In a few days’ time, President Muhammadu Buhari would have spent four full months in office. He recently marked his first 100 days without much ado. Many of the president’s critics noted that there was nothing substantial to define the president’s first 100 days in office. Perhaps they are right. For such critics, like many others who grumble in the background, they probably expect that all the plagues that have hounded us as a people in the last sixteen years would have been cleared with a magical deft.
They would have expected that thus far, all our broken and gully-filled roads would have worn a new look of nylon-tar road network while all the armed robbers and kidnappers raiding and raging in our various communities would have suddenly turned Born Again citizens, surrendering their evil tools of trade.
To such ones, the promised change has not been seen or noticed, especially as the mass of our youths yet remain without jobs and food and living has not got anything easier.
Nigerians are hungry for a change. It is therefore understandable that there is a creeping forlorn feeling as the infrastructure are yet poor, decrepit and even abandoned.
The reality is that Nigerians are not going to wake one morning and find that our streets have been magically transformed to look like the streets of American cities. No, it won’t happen so. It may not even happen in my life time.
But what is important to me is that we should be headed in the direction of such growth and development.
In a way, I have seen the ship of state being steered in the direction of transformation in the real sense of the word, not like the adumbrated type promised by the PDP-led government. I see the dawn of a national rebirth when I hear that many people who had stolen huge sums of money from the nation’s treasury, without prodding, are voluntarily returning such sums to the public till.
I see a national rebirth when I see government agencies even like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) really getting down to brass tacks in doing their job of hounding the crooks in our midst. I see the dawn of a new Nigeria when brazen acts of impunity are flying out of the window. It is a new dawn when civil servants take their jobs seriously and not devote their time to watching Tele Mundo or African Magic in offices and expect to be paid at the end of the month.
I see a new dawn when I read that the sum of N924 million which was fraudulently transferred to a private account by a certain accounts officer, Mr Adeolu Olugbenga Adeyanju has been recovered and returned to the Ministry of Environment which actually had the money. You can imagine all the projects and programmes the Ministry of Environment can execute with such an amount which had been “cornered” by the crooks in the system.
And yet another recovery by the ICPC of the sum of N56,211,086.23 food subsidy meant for some Federal Government Colleges in Ogun State. The money was recovered from a Federal Pay Officer in Abeokuta, one Mr Olusegun Lawal.
You can imagine how many such monies have been stolen unannounced in the past, and how such acts have collectively and persistently helped to under develop our nation. Yet those thieves have been the same ones the society has been celebrating as the icons and pillars of our communities.
I was at two launches this week—one a newspaper and the other a book (in Ibadan and Lagos respectively) and many of the donors refused to announce their donations. There is a new culture of caution in the air.
And as for those expecting that skyscrapers will suddenly grow out of the ground overnight and that our skylines will be coloured bright by the orient lighting of cherubic proportion, I declare that I see change when on the same Ijora bridge, Lagos, on which we spent hours unend few months ago, as we journeyed to work in Apapa everyday, I can now do 70km/h, without hitch or hinderance across the same bridge. What happened? Did the road get wider? No! Just order became the norm. How can we not celebrate that? Did residents of Apapa not almost all relocate because of the hellish traffic that plagued the people? Today, it is a huge relief. I see and applaud that change.
And those who argue on whether the improved electricity supply in the country is as a result of the “great reformation” work begun by the Jonathan administration or not, I note the declaration by Mr Igali, the Perm Sec of the Ministry of Power that since Buhari came into office, no pipeline has been vandalized, so gas supply has not been disrupted. Where did all the vandals suddenly go? They became Born Again? That is the attitudinal change I will rather see than skyscrapers germinating from the ground.
The multiplier effect of increased electricity supply to the economy is beyond contest.
Crabs and Cabinet
I am filled with anxiety over who and who will be in Mr President’s cabinet
Why are you worried? Are you expecting to be named?
Far from it. I am only being curious, given the fact that it had taken so long in coming. And from the fact that it is as if Mr President was either looking for human angels or human beings endorsed by angels in his cabinet.
Do you blame him? Don’t you know that many ministers are the cause of the failure of governments? Don’t you know many of them scheme to circumvent the very system they are appointed to protect and project.
That is not true. On the contrary, it is the civil servants who teach the ministers how to navigate the booby traps in the system to avoid being caught.
But they are the real people who do the work. Didn’t you hear Mr President saying that ministers are mere noise makers while the civil servants are the real guys?
Don’t mind Mr President. If what he said is to be taken seriously, why then is he devoting much time to search out noise makers? Does it require much virtue to be a noisemaker?
Look, let me tell you that in composing his cabinet, he will make shocking mistakes. In four months, he has heard all kinds of things from all kinds of people. The passage of time has helped to confuse him. He is likely to end up with lemons instead of lemonades.
What are you implying? That some of the persons whose names have been bandied are not the ministerial messiahs?
You said so.
Truth is that many of the people long touted as being sure of making the cabinet will be jolted. I can tell you there has been a forensic check on almost all the names and personages that have been touted. Only few have passed the litmus test. Many are called, few are chosen.
I am telling you that there are no virgins in maternity wards. If President Buhari is expecting to appoint an all-saints cabinet, he will soon find that he is grossly mistaken. Truth again, is that many of those who know they cannot make it have gone ahead to embark on “crabology” just to make others unappointable
Crabology? What’s that?
It is literally the study of crabs: how they lock-on to one another which forestalls their ability to make progress. They hold on to one another in a way that they will neither go nor their neighbour. That is crabology. Politicians do a lot of it. They undercut themselves. That is why they say politics is a dirty game but played by the elite.
Don’t worry, only a mindless person stays so long at the bus stop and ends up with the wrong bus. President Buhari has waited long enough to search for trusted, capable and loyal Nigerians to assist him in running the government. I do not believe you that he will end up with tons of political liabilities as ministers. After the long grill, only the fittest will be fit enough to come on board.
Buhari is not a fool. He understands how politicians are. He remembers how they generated issue of his certificate or no certificate, his authoritarianism, the mud slinging that came with his election…. He knows politicians. He can discern mischief when he sees one. He will not be tossed about by the antics of politicians. All I am telling you is that crabs or no crabs, Buhari will come forth with a set of 3D ministers. And they will rescue Nigeria from the cesspit of underdevelopment.
Well, let us wait and see. Perhaps by next week, the much hidden list will be made known. And whichever way he goes, it will create a problem for him. He is basically a politician. If he fails to make political concessions, he will be losing political territories as fast as Boko Haram members lose Sambisa Forest.
I am saying that there must be a fair balance of the good, the bad and even the ugly in the cabinet. That way, he can secure his political platform and future.
God forbid that the bad and the ugly should make the cabinet. Then what is the Change mantra all about? It is that same base argument that has helped to keep us where we are as a nation. There must be a radical departure from the old ways. That is only when Change will make meaning. We need neither the bad nor the ugly. Only the good and the best guys should feature. We have stayed too long in the darkroom, a mere aperture of light will not illuminate our world. We need brilliant wild lights. It is that straight. As straight as six O’clock. No more, no less.
No problem, you can ignore my advice at your own peril. By 2019, you will come to a sad denoument when these angelic persons cannot even convince their next door neighbours to vote for you. At that time your fall back to the demonized crew of bad and ugly folks will be too late to save a sinking ship.
Let us concern ourselves with the priorities and demands of today before plotting the graphs of 2019. What is done well and correctly now will pave the way for 2019. My friend, we must learn to live one day at a time.
Thanks for you homilies. It is clerics and the meek who live one day at a time, not politicians.
I don’t want to argue with you. Let us all go back to pray for Nigeria. A great Nigeria. A Nigeria where those elected or appointed serve with the fear of God and the concern of mankind. That’s all we need.
Do the Governors Need the Whip?
I am rather shocked that there is a huge effort being made by concerned Federal Government agencies to ensure that the bail out funds given to state governments to enable them pay civil servants’ salaries are not diverted. How can a responsible governor who ordinarily could not pay workers’ salaries and was helped out of the mess by the federal government, turn around and divert such funds again? Can such a governor be considered serious?
What could be of a greater priority to a state government than paying its workforce? Out of sheer mismanagement of funds plus the larger issues of economic downturn (caused by low crude oil prices in the international market), many of the state governments owed or inherited debts as much as seven or more months’ salaries. To reflate the economy, the federal government gives long-tern loans to states to enable them pay the backlog of salaries.
Yet, they turn around to divert same? Do the governors need to be whipped like errant school children for them to do the needful? It is even more worrisome that the House of Assembly of such state governments will either watch helplessly like robots and see the governors waste the loans again or even partake in the pillaging of borrowed money. Sad!
This article was originally published on Thisday.