Agenda for PMB (I)
It’s legacy time for Buhari. When a leader has the good fortune of scaling the referendum hurdle of re-election, he must begin to think about entrenching an imperishable legacy. Having probably compensated all his close admirers during his first tenure, he must now start piling up the building blocks of an enduring bequest.
How history will remember Buhari will be determined by what he does in the next four years. His promise to work even harder during his second term makes it crucial that he does so in the right direction, otherwise we run the risk of making haste in the wrong direction.
Getting things right starts with assembling the right team. This time, the president has to achieve a delicate balance between reward for partymen and ensuring quality service delivery - not an easy task if you ask me. As we have seen repeatedly over the years, the issue of coordination frequently dogs the presidency, to the extent that, at times, inter-agency rivalry gives the impression that the operatives are working for different interests within the same government as the left hand dedicatedly pursues the exact opposite of what the right hand is doing.
To ensure a tight and focussed team, the president should appoint a senior operative whose sole duty will be to assist him in the daily nuts and bolts of governance. The Chief of Staff to the president should continue handling the daily administration of the president’s office while the National Security Adviser and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation continue in their current roles of overseeing national security and federal ministries respectively.
One of the key appointments of the new administration would be the Chief Economic Adviser who ought to be a technocrat - a doer with capacity to fashion out policies that would result in accelerated industrialisation, job creation and economic growth. He/she must also work with the National Planning minister to produce a 10-year National Development Plan which will outlast the administration and also ensure continuity of government’s policies and programmes. The Gowon administration which had the task of rebuilding Nigeria after the civil war would not have achieved the giant strides it made in infrastructural development without its national development plans.
Our hands-on Chief Economic Adviser should not just be an egg head who has his nose high up in microeconomic and macroeconomic clouds. He must be able to design a blueprint that permeates all levels of government, with ideas that would help state and local governments which are closer to the masses of the people. He should probably read my humble submissions in Daily Trust of October 31, 2016, with the title, “How Governments Create Unemployment”; or the piece of February 26, 2018, titled “Ease of Killing Business.”
The head of the finance ministry is crucial in the mix. A thoroughbred professional with existing contacts in the local and international circles, who also has a track record of verifiable achievements, will be required to manage the country’s financial policies and enforce needed fiscal discipline without fear or favour.
The impact already made in the anticorruption war must be sustained if Buhari is to record that as one of his lasting achievements. Perhaps thought should be given to separating the office of the chief executive of EFCC from that of the Chairman of the agency. Also, government may want to cast its net wider and give consideration to retired CPs, AIGs or DIGs with unblemished public service record. The practice of appointing only serving police officers often leads to - as we have seen over the years - rancour, petty jealousies and personalisation of public trust.
If I were President Buhari, I would bury, once and for all, the rancorous insinuations on social media that he could not work comfortably with a pan-Nigerian kitchen cabinet. Those who have worked closely with the president attest to his expansiveness of spirit but the president has to deliberately show that side of his persona to all Nigerians, including those who didn’t vote for him.
The way I look at electoral contestation is that a certain number of people did not vote for the eventual winner even though he must now superintend over their affairs. Going by the results released by INEC, at least 11,262,978 Nigerians preferred the opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar. This realisation doesn’t take anything away from the 15,191,847 who voted for Buhari. What true statesmanship demands now is that the president makes conscious efforts to woo those who didn’t vote for him because he is their president too.
The focus on effective governance, anti-corruption crusade (for which the African Union has already acknowledged PMB as a its poster-man), revamping the economy, fighting the anti-terror war and banditry with more vigour and generally ensuring greater security for Nigerians, ensuring that the ministries and MDAS live up to their billing - all these peter into nothingness without national cohesion, the attainment of which is dependent on the president leading us from the front.
The first task, then, as I did state on these pages last week, is to live up to the letters and spirit of the president’s acceptance speech following the announcement of his victory: “I will like to make a special appeal to my supporters not to gloat or humiliate the opposition. Victory is enough reward for your efforts … We have laid down the foundation and we are committed to seeing matters to the end. We will strive to strengthen our unity and inclusiveness so that no section or group will feel left behind or left out.”
So help him God!
(Continued next week)