Okenyi Kenechi
South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, seems to be in a haste. Few days after he was elected president, he drew up a list of cabinet members who would help him to steer his government in the right direction. He must be living in a fool’s paradise, being in a rush to create the impression that he is ready for the task of governance. I don’t know if anyone has told him or no one really has but it will do him a great deal of good to study the Buhari’s model. We call it go-slow. Go-slow, a brand of governing principle says that the slower the speed of government’s approach to national issues, the more effective government functions and more impactful such government becomes. In essence, if unemployment is ravaging your people – Go-slow. If insecurity is leading to multiple killings – Go-slow. If obnoxious economic policies are ensuring that the country develops in reverse – Go-slow.
Go-slow principle, a term normally used to describe heavy traffic situations is based on the theories of sleeping while things deteriorate. We have been there before and it left us battered and bruised, but we are also a nation that loves making lengthy excuses for her nonchalant leaders and so, things will only get worse and not better.
In 2015 when President Muhammadu Buhari first chanced on this country as a Democratically elected or selected president, many persons felt that it would spark-off a new way of doing things. It was a very wrong assumption that would turn out saddening. Based on his assumed integrity, people made excuses for the slow pace that the president employed. But it is now glaring, that it is violence against common sense to insert Buhari and integrity in the same sentence.
While the president was drooling as gullible Nigerians yielded to his con, Lackeys went to town, magnifying everything the present did not do, and thumbing them up as the swagger of a messiah. But his inability to draw up a cabinet; his lack of vision and zeal to govern and lead from the front as he promised during his campaigns ultimately had left stakeholders in a state of worry. And as a candidate who had contested severally, many believed that he had his blueprints on how he would steer the affairs of the country at hand. Wrong again. Instead, the president sat at the back of the presidential jet and flew all over the place. When he felt the need to speak, he blamed Nigerians for everything. When he was not blaming Nigerians, he blamed past leaders which he is anyway; blamed old age; blamed the National Assembly and blamed God.
It would soon dawn on Nigerians and the world at large that the president did not feel he owed anybody any responsibility but saw Nigerians as people who must work towards his own personal comfort. It equally became clear that the only corruption he fights is his alleged integrity which is the most corrupt property he owns.
While speaking in far way France on why he had not constituted a cabinet, he said that ministers were noisemakers as permanent secretaries did the job. When the outcry for a cabinet became too loud and deafening, he composed a list of jobbers who would steer the country into its first recession in over three decades. Not done with plaguing the country into the abyss of hopelessness and uncertainty, his former minister of finance, Kemi Adeosun, while speaking to journalists and exhibiting personalities of a spoilt brat, said that “recession is just a word”. However, that “word” led to the loss of over 20 million jobs in the first half of Buhari’s Presidency while thousands of companies pulled out of the country with the country coming last in virtually every index; one of which is the poverty capital of the world.
One does not in any way expect anything different from his second term. The process was equally flawed. The election was rigged and re-rigged in his favour with president turning everything on its head to protect his loot. That is why 12 days after he was sworn-in, there is no word as to who would work with him to dig the holes deeper.
He needs another six months to at least discover himself and perhaps, answer that question thrown at him during that NTA interview.
When asked by Adamu Sambo on May 27 who Muhammadu Buhari is, Muhammadu Buhari answered every question that were not asked but not who he truly is.
He failed to tell his interviewer that he was the man who claimed to have integrity but is just as corrupt and morally reprehensible as the politicians he loathes. He forgot to tell his interviewer that he is the man who promised to lead from the front but now leads from the back of Presidential jets.
He forgot to say he promised security but watched while the country became a killing field. He forgot to say he promised electricity but delivered darkness; promised 3 million jobs every year but forced 7 million to lose their jobs yearly.
He forgot he told lies about his integrity, took monies from even school children but ensured that their fathers lost their jobs.
He forgot to say “I am the man who promised affordable health care for all but delivered only for myself”
In six months time when he truly discovers who he truly is, it will guide his selection of new cabinet members.
