C. Don Adinuba
The impending May 29 installation 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, malam, chief and alhaji. Leadership is about service, and not titles.
Here is a set of steps which he 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 (ADC). 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