Article: Buhari/Osinbajo: Paradigms of good governance and competence

by SEUN LAWAL
As a Nigerian, I have found myself amazed by the
sheer hypocrisy of the Jonathan-led administration
with regard to the particular aspect of directly
impacting the lives of the citizens through poverty
alleviation policies and combating the seemingly
implacable scourge of corruption. Nigerians have had
to settle to the fate imposed upon them by the sheer
inadequacy unapologetically displayed by the
administration.
It is no longer shocking to hear of the disappearance
of billions of dollars from public funds supposedly held
in trust by the government on behalf of the people.
Government officials plunder the national treasury
without any fear of consequences to advance an
ostentatious and obscene lifestyle. Then the elections
draw near and, suddenly, the President remembers to
conquer corruption in four years using modern
technology. Was technology non-existent in the last
six years of the present administration? It does not
matter that the President has spent six years in office
and the avant-garde discovery of technology as a very
ingenious solution to the menace of corruption is to be
placed in the same league as Columbus’ discovery of
the Americas in the 14th Century. That is how creative
and innovative the President is. He should undoubtedly
take the credit for this unprecedented finding.
While the plundering goes on, the President looks the
other way. He sees nothing morally wrong in granting
state pardon to a convicted felon who was indicted for
brazen acts of stealing of public funds and
perpetration of other acts of corruption. A senatorial
slot in the Federal Legislature is certainly a worthy
reward for the commission of felonious activities. Mr.
President (if we are to borrow his unconventional
reference to himself in the third person) is comfortable
with letting members of his cabinet who were alleged
to have sustainably furthered brazen acts of corruption
off the hook. Allison-Madueke and Stella Odua’s
activities instantly come to mind. To the President, it
is crucial to clear his people’s ignorance by
unilaterally redefining, without recourse to legal and
moral persuasions, what constitutes corruption and
stealing and drawing the line of distinction which
curiously exists between the two crimes; only in the
President’s lexicon, none of the acts is worthy of any
penal sanctions. Nigerians are just too ignorant to see
it. After all, the fund Nwobodo was said to have stolen
was significantly lower than the price of a Peugeot
automobile. So, why should he be sent to jail at all?
Why, indeed, must any person for that matter be sent
to jail for corruption? That is how fertile the
President’s mind is.
Nigerians still reel from the shock of the commando-
style capture of the over 200 girls from their school in
Chibok, and are yet even more jolted by the
government’s unconcerned reaction to this tragedy of
epic proportions. The subsequent indoctrination of
these victims to carry out terrorist activities of their
own is some sort of collateral damage which, frankly,
does not come on the President’s list of priorities. On
an almost daily basis, we deal with the visual and
mental throes of the savagely brutalized and slain
bodies of our compatriots by reason of the lethal
impact of the Boko Haram sect whose activities have
claimed tens of thousands of innocent lives. Yet, the
President is unmoved by the sufferings of the very
people who gave him their mandate by voting for him
in the 2011 elections. Terrorism is a global
phenomenon and Nigerians must have their fair share
of the torture and curse of the plague. The agony
becomes easy to bear once the victims remember the
terror attacks in Rwanda, Syria, and Iraq. A quick
listen to the President’s 2013 interview with CNN’s
Amanpour contains the rudiments of this novel theory.
That is how calculated the President’s mind works.
Starting from the President, this administration is
made up of mostly coarse individuals—coarse not only
in manners and method, but in their sensitivities.
These are individuals for whom brute avarice was not
a last resort but a first, for whom pure self-interest is
the product, not of a distressed philosophy, but of
undisguised greed. These are people who have no
business in national service because, effectively, they
have diminished its principled and upstanding
credibility by their very existence in government. They
possess no real technical and intellectual qualities that
can be exploited for governance; any little skill they
have has been neutralized by a lack of any real
conscience, an abject failure to understand the
legitimate yearnings of the people.
So, where do we go from here? First, with the recent
political activities in the country particularly by reason
of the upcoming February 14 Presidential elections,
there is ample reason to believe that Nigerians have
seen through the shenanigans of this administration.
Those not in government are the most hit by the
government’s ineptitude and they suffer most from its
shabby economic policies that have done little or
nothing in transforming their lives. We are in the
moment of truth. We are no longer playing Who Wants
to Be a Millionaire. Now, we are playing Truth or
Consequences, the political reality of voting the right
individuals into government and the repercussions of
failing to do so.
And then, the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket comes in. The
excitement in the polity by the emergence of these two
right-minded, ethical, and incorruptible individuals as
the sorely needed change-brokers is almost palpable.
They have held themselves out as the paradigm of
virtuosity and good governance. They have created a
distinct and focused political identity different from the
ruling party’s. This is a huge political evolution for the
country, and the size of the hugeness is very large.
The electrifying significance of their candidacy has
been caught on by those who believe that it is time for
a fresh change, not the kind of unfulfilled change that
was promised in 2011, the change that is yet to come
after six years of untold economic and moral descent
into the abyss of executive ignominy.
General Buhari and Professor Osinbajo, S.A.N., need no
further validation. They are men tested and found
worthy of the people’s mandate. They are top-drawer
men. Buhari brooks no tolerance for indiscipline and
acts of sleaze, a quality sorely missing in the present
administration. Try as they may to smear his
reputation, Buhari is the picture child of military
professionalism, comportment, and authority. His
running mate, Professor Osinbajo is as smart as a
whip, adaptable, levelheaded and the best intellectual
marksman amongst his peers. He has demonstrated–
whether as a teacher of Law, or as an advocate in the
Courts of Law, or as the Attorney-General of the
centre of commerce and excellence, or as a
humanitarian and philanthropist, or as a Pastor, or as
a one-man roving ambassador, or as a peacemaker—
that his abilities live up to his reputation. I say this
because I have firsthand knowledge of him. Even the
most conspiracy minded skeptics have had to admit
that here is a man of brilliant intellectuality and proven
competence and integrity, a man with a near insatiable
thirst for justice. Have not these traits shown through
on the APC’s campaign trail? We have seen a man
with passion, eloquence, a sense of urgency:
articulating his visions for our country. In spite of his
soft-spoken and courteous demeanour, the forceful
nature of his leadership is easily recognizable. Buhari
and Osinbajo are two individuals who can carry out
some deep presidential-level policy re-evaluation of
Nigeria. They deserve a chance to show us what they
can do.
As they are wont to do, the ruling party embarks on a
campaign of calumny instead of focusing on the issues
that directly affect every citizen. They throw in a lot of
sludge hoping that some would stick. To them, the
person who can manage the affairs of government is
one who can summarily recite his mobile phone
number. There is absolutely no dramatic content and
human interest slant to their position. Their
protestations provide little reassurance to the masses
of Nigerians who have suffered long enough under the
burdens of a wicked government and who hope only to
see a better day. The electorate has now been able to
distinguish between low-hanging fruit and poisoned
bait because they can now discern the shallow quality
of the present administration’s political glossary. For
the initially unconvinced, skepticism melted as
examples of Buhari’s and Osinbajo’s examples of
integrity, competence, and forthrightness multiplied.
We are standing at the shore of history. It is important
that we confine the last six years of our experience as
a nation to the scrap heap of history. The ruling
party’s game is up. It is time to open a new page and
start afresh. It is time to stem the tide of ineptitude
and make a better life for ourselves and our children
and our children’s children. We are accustomed to
suffering, but we are not reconciled to it. It is time to
end the suffering altogether. Nigerians are a people
who need to know that their leaders have physical
courage, intestinal as well as intellectual fortitude to
chart the sails of governance to the greatest good for
all.
Jonathan is out of his depth. He is not on the same
page with Nigerians because we are not reading the
same book. There is no point pretending otherwise. It
is clear for all to see. Societal recriminations have
followed almost every government policies of the last
six years because those in leadership are devoid of
self-insight. It is a government of movement without
thought, of action without reflection. It is only when
this government is pushed out and replaced by the
Buhari/Osinbajo administration that Nigerians can truly
experience that lighter-than-fresh air feeling of political
and economic freedom which has eluded them for an
extended period of time.