Over the past few days since President Muhamnadu Buhari delivered the 60th Independence Anniversary broadcast, high-octaned reactions continue to trail the President’s speech, the facts and the lies. Nations do experience challenges, no doubt. And at a time such as Nigeria faces currently, the citizens look up to their leader, their president to give them hope and inspiration. Speeches at such auspicious occasion lift the spirit for a better tomorrow. For example, the excitement and optimism that Americans felt during late Jack Kennedy’s presidency was rooted in his inaugural speech, written by Ted Sorenson.
It thrilled them to the core. “Let the word go forth from this time and place”, Kennedy began, “to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace… Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty”. And then came the famous lines:” Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”. And I add, but your country be kind to you.
Sixty years after, that speech remains one of the most stirring and eloquent political speeches by any American President. Accepted PMB is no JFK. He doesn’t have the aura, or the oratorical skill. His speechwriters have not helped much either. A good speech must capture the mood and concerns of the people. It must not alienate or fudge facts or outright lies . The truth is that, nobody needs to tell anybody any longer what to like or dislike about Buhari presidency.
Our collective worry should better be seen, not from the adversarial angle, but in the fact that there’s always something in government that pulls people into it, or away from it. To be fair, Buhari was right when he said that, “sixty years of nationhood provides an opportunity to ask ourselves questions on the extent to which we have sustained the aspirations of our founding fathers: where did we do the right things. Are we on course? If not, where did we stray and how can we remedy or retrace our steps”.
That brings us to the vital question: What’s wrong with our present political leadership? Founding fathers of modern Nigeria long gone will be wetting their graves with tears of lamentation if it were possible for them to see how their fatherland has been disappointed by the performance of the current leadership at all levels of governance. Sadly, since the present democratic dispensation, to a large extent, all the presidents have been a textbook of failure. For the present government, the biggest problem that I see is trust deficit. Trust, as late American President Gerald R. Ford, said in his memoir: A TIME To HEAL, “is not having to guess what a candidate means. Trust is levelling with the people…Trust is not being all things to all people but being the same thing to all people. Trust is not cleverly shading words so that each separate audience can hear what it wants to hear but saying plainly and simply what you mean – and meaning what you say”.
It troubles the mind the lie told to Nigerians in the President’s speech , that “it makes no sense for fuel to be cheaper in Nigeria than in Saudi Arabia”, the world’s biggest oil producer. Where is the comparison? In Saudi Arabia, minimum wage is N305,113. It’s N30,000 in Nigeria and less than seven states have accepted to implement it. Half of Saudi citizens receive welfare payments. Only recently, the government of Saudi Arabia paid a hefty $533 million in the first monthly installment of a new welfare system to help low and middle-income families cope with austerity measures planned for next year. Half of the 10.6 million families targeted have already received a maximum of 938 riyad ( about $250 monthly). The minimum payment is 300 riyad($80, according to the Minister of Labour and Social Development, Ali al-Ghafern.
The point here is that trust is critical. It must be earned. It’s so because the President is not just the symbol of democracy, he’s also the spirit of leadership that inspires the people to meet their aspirations. A leader’s authority, it must be said, comes from the public belief of the leaders’ right and ability to govern. The verdict on the present leadership of the country is that of woeful performance. Why is this dismal record of performance? The answer is not farfetched. Many of them literally were ‘forced’ into the office and foisted on the people. They were not prepared for the tasks that leadership at the highest level required.
They had no vision that can carry the country beyond tomorrow. The result is that many of our political leaders came to the office ill-equipped and not fully prepared to face the rigours that the office requires, when politics demands that that those who occupy high office should define themselves and where they stand on issues that matter to the people. For a brief moment, look back from independence till today: was Shehu Shagari prepared to be President? Wasn’t Olusegun Obasanjo ‘forced’ to contest to placate the Southwest over the annulment of June 12, 1993 Presidential election, widely believed to have been won by MKO Abiola? How did Umaru Yar’Adua become President, or even his successor, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan? Can you now see a common denominator in all of them? That’s why Bishop Matthew Kukah called them “accidental leaders”. As Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Citadel Global Church said, there would be no progress when mediocres are in charge.
Again, that’s why many of the Presidents we have had since this democratic dispensation have faultered and inevitably, ran aground in the presidency. It’s because very often, they confused their own egos with the collective destiny of our country. Therefore, the pain of how we came to this sorry state won’t be a surprise to any keen follower of Nigerian politics and leadership problem. The central message is this: Nigeria needs leaders who have the nous and capabilities of addressing our challenges, especially in this period of unprecedented uncertainties. The lack of that transference leadership is the price we are paying now.
In politics, there’s no point in embracing a vision if that vision is not in sync with the needs of the people and the country. Ideally, every president can only infuse democracy with a new intensity of participation if he shows competence in the issues that call for his attention. Competence is perhaps the most important virtue that fills a leader with a genuine self-confidence. Leadership is always about people. We are yet to have that kind of political leaders. That, it seems, is what we have in Nigeria today.
Taken together, the pain of how we came this far, 60 years of nationhood does indeed trouble the mind. It’s a curious state of affairs in our politics that must be changed. We should not wait until Nigerians start fighting themselves on the streets.