Buhari: Reconstructing the spine of the Nigerian state

The recent visit by President Muhamadu Buhari to his doctors in the United Kingdom expectedly drew considerable public attention and a deluge of comments. While some commentators were sympathetic to his condition, others dispensed with such a consideration and opted to go otherwise including the recourse to banality in their utterances; spewing out ordinarily unprintable expletives that came to public view only by virtue of the unwarranted liberties granted all comers in the social media. Hopefully the newly revealed sense of humour which Buhari -now a democrat played up during his presidential campaign days, will guarantee that he takes any pun launched at his person, in his characteristic measured stride and equanimity.
Yet for those who can discern the future before it arrives, they can read the trip as also providing an opportunity for the retired army general to engage in a tactical retreat, in order to review the journey so far after a first year of mixed fortunes for both the government as well as the governed, and re-strategise for the future. This much was captured in his May 29th 2016 Democracy Day speech.  In that context, it must be of utmost value for Nigerians to have an inkling of what the future holds for them under the remaining years of the administration. For as the first year has eloquently demonstrated, the Buhari administration has been doing things differently, and is likely to continue in the same manner. This is because a general at war who returns from a strategic and tactical retreat is expected to consolidate his game and should not be taken for granted; for old things are passed away and all things shall become new, even if not necessarily better. This is the caveat which the administration and Nigerians need to identify with in bracing for the future.
It is significant that in his Democracy Day speech, PMB defined as a major challenge of his administration that of “reconstructing the spine of the Nigerian state”. In common usage the spine is the main frame keeping the body erect and protects the vital spinal cord that connects all parts of the body to brain. Injuries to the spine are usually critical to the overall functions of the entire body. Hence by aspiring to reconstruct the spine of the Nigerian state the president is alluding to a country that has lost critical functionality with respect to standing up and taking its place among the comity of nations.
The immediate effect of the President’s speech is a throw-back to the ‘Soft State’ syndrome identified by the great economist Professor Gunnar Myrdal in his analysis of developing economies of which Nigeria is a typical one. A soft state economy is likened to a candle that is placed around a fire and buckles with the near melt of its wax. It cannot stand well while its flame flickers and devours the wax uncontrollably until the later is wasted.
Admissibly, anyone who thinks that the prognosis by the President is wrong must be reading a faulty picture of Nigeria as the facts are there for all to see that the country is headed for the edge of a precipice. The bigger issue however is which spine was the President talking of which holds the country together and needs to be reconstructed under his brief? For it is trite knowledge that the component units of any nation are not held together by physical structures, but by shared values among them and which include a sense of belonging by all the constituents. In that context the spine the President was alluding to in his speech cannot be far from the complement of shared values of the people that make up Nigeria as a nation state.
Hence even as the component parts of the country may have adopted a common flag, anthem and other symbols of Nigeria’s nationhood, there are areas of fundamental differences that need to be reconciled for the country to move forward. This much was reflected in the report of the 2014 National Conference which articulated the basic principles that define the spine for Nigeria’s unity and cohesion. That report is therefore the terrain for spine reconstruction which Buhari needs to attend to, and actualize the change his party the All Progressives Congress (APC) is talking about. Yet President Buhari has left nobody in doubt over his aversion towards the National Conference, on the grounds that he had opposed it when he was aspiring for presidency. Now he is President the paradigm has definitely changed for him and the country, hence he needs to see things differently with respect to that exercise, as Nigerians demand that he pays attention to its outcome which is the report. If he however retains his aversion for the report then the country should brace up for a continuation of the soft state condition in which we are already travelling towards avoidable meltdown.
The urgency for Buhari to act is accentuated by the fact that the country’s predicament is not a recent scenario but the build-up from serial acts of mis-governance and mindless impunity by people in power over a long time. Yet if the situation was confined to the past, it would have been less odious. Rather the culture of executive obduracy and visceral inclination to misgovern Nigeria seems to be standard behavior of the country’s leaders even in the present, and translates to the fact that hardly has any lesson been learnt by the political class.
For instance, beyond the inanities of the past is the spectacle where a sitting governor can appear shamelessly in the public domain and sin against the people and the Constitution by claiming inability of his administration to pay the salaries of civil servants who run the machinery of government. Meanwhile his full complement of juicy perquisites of office remain intact. Of course many of these offending governors hide under the defeatist argument that states are insolvent, in respect of which the Federal Government has been blackmailed once again to release another bail out for them. One may ask if the Olympian position of a governor has been reduced to that of a mere paymaster whose only brief is to dispense public largesse to people according to personal whims and caprices?
What of the Federal Government which remains culpable for several breaches including the perpetuation of Constitutional incontinence in the polity by granting monthly statutory allocations to unelected local governments in the country, in patent breach of Section 7 of the Constitution which guarantees recognition for only duly elected local governments. That dispensation remains the most potent factor crippling the country’s local government system as it discourages the evolution of eklective democracy at the grass roots of the country. The moment the federal government stops paying money to unelected local governments, the country will change. Beyond the forgoing is the wide spread feeling in sections of the country that not all Nigerians are equal in the eyes of the government. And rightly or wrongly incensed by such a brainwave, some have taken up arms against the country, thereby exacting avoidable toll in lost lives and property.
In sympathy with the administration the task of changing the country is herculean given the multifarious angles the challenges. However Buhari will stand to earn more mileage if his return to office this week is marked by a new deal for the country, especially one in which the wishes of Nigerians as expressed in the National Conference Report will not only engage his attention, but will also be reverted to the National Assembly by him for necessary legislative action. That is the expectation of Nigerians from him.