The absence of a parliament, embroiled in a long conflict of succession, has given the president an unprecedented executive power unchecked by parliament. It is four months of the imperator – that is the position Buhari has assumed – in combining military, administrative, and in large part, parliamentary duties under presidential powers.
Nigerians hope that as the National Assembly finally resolves its conflicts and returns to the business of law-making, that this temporary absolutism will be contained, and the democratic order re-established. I frankly suspect that this president, with a background in military governance, knew no other way to govern, but by the command-and-control means; a government of quick and dissoluble task forces, rather than of long-standing, deliberative committees that, by their very nature take their time on the fine details of procedure and rules of conduct, in accord, of course, with the law.
The president has taken all of four months to orient himself; feel the high of absolute control, and prepare himself for the more deliberate rule of governance, anchored on process and accountability. The president has argued for time in planning and appointing his cabinet. “I should not be rushed” – he pleaded with Nigerians.
He has pledged to seek out and appoint only “honest and capable Nigerians.” A Tribune story three weeks ago, and I suspect this to be bush-whacking journalism on behalf of the president, claimed that Buhari had reconsidered the appointment of ministers because those whom he and his party, the APC originally penciled down for appointment and confirmation, failed to live up to their worth, in the background checks.
Well, the president must be told this: maybe he is looking in the wrong places, but a nation cannot produce a humanity different from the moral climate of an age. This is the Darwinist stage of Nigerian history – which produces the condition that the Igbo called, ike-kete-orie – the survival of the fittest. Given the distortion in the macro-cultural reality of this nation; the lack of a sense of national belonging, only less than one per cent of people in Nigeria currently believe in Nigeria as a historical imperative; as the anchor of their being.
There is no nation, only a vast prison-yard of poverty, disease, and social injustice. Without economic and social justice, this nation is doomed, and will be subverted by Nigerians themselves. This is what the president must bear in mind: that he can no longer find Nigerians. He is likely to find Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Berom, Fulani, Ijo, Ibibio, Gwari, Igala, Kanuri, and so forth.
A new dimension has also been added to this fragmentation of nation – the religious dimension: two broad alien religions bent on the conquest of the Nigerian soul have grown fangs and sowed the militant spirit among its Nigerian adherents: the age of serene and private adherence to religion, with its need for toleration under a secular order is gone from Nigeria. The president’s demand, just last week, for the inclusion and deepening of Islamic Studies in Federal Government Colleges, is a throwback to this contradiction.
As far as many Nigerians see it, we have two religious fundamentalists in office as President and Vice-President, and the battle of the future will be staged on these two lines – the battle of values between the West (Christianity) and the East (Islam). In such a situation, with its secular moorings slipped, the president is unlikely to find any NIGERIAN untainted by self, partisan, or group consideration. We labour now under three fundamentalisms: the fundamentalism of the self; ethnic fundamentalism, and religious fundamentalism.
That age of nationalism and nationalist renaissance is gone with the generation that grew up when Nnamdi Azikiwe was whipping up a pan-Nigerian nationalist philosophy dying out. Azikiwe’s vision was ultimately defeated by the skeptical and cynical forces who felt that he was far too much of an idealist to imagine the coherence, into a single national purpose, of the fragments of nations that were forcefully amalgamated to construct Nigeria.
Where Azikiwe preached political inclusion and strategic integration, his political opponents preached exclusion based on historic difference. The defeat of the Zikist vision of nation was the ultimate Nigerian tragedy; in its place have triumphed the Awoist and Sarduana models of Nigeria, in which “the North is for the North, and the West is for the West, and Nigeria for all of us.” These are the people we celebrate today for their “sagely” vision that basically argued that a single, organic national space is impossible and must be fought. This belief in the “ethnos” is the powerful drive against coherence; and against the emergence of Nigeria. Nigeria of course deserves its heroes. For many years, the Igbo modelled the dream of a pan-Nigerian nationalist identity; the possibility of an organic Nigerian state.
They dispersed in this belief to all corners of this nation, willing to be nothing else but Nigerian: they made the railways run; they made the civil service function; created institutions; men like Kenneth Dike ran universities at global standards; created the Nigerian National Museum of Antiquities; the National Archives; the National Institute of Social Research; the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture; the National Institute of International Affairs; etc. But in 1966/67, the Igbo were forced out of Nigeria, and when it became clear as Gowon only recently confessed that “Nigeria was better with the Igbo as part,” Nigeria fought a war to bring back the Igbo. The Igbo were forced back, not as equal partners, but as a defeated part of Nigeria which must only be tolerated, but whose political and economic rights remain severely abridged since 1970. As a result, a high number of the Igbo continue to dream of a separate nation of Biafra.
The Igbo are still to return spiritually to Nigeria. Over the years, many Igbo have bought into the ideology that Nigeria is no longer worth their time; that it is a “contraption;” a “mere geographical expression,” a “mistake of 1914.” The Igbo have created a myth of Biafra and handed it to their children, and just like the Jews mythologized Jerusalem, only a return to Biafra, will mark their ultimate triumph and liberty. It is only in this “New Jerusalem” called Biafra that they would unleash what they see as their talents, of which in some estimation, Nigeria is undeserving. This is of course a highly romantic vision, of which I too as an Igbo occasionally indulge, only because, there is a certain power to dreaming about historical purpose. It is the absence of “the dream” and clarity of a historical purpose; a fundamental myth of nation; that makes Nigeria fragile and impossible, and of very little worth to the imagination.
The reason why modern Nigerian art – its poetry, its fiction, its drama, its visual arts, and even its music – is fixed within a tragic sensibility is fundamentally because there is no redemptive myth of nation. While Azikiwe gave us that from 1937-1957, the result of which is the aesthetic and moral force that drove Nigeria’s early vision of itself as the “giant of Africa,” or as “the new black hope,” this age, with its recondite and separatist will; its religious fanaticism; its sectarian and ethnic impulsions, think of itself in the measure of teaspoons. Its mind is inferior. President Buhari has yet to grasp the imperative of this history, because he is fixed to the past of Nigeria’s most tragic moment.
For a new nation to arise, he must offer himself as sacrifice – he must be like Zik: large and above the fray. He must seek to bring together and heal. He must drive a new generation towards self-redemption; towards believing again in a historical national purpose; he must look towards the youth for the new foundation of this new nation because any Nigerian above the age of 35 is tainted.
As Zik preached, the youth of Africa are those on whose shoulders rests, the future. Buhari must appoint his ministers from people in that age. President Buhari must give this younger generation purpose, but above all, the task to rebuild this nation in their own interest. All over the world, their peers are steering the ships of state, and redefining the world in the powerful image of their time.
The president must seek young, fresh, creative, driven, and sophisticated Nigerians from across the world, to join their peers, in shaping this new Nigeria that President Buhari has promised this nation, and for which he has taken four months contemplating.
There are such Nigerians, and I can name at least three at my fingertip: Last year, I called up Dr. Chudozie Okongwu, Senior Vice-President at NERA Consulting in New York, to roll up his sleeves, get off his metropolitan bum, and join national service. We had planned to meet for lunch in London and talk, but eventually, both our schedules did not permit it. Chudozie, whose father, Dr. Chu S.P. Okongwu was once Nigeria’s Minister of the Treasury, is a chip off the old block; a brilliant Economist trained at the famous MIT and with a PhD in Economics from Berkley; there is Dr. Alvan Azinna Ikoku III, who studied Medicine, and is an MD from the Harvard Medical School and also has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Columbia, and is currently Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford; Chinedu Echeruo, after Kings College, Lagos, studied Finance and Accounting at Syracuse, where his father, the famous scholar and poet, Professor MJC Echeruo had been a Professor. He later earned the MBA from Harvard.
Chinedu is a young entrepreneur whose Apps was reportedly bought for $1 billion dollars by Apple. These are the future of Nigeria. There are such young men and women from across Nigeria and the Nigerian diaspora. President Buhari has an abundance of such young and driven men and women – who would bring a new spirit; a new face of innovation to public service. The president’s search committee must get creative.
But it is also possible to appoint the right men and women, and still deliver duds at the end of his administration on account of a decayed and corrupt civil service. Corruption of the civil service is the fundamental cause of the massive corruption in the land, because without the collusion of the civil bureaucracy, there would not be massive looting of the resources of the nation.
The systems of control that disciplined punished and rewarded civil servants was strategically dismantled under the military administrations. The accounting and classification systems that provided the internal regulatory capacity of the service was fundamentally weakened. The internal reviews capacity of the service did not develop. The system of competitive remuneration and bonding that made it possible for the old service to recruit the best candidates coming out of our school systems was destroyed. Indeed, the problem of the civil service is quite simply linked to problems: first, the quota system that destroyed merit and seniority, and the experiments, starting from the middle of the 1980s, with Nigeria’s sudden emphasis on the private sector and the strategic diminution of the public sector. With the decline in public sector growth, came the decline of public systems administration.
The private sector recruited the best and left the dregs for the public system, which for a time also made such recruitments not based on the highest standards following what used to be the Civil Service Examinations. Effectively from 1984/85 employment into the public service was embargoed, and any recruitment that took place was by a system of nepotism. For Nigeria to survive and thrive it must have a highly nationalist, properly oriented, merit-based civil service. There are two institutions which nations, even the most insane protect even in their madness, and do not ever degrade: the civil service, and the universities. In Nigeria we did.
The current service is a great national disgrace. It is badly trained; it is badly equipped; and it is poorly oriented. Its intellectual base is weak. Recruitment to the service over the last three decades opened the service to the lowest ethical standards of all time, from the junior service to the administrative cadres. The president’s most important task must be to reorganize and re-orient the Nigerian Civil service. He must clear the deck; reconstitute the Federal Civil Service Commission with only six commissioners, and restore the place of the Ministry of Labour & Establishment in the Cabinet.
I have argued that Nigeria must cut down the number of Ministries, and from all indications, the president agrees on this need: I propose the following Ministerial positions: Education (to include culture, youth, and sports); the Attorney-General & Justice, Defence, Foreign Affairs, Health & Human Services, Trade & Industry (to include Technology); Labour & Establishment; Energy & Petroleum; Finance & The Treasury; Information & Research; Agriculture & Natural Resources (to include the Environment and Water Resources); Home Affairs, and Aviation & Space Development (to include Communications). Because we have Permanent secretaries, there should be no ministers of state – it is a needless duplication of function.
These are redundant positions in the presidential system of government. Rather, the President must create a presidential advisorate, in the place of junior ministerial positions, in the office of the president. What the president needs is a tight, effective team, and therefore, he must have a highly capable Directing and Advisory staff in the Office of the President under a very effective Cabinet Secretary and Chief of Staff, preferably a highly experienced civil servant from the pool of his Permanent Under Secretaries. The president must avoid duplication of functions and offices, which often leads to duplicity.
No comments:
Post a Comment