Lessons from Late President Harry Truman

Taking responsibility is still a big issue with President Muhammadu Buhari. He is obstinately shifting blame for all the failings of his administration. Those around our President should encourage him to read about the life and times of the late President Harry Truman of the United States. Truman, who served as the 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953), had a sign with the inscription, “The Buck Stops Here” on his desk in the White House. This was meant to indicate that he would not pass the buck to anyone else but accepted personal responsibility for the way the country was governed. The phrase further refers to the notion that the President has to take the decisions and accept the ultimate responsibility for those decisions. Throughout his tenure, responsibility was never passed beyond Truman’s office. He was persistently plain-speaking.

Truman assumed the Presidency during the waning months of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. One of the deadliest decisions Truman took was approving the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japanese cities, which effectively ended the 2nd World War. Despite the horrendous death of at least 129,000 people, most of whom were civilians, Truman took responsibility for the action. It remains the only use of nuclear weapons in the history of warfare. Our dear Buhari also needs to read about how Truman effectively implemented a Marshall Plan that resulted in the rebuilding of the economy of Western Europe after the 2nd World War 2. This is the meaning of taking responsibility.

Unfortunately, our President is still into buck passing, almost three years after emerging as leader. Buhari has spent almost his entire tenure blaming his predecessors and saboteurs for the flaws in government. In his New Year speech, he blamed saboteurs for the stinging petrol scarcity across the nation. I was so depressed. His business is to fix the problem with all his executive powers and not telling Nigerians Mungo Park stories. If there are indeed saboteurs, Buhari has all the constitutional powers to crush them. At his level, it does not make sense shifting blame to marketers.

Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, was apt when he called on the Buhari admin- istration to end the current fuel scarcity in the country rather than buying time and passing the blame. In his statement titled, “Blame passing: The New Year Gift to a Nation,” the playwright recalled that before the current fuel crisis, other challenges, requiring an immediate fix, had begun to monopolise national attention, relegating to the sidelines the outcry for a fundamental and holistic approach to the wearisome cycle of trauma.

Buhari has clearly failed to actualise virtually all the promises his administration made to Nigerians. Refineries are not working 100% as promised, new ones have not been built, petrol price did not come down, rather, Nigerians are paying an unprecedented price for this product. His school feeding programme never took off in the real sense of it; three million jobs have not been created as promised, instead, about 10 million Nigerians have lost their jobs in the last 31 months. Buhari has failed to crush Boko Haram within three months; he has failed to provide uninterrupted electricity supply while the N5000 stipend to 25 million unemployed youths did not commence. His war against corruption is a jaundiced one, while the majority of Nigerians wallow in hunger, disease and poverty. Herdsmen, armed robbers and kidnappers are still killing and maiming with impunity across our nation. So, our President has to take responsibility and take practical steps to reduce the suffering in Nigeria. He must take responsibility for these failings and be courageous enough to rejig his cabinet, which is dominated by dead woods. One of such dead woods is junior Minister for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu. I watched him on television on Thursday, as usual, lamenting about the poor state of our refineries. That’s what he has been doing for almost three years without taking any concrete step to remedy the situation. Kachikwu has no business staying a day longer in this government.

Two other documents I really want Buhari to spend quality time reading meticulously are the New Year messages of the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria. These messages aptly capture the situation in our dear nation. I doubt if those around the President would allow him to see the newspapers that published them. I have spent quality time reading the messages and these are my takeaway. First, the NLC noted that the All Progressives Congress government ruined Nigerians and pushed more workers into poverty and wretchedness in 2017.

It stated that the deplorable economic conditions in 2017 were captured by the statistics recently released by NBS, which indicated that over four million Nigerians lost their jobs in the first nine months of 2017 alone.

The NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, said: “The APC government has failed to fulfill its promise of creating three million jobs annually. It has chastised and ruined Nigerians through its policies. Rather than working to create jobs and improving the conditions of workers/Nigerians in general, leading elements in the ruling APC government, like Governor Nasir el-Rufai have been taking measures to further chastise and ruin Nigerians by throwing tens of thousands of workers into the already saturated unemployment market and wretchedness.

“For us in the Congress and for the majority of working people in Nigeria, the hope placed on the capacity of President Buhari to bring about positive change is being undermined by his government’s inability to address the infrastructural deficit and other related problems in the oil industry, such as making our existing refineries work at optimal capacity by refining products for domestic consumption.”

The TUC President, Bobboi Kaigama, and Secretary-General, Musa-Lawal Ozigi, added: “The TUC states here unequivocally, that workers have not only lost their jobs in millions but many even committed suicide when they could no longer fend for their families. Families die on our roads, yet, they tell us our roads are not as bad as some Nigerians claim.”

Buhari, with all manner of Executive powers residing in his office, the buck should stop on his desk. This New Year, he must learn to take responsibility for all the failings of his administration and take pragmatic action to alleviate the sufferings of Nigerians.