May 22, 2015 : C. Don Adinuba
President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari
The
impending May 29 inauguration of Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s
president is not seen by most Nigerians as representing just a change of
government. It is rather considered an inauguration of a new social
order. Everyone remembers with nostalgia the values of order,
discipline, honesty, honour, trust and commitment to the common good
which Buhari made cardinal principles of state policy when he was the
military head of state between 1983 and 1985. Ever since he was
overthrown in a coup d’etat by a coterie of self-serving army officers,
Nigeria has become a quintessential low-trust society, to use the
expression of two eminent American social scientists, Edward Banfield
and Francis Fukuyama. In other words, Buhari is today the closest
approximation to a messiah in the imagination of most citizens,
particularly the downtrodden.
I have argued elsewhere that without the
right social values, the national economy cannot recover. Long before
Fukuyama published in 1997, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation
of Prosperity, Pius Okigbo, Africa’s most scintillating economist, had
declared during Ibrahim Babangida’s regime that the cause of Nigeria’s
debilitating development crisis was not economic but social. The reason
why the refineries are not working, with all the concomitant problems,
is social, and not the economic policy or programme. It is poor social
values like graft, nepotism and squander mania which led to the collapse
of Nigeria Airways and other state-owned enterprises. So, Buhari had
better get the values right from inception. Good enough that he has
indicated that he is still the good, patriotic leader we have always
known. He has spoken passionately against the culture of waste and
ostentation in public service. He has chosen to be known from May 29
simply as president, advising that he be spared such titles as General,
Mallam, Chief and Alhaji. Leadership is about service, and not titles.
Here is a set of steps which Buhari could
consider taking the moment he assumes office to demonstrate that he has
come to serve, and not to be served. Do away with the feudalistic
tradition of having a military or any security officer as an Aide de
Camp. Have you ever seen any American president, the commander in chief
of the world’s mightiest force, with a so-called ADC? Ever seen the
leader of any of the developed or truly emerging economies with an ADC?
Second, Buhari should end the practice of the State House chief protocol
officer, often a career diplomat, holding the chair at a meeting for
the President to sit down. Has any of us seen in pictures this
feudalistic practice associated with a modern leader?
The next step is the abolition of the
protocol of addressing each of our leaders as “His Excellency”. Maybe,
only the President and the Vice-President can be addressed as such only
in diplomatic circles like when they are addressing the United Nations
or in meetings with foreign diplomats. The new practice of addressing
every senator officially as “Distinguished Senator” or even just
“Distinguished” for short, is embarrassing. “Distinguished Senator” is
no title anywhere in the world, but used informally by the American
media to refer to eminently influential and knowledgeable people like
John McCain who have been in the Senate for several years. Embarrassing
also is the practice of referring to state governors and local
government chairmen as “Executive Governors” and “Executive Chairmen”.
Why do we address ministers as “Honourable Ministers” when they are not
elected legislators as in Britain?
Buhari should also consider the kinds of
vehicles which should serve as official cars. The Sport Utility Vehicles
like Innosons and Nissan which are assembled in the country should do.
From the later part of the 1970s to 1999, Peugeot was Nigeria’s official
car because it was assembled here. The assembly plant provided
thousands of jobs to Nigerian engineers, marketers, administrators,
communication practitioners, etc. But the firm is now a ghost of itself
because the government, its principal customer, ceased to patronise it.
When oil revenues spiked dramatically under the Peoples Democratic Party
administration, Peugeot was abandoned in favour of expensive Japanese
SUVs imported mostly by a handful of Indian traders. The presidential
fleet ballooned, and in no time state governments joined in the craze
for executive jets. Even a poor state like Taraba is not left out; its
governor almost lost his life when its own crashed. Needless to say,
private citizens began to compete with one another over the number, size
and make of jets they possess.
In his magnificent book, From The Third
World To First: the Story of Singapore Since 1965, Singaporean founding
prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, expressed shock at the sight of presidents
of African nations like Nigeria and Kenya arriving at the Commonwealth
Summit in Canada in 1980 with presidential jets which were parked at the
airport where they were accumulating high fees. Meanwhile, the British
prime minister came by British Caledonia commercial airline. Yet, the
rulers of the poor countries were asking leaders of rich countries with
no presidential planes for aid! To repeat the obvious, the British prime
minister has no presidential jets to this day. Yet, the United kingdom
manufactures the Fokker plane series and is deeply involved in the
production of Airbus planes; its globally famous engineering firm, Rolls
Royce, manufactures plane engines. Singapore has the most profitable
airline in the world, still its premier has no presidential plane to
this day. Frankly, ostentatious lifestyle at the expense of the poor in
our midst seems to be a cultural problem. The Pope, for instance, who
leads the world’s largest and wealthiest church, does not have even a
helicopter, but Nigerian evangelical pastors whose congregations are
composed of Frantz Fanon’s the wretched of the earth have private jets,
with someone a popular one having as many as four!
Nigerian state governors live large, to
the extent that they make Hollywood stars green with envy. They move in
long motorcades of state of the art SUVs, complete with sirens,
ceremonial outriders and large batteries of police and state security
officers as well as soldiers armed to the earth and looking like
intimidating beings straight from the Mars. Interestingly, the few
governors who are going down in history as leaders worthy of their
office like Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State and Donald Duke of Cross
River State are a breed apart, defined by the simplicity of their
lifestyle, a style shorn of showbiz razzmatazz.
The number of security officers assigned
to each high public officer has to be curtailed, so that there will be
enough to serve the public. The practice of assigning police orderlies
to permanent secretaries and chief executives of agencies who open doors
for the “big men and women” and carry their files is ridiculous. So
also is the new practice of providing policemen and even soldiers to
wealthy civilians ostensibly for protection but in reality for
self-aggrandisement. It should be stopped. The only exception should be
when there is a clear or likely threat to a person’s safety. Even so,
officers attached to such a person should be in mufti. Also to be banned
immediately is the use of sirens by unauthorised persons to intimidate
citizens.
All manner of people have since 1985
been awarded national honours. They include convicts like erstwhile
Inspector-General of Police, Tafa Balogun, and woefully failed public
officers like Abia State Governor Theodore Orji as well as controversial
businessmen like Arthur Eze. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo brought
the worth of the awards to an all-time low when he bestowed the
nation’s highest honours in 2007 on incoming President Umaru Yar’Adua
and incoming Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan in the hopes, as he put
it, that they would do well in office. The two recipients were soon to
become the butt of Obasanjo’s vitriolic criticism for ineptitude. Put
succinctly, all the honours bestowed since 1985 should be reviewed.
Those who should be rewarded are elements like Theresa Ugwu, the poor
cleaner at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos who recently
found a whopping N12m in the toilet and returned it to the owner. Others
who deserve national recognition are poorly paid traffic officers who
work from morning till very late in the night every day, under the rain
and scorching sun. Without them, movement in our cities will be
impossible. They are the authentic public servants, and not serving
(thieving) governors, ministers, chief executives of wealthy government
agencies and their ilk.
Buhari has his job cut out for him. He
must lead the nation to recover its values. Robert Duncan Clarke, the
South African economist and leading petroleum analyst, has in a recent
work called our attention to the compelling arguments of Robert
Calderisi, the veteran development economist and African development
expert, to the effect that the principal cause of the continent’s
economic woes which seem to defy all solutions is our propensity for
pomposity, pillage and brigandage. As someone who has over the years
watched government officials at close quarters, I can testify to the
validity of Calderisi’s assertion. Nigeria has gone too far in the wrong
direction. We need to be redirected.
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