The Presidency: What Nigerians want

Two decades of democracy, Nigeria’s economy is involving generally at snail pace.

As the February 2019 elections approach: what do we want as Nigerians realistically, is it poverty or prosperity? Patriotism or fascism? People oriented policies or people disorientated policies? Whichever way we answered these questions will determine our electoral votes for the President, and the Presidency Nigerians want. The way we vote and for whom we voted will determine the collective dream and our aspirations for a future Nigeria.

The president Nigeria wants in the 21st century, with our political, economic and judiciary institutions in shambles, must imbibe the qualities for our passions, our struggles, our aspirations and for Nigeria that works. Our convictions in choosing the president that will preside over our nation from May 2019 must be from the heart. The electorates must understand their needs to understand the president that they want.

The next president must seek to advance a general political philosophy - one usually related, in one form or another, to a belief in the proper scope of the federal government. For us, philosophies that deals with issues such as fiscal federation, state police, devaluation of federal powers, local government autonomy, regional autonomy, land reforms, code of conduct, National Youth Service Corps, reclassification of indigenes and residency, immunity clause, election of a Federal Capital Territory Mayor, constitutional role for traditional rulers, and so many others must be the new norm.

Nigerians are hungry for a hero, one who fits the new age, a 21st century icon.

Sooner or later, they will find one. The question is whether he or she will be a demagogue or a democrat that can link their passions to their government.

A leader with an understanding of what he is about knows that he has two jobs, to move the national enterprise forward and to keep the people happy. He must find the tricks to reinforce the thrust for action with high morale and to make achievement a source of satisfaction. This is almost always a leadership albatross. This is why a leader in our peculiar presidency must formalize and impact a systemic division of labour.

We lean on the president for leadership in making the government work and in making us happy about our country. We elect a politician and we insist that he is also to be a king. He must be a man or woman who must do two things: first, bless us with inspiration as he goads us to action; second solution is alternation - the president is king for a while and then shifts to being politician at other times in a timely manner.

The people look to their president to satisfy at least three sets of needs. One is the need for assurance, they want to believe that their president is a good man and they want to be taken care of; they place ultimate responsibility for that on the president.

Two, people want a sense of progress and action, they want to know and feel that the president was taking effective actions, moving forward with some kind of program at least; they abhor and react strongly against “donothing” government, against a president who seems to be holding the office but not playing the role. There is such a feeling against the current presidency, led by Muhammad Buhari and this has led to questions on his political competence and drive amidst a general aura of respect and affection. The president is supposed to be a take charge man, a doer, a turner of the wheels, and a producer of progress.

Three, people want a sense of legitimacy from and in the presidency. He is expected to be a master politician who is above politics. The president is expected to personify our betterment in an inspiring way, to express in what he does and not just in what he says, a moral idealism, which in much of the public mind, is the very opposite of “politics.”

Within those realms of reassurance, action, legitimacy, at-least a sense of these encompass most of what Nigerians expect and want to feel about their President. They want a memory of the President as a man moving strong and straight towards a goal. They want and need to believe that the ordinary men they elevate to the Presidency, or might elevate are bearers of the torch and benevolent leaders. The task is for a man or a woman, a leader, who ought to keep us safely in his care, He ought to get the country moving. And he ought to inspire our higher selves with an example of principled goodness.

Nigerians need new promising, forward motion President, and leaders, with new vitality.

The President Nigerians want must understand the power to persuade.

The Nigerian National Assembly - the Senate and the House of Representatives combined are the dispenser of authority and funds, they are not less a part of the administrative process-Federalismaddsanother set of separated institutions and rights. The president must be knowledgeable in world politics.

The President we want must understand that the art of persuasion is a two way street. A president depends upon the men he would persuade; he has to reckon with his need or fear them. They too will possess status, or authority or both, else they will be of little use to him. Their vintage points confronts his own, their power tempers his. The power to persuade is the power to bargain. Status and authority yield bargaining advantages. But in a government of “separated institutions sharing powers bargaining power is yielded to all sides.

In legislative matters a president will often be unable to obtain action on his terms or even to halt action he opposes. The reverse is equally accepted. The National Assembly (NASS) often is frustrated by the President. Their formal powers are so intertwined that neither will accomplish very much, for very long, without the acquiescence of the other. What one demands, the other can resist.

This is also the case outside the formal structure of the federal government.

Power is persuasion and persuasion becomes bargaining. The concept is familiar to everyone who watches foreign policy, even within a single structure, the executive branch, where presidential word is law, or ought to be.

Yet we have seen that when a president seeks something from executive officials his persuasiveness is subject to the same sorts of limitations as in the case of legislators, or governors, or national committee men, or private citizens, or foreign government. The constitution gives the president the “takecare” clause and the appointive power. The statutes give him central budgeting and a degree of personnel control. All agency administrators are responsible to him. And they are also responsible to NASS, to their clients, to their staff, and to themselves.

For Nigeria to learn from the United State of America, we may need to analyse and review its democratic values as it navigated the steep waters of nationhood in the early twentieth century. To establish stable authority and a sense of national identity, leaders of the United States resisted efforts by “old states” to involve their young nation in their quarrels. They rejected their political and class structure as backward, but relates to their cultural and economic achievements as worthy of emulation. A path that Nigeria may have to follow.

The president that Nigerians want must pay special attention to values proclaimed in the America Declaration of Independence which prescribe social and political behaviour. That as a nation it is dedicated to equality and to liberty, to the fulfillment of its original political objectives.

The most important expectation from a president is to have a higher loyalty to the people. Finally, the presidency Nigeria wants must guard our heritage. We must reach a turning point.

Emmanuel Ogunsalu wrote this piece from Washington DC, USA