselves and the country it is their turn to lead as a future role model and pacesetter to other countries and peoples. This kind of ambition is not alien to modern Africa. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt dreamt far beyond the limitations and developing economies of their countries. While war cannot be discounted as an agent of change and expansion, and will still occur on a large scale in the future, the change agents of today are economic and ideational influences.

Gen Buhari and his party must determine where they want to locate themselves in the developmental and historical continuums. Hopefully, their ambition may be much more sublime and engaging than they have stated publicly. Let them, therefore, develop another richer position paper, other than their current blueprint, in which these deeper, inspiring goals are reconstructed as the superstructure on which the general and mundane yearnings of the people are to be realised. If the APC does not produce and execute something much deeper than they have publicly stated, and notwithstanding the fact that their opponent, the PDP, appears incapable of doing any better given their woeful 16 years performance, somebody or another party will rise and fill the yawning gap — if not now, then sometime later.