As President Muhammadu Buhari marks
his first 100 days in office, we note with
joy the positive atmosphere that has
enveloped the nation and the renewed
hope and optimism it has engendered
among Nigerians that ‘change’ has
indeed come and that we have begun the
journey to achieving our deferred dream
of making Nigeria a great country.
Since
after Nigeria’s independence in 1960,
never has there been such a groundswell
of optimism in our collective ability to
resurrect the ‘crippled and sleeping
giant’ of a nation and begin to position it
to achieve its manifest destiny of being
the voice of and leading Africa and the
black world.
Right from the day of his swearing-in,
President Buhari made it clear that this
would be a new beginning for the
country and that he would wage a
relentless war against insecurity,
corruption and impunity. True to his
words, he set about almost immediately
on a shuttle diplomacy to rally Nigeria’s
neighbours to act in concert to defeat the
Boko Haram insurgents that had been
terrorising the country and, recently,
neighbouring countries. He visited Chad,
Niger, and Cameroon, and hosted a
summit on the Lake Chad Basin
Commission. These visits achieved the
important aim of starting and deploying
the Multi National Joint Task Force
(MNJTF) with headquarters in
N’Djamena, Chad, to comprehensively
tackle the Boko Haram menace. Between
these, he also travelled to Germany,
South Africa, the United Kingdom, and
the United States – all aimed at winning
key supports, assistance and friends for
the country in the fight against
insurgency.
Expectedly, the president wasted no time
in sounding the battle cry in the war
against corruption and impunity, which
many Nigerians have identified as
among the main reasons for our national
malaise. Through his body language and
some concrete steps taken, like the
change of guards at the NNPC and other
institutions, the president indicated
clearly that it would no longer be
business as usual and that his
administration would vigorously pursue
and prosecute corrupt and erring
officials. He has been particularly
successful in building a national
consensus against, and intolerance of,
corruption and impunity encompassing
the media, civil society groups and the
general public. He is also determined to
see to the recovery of looted funds
stashed in foreign accounts/countries by
corrupt government officials and has
sought the help of the international
community, particularly the United
States and United Kingdom, to achieve
this.
However, we are constrained to point
out that despite the groundswell of
support for the war on corruption and
the posturing of the administration in
this area, no one has as yet been charged
to court for corruption. What appears to
be happening is a carefully orchestrated
campaign of calumny, terror, and media
trial that may not conform to the rule of
law.
For instance, there was a media blitz
against the former National Security
Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, to the
effect that he purchased fake military
hardware and could not account for a
large cache of funds meant for the
purchase of military equipment. This led
to a commando-like storming of his
house in Abuja and his father’s house in
Sokoto by the Department of State
Security with all the drama that went
with it. To our utmost shock, when he
was charged to court, he was only
charged over offences relating to
possession of firearms without licence
and not the corruption/mismanagement
the administration had earlier touted.
This is a dangerous signal. Government
must stop the smear campaign and
media trials on citizens and take its
cases to the courts if there is evidence of
corruption on anyone.
Again, even after several denials, and
despite our best efforts to ignore the
trend, the president’s appointments thus
far have shown a tendency towards
provincialism, and this is already
generating tension among Nigerians, on
social media and elsewhere. We are
strictly in favour of merit-based
appointments as sine qua non for the
country to move forward. However, we
urge the president to take into account
the fragile nature of Nigeria’s unity and
extend his searchlight to other sections
of the country as he seeks to appoint
only highly qualified people of good
repute and integrity.
It can bear stressing that President
Buhari is not the president of Northern
Nigeria alone and must not allow himself
to be seen as such. We recall the
resounding line in his inaugural speech:
“I belong to everybody and I belong to
nobody”. We, therefore, urge the
president to live up to the letter and
spirit of those words and not fritter the
goodwill that came with his elections and
the early days of his administration.
Understandably, many people in his
party are now angry and embarrassed at
what they termed his unilateral and
sectional appointments and actions. As
one of the president’s backers recently
commented on social media, “A
president who ran for election on the
mantra of change can’t continue the
tradition of invidiously clannish
appointments and expect to continue to
enjoy national goodwill.”
All said, we agree with Gregory
Kronsten, an analyst, that “the president
has been very active in the three months
since the handover on 29 May”. Even
though he has not appointed his
ministers, he has, however, “wielded the
axe at leading public agencies and
indicated policy preferences for a
number of industries such as textiles and
aviation”.
Going forward, we urge the president to
seize the opportunity of the moment to
build a national consensus and unite the
entire country around the quest for
growth and development. The clock is
ticking.
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