What in your opinion are the expectations of Nigerians from the President-elect as he takes over power by May 29?
I think it will be proper to begin by congratulating General Buhari for having become President-elect through dogged persistence, because I am still astonished at a General of his age repeatedly contesting for that office and not being deterred by the fact that he was losing consistently. So, he kept at it, like they say Abraham Lincoln did, and he is President-elect today. I say congratulations to him. I will not restrict the congratulations to General Buhari alone, but will expand it to include one of the most savvy politicians Nigeria has today, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who finally succeeded in creating a national opposition party. I don’t know how well wielded together it is, how sustainable it may be, but one thing we cannot write away is that Bola Tinubu has been able to put up a very formidable fight and put in a new President in Nigeria, and was able to win over nearly all the states that were opposed to the APC before.
Having said that, I think the greatest applause has to necessarily go to the man who many have described as the hero of democracy in Nigeria, but whom I want to modestly but in all sincerity acknowledge as the father of the new Nigeria, that is President Goodluck Jonathan. Had Jonathan not created and allowed for the expansion of an enabling environment for democracy to thrive via a free and level playing field; had he not subscribed to and encouraged freedom of information, freedom of discourse, freedom of association and freedom of protest on a level that we have never had in Nigeria, not even in the pre-military era; had he not been such a democrat that he was even seen to be subtly sympathetic to, in some cases, individuals that did not belong to his party (for example, in Edo, Anambra, Ondo); had he not created a new atmosphere of ‘come out and run’ and ‘come out and vote, and know that it is one man, one vote and each vote will be counted and each vote will count’; had he not enabled this terrain of democracy, even the best of Tinubu and Buhari would not have changed the ‘forever-winning’ pattern of the PDP nationwide. More than this, he so egregiously went ahead and allowed Nigeria to exist till this moment by congratulating Buhari, even though it is obvious that he has many reasons to doubt the veracity of some of Jega’s results, giving that the whole world is aware that, for example, there was mass underage voting and creation of illegal polling units (which even the National Assembly had ordered Jega not to establish, and he had agreed not to) in many states of the North.
We cannot now just wave away the portents of danger being about to engulf us, the reality that Nigeria may have been on the skids, about to break up, post-March 28, or that a civil war may have erupted by now. But by his (Jonathan) conceding, and conceding in time, and graciously also, and by his compelling his party (PDP) not to contest the outcome of the presidential election, he did not only create a first in Nigeria, but has gone into the annals of history as a leading selfless and patriotic African leader who cared more for his country than his personal ambition, remembering that we were in circumstances such as Nigeria was finding itself then, where the whole world, led by the United States, had even foretold our failure this year and were expecting it to start from the presidential election.
We must applaud him, for he consciously calculated everything, held back and has allowed peace to prevail, that is the first thing we have to recognise in President Jonathan. He has shown that he is a man greater than even the office of the President of Nigeria. Accept it or not, Jonathan has fathered a new opportunity for a new Nigeria to grow out of this mess we are currently in. This is a truism, it is a reality. The world has come out to acknowledge it. Whether all Nigerians, for partisan, ethnic or religious reasons recognise him as father of the new Nigeria, or not, posterity will applaud him still. We cannot stop the rising of the sun.
As to what we expect of the General when he assumes office, the first thing he has to do is let us learn to stop calling him ‘General’. He has to shed that toga of him being military, whether benevolent, autocratic or brutal. He has to become a truly democratic civilian President in the new Nigeria where peace, democracy, rule of law and respect for other people’s sensibility has to take control. We expect him, most of all, to focus on the restructuring of Nigeria. You will remember that the Yoruba’s Afenifere and a great deal of people supported President Jonathan not because they liked his face, not because they necessarily liked his politics, but because they like the fact that he committed to restructuring this nation as it is needed and necessary if it is to sustainably continue as a united, progressive Nigeria. One of the biggest platforms on which he now created this ethos of restructuring is the platform of the National Conference.
Many of us, who were supportive of the National Conference and its recommendations, have been calling for the implementation of the recommendations of the Conference. If all that General Buhari does is to implement the National Conference’s recommendations, the President-elect would be a hero.
But, he has already begun to win my heart by announcing that he will not nominate or appoint anybody into public office who has not sworn to declare his assets in Court, not just to the Code of Conduct Bureau. People should note the elements here: if you lie to the code of Conduct Bureau, you could be indicted and sanctioned, these are maybe’s. But if you swear to a falsehood in Court you are liable to be prosecuted for perjury.
What Buhari has therefore, said is that he would only use people who are ready for us (Nigerians) to shine searchlights on them to confirm that whatever they say in Court as concerning their past is true. I believe that means he may be serious about appointing only non-corrupt Nigerians into office. I don’t know how many non-corrupt politicians we have in the county, but then he has said that even his transition committee will be filled with technocrats, so maybe he is going to lead this country with technocrats, which could be a welcome development.
We must remember that one of President Jonathan’s major key-players, who also was a key-player under former President Obasanjo is Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a technocrat’s technocrat. Maybe, with more technocrats, we will have less corruption, maybe. All that remains to be seen, but it is a welcome development and we are going to hold General Buhari to this. If anybody he appoints or needs to be appointed cannot stand up to the full glare of public scrutiny, we are going to shout and shout very loud.
Let me sidetrack and repeat, I am not a member of any party. I was, and I am, a friend and supporter of President Goodluck Jonathan. But I am primarily a citizen of this nation that wants Nigeria to improve, and I have the pedigree to prove this beyond any reasonable doubt. Since we have all accepted the fact that the President-elect would take over on May 29, it follows that we all have to work with him to improve Nigeria. Therefore, I will be joining others to throw a very bright searchlight on him and his appointees, not for any partisan reasons, but mainly from the viewpoints of his own promises to Nigeria, through which, as Jega assures us, he convinced us that he is truly above board, patriotic and devoid of ultra-fundamentalisms, be they religious, ethnic, feudal or parochial, and that he is going to surround himself with people of the same calibre who are truly above board. I sincerely advise and recommend to him that he does not fail Nigerians in this respect. If we find him surrounding himself with corrupt, religiously-fundamental or ethnicised folk, he would have failed even before he began.
I applaud him on another issue, the fact that the General has said he would campaign vigorously to stop one the greatest abuses I have campaigned against for some time, the fact that governors sat down unilaterally and awarded themselves humongous retirement pension benefits, disregarding the fact that they have not been able, in most cases, to even pay minimum-wage-based salaries when and as due to the electorate of Nigeria. Now, that General Buhari has said he is going to work against those pensions and humongous benefits being collected by these politicians, many of whom performed far below average, is another very welcome development. We are going to support him in this, and increase the fight against the looting of the commonwealth of Nigeria through either institutionalised, pseudo-legitimate or irregular means, whether legal or illegal corruption.
Of course, very importantly, we will expect that General Buhari does one thing that everybody is expecting him to do as soon as he assumes office; he must end the terrorism and insurgency in the North East as soon as possible because that was the key promise of his campaign- ‘we will stop Boko Haram, we know how to stop Boko Haram and we know who Boko Haram is’. Yes, that is his pledge.
And, truly, since, we must admit, they have not attacked us so much since he won the election, I want to assume that once he ascends into power, Boko Haram will formally sign-out. But in reality, we know that BokoHaram has formally aligned itself with its cousins ISIS, we know that the Al-Shabab is increasing operations in East Africa, AQIM is expanding through North-Western Africa further south into Mali etc, Yemen is burning, Syria is exploding, so whether Boko Haram is going to die that kind of a natural death remains to be seen.
But, having had the opportunity to work with him politically in the past, I want to believe the General is man of his word. If he does not put Boko Haram out of business within the first 90 days of his being in office, Nigerians would be able to say to him very openly and frankly, ‘General, you lied to us’ because of his repeatedly assurance to us that he will be able to make Boko Haram stop immediately he becomes President.
I want to think, because he was chosen by Boko Haram as their public representative, he had already spoken with them and they had acceded, but, whichever way, all we are saying, Mr. President-Elect, is ‘Stop Boko Haram!’.
These are the imperative things General Buhari must do for us to within the first 100 days, to get us to welcome him and say that truly Jega’s Nigerians did not make a mistake; then we all will applaud him and say, ‘we chose a better leader by bringing in Buhari’, however, if Buhari does not do those key things, I do not know how today’s NIgerians and posterity will judge him.
