The ‘me’ in the ‘change’ slogan

About a fortnight ago, President Muhammadu Buhari at the Banquet Hall of the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja launched the National Re-Orientation Campaign tagged ‘Change Begins With Me’. President Buhari got it right when he remarked that the country’s value system had terribly eroded over the years. Truly, the Nigerian society (traditional as well as modern) radically degenerated and lost respect for decency and basic ethical values. A country, Nigeria, where a parent supports his/her child to engage in an examination malpractice or a professor as a teacher who finds nothing wrong with students cheating in an examination is something to worry about. Contemporary Nigerians have so much lost their conscience and that they carelessly replaced nearly everything called virtue with acts of indiscipline.
One could not agree more with President Buhari when he observed that the long-cherished virtues of honesty, integrity, hard work, good neighbourliness disdain for corruption have all been exchanged for dishonesty, indolence, intolerance and widespread impunity. In most parts of the country today, one’s degree of goodness, kindness or uprightness is measured or determined by the extent to which the person could bend ethical rules or principles. This is the height to which our ethical degeneration has regrettably risen.
In his speech that later became ‘talk of the country’ because of the plagiarism scandal that trailed it, President Buhari appealed to Nigerians to ‘summon a new spirit of responsibility, of service, of patriotism and of sacrifice; adding that ‘the change they want begins with them’. This is the point from where our discourse for the week takes off. It is the opinion of this writer that the ‘me’ in the ‘change’ slogan refers to and demands more from leaders and everyone in a position of authority than it is a task to other Nigerians.
President Buhari’s popular integrity and sense of probity over decades remained his strongest political weapon with which he pulled and still pulls crowd over his military colleagues and partisan political rivals. The success, however, of the ‘Change Begins With Me’ goes beyond President Buhari’s personal integrity and discipline. The general attitude, philosophy, ideology and more importantly public life of political office holders and other public officers under his administration are actually crucial to the ‘change’ agenda.
It really does not make sense to ask citizens to re-kindle and demonstrate a renewed but deeper sense of responsibility and patriotism or asking them to be law-abiding and selfless in their service to the country while those who as government officials preach ‘change’ remain lawless, unpatriotic and selfish. Other Nigerians will have no choice but to buy into the ‘change’ agenda if all the virtues they seek their re-birth in Nigerians are missing in their public lives. Indeed, leaders would predictably earn the respect, loyalty, confidence, and trust of Nigerians if their characters are practically reflective of virtues and ethical values they proclaim.
The ‘change’ campaign should, for instance, begin with a local government chairman who out of a sheer sense of irresponsibility chooses to reside in the state capital or Abuja or elsewhere other than the headquarters of his LGA. Only then would such a local government chairman reserves the moral right and courage to command patriotism or demand for a change from sentimental judgements to nationalistic thoughts in the attitude of those he has a mandate to lead. Even before the economic recession officially set in, it is public knowledge that LG chairmen go to work only aty month-end to ‘share’ that which came to them as allocation from the State-LG joint account. This applies, too, to governors who spend more days in Abuja or outside the country than they remain in their respective states.
More crucial to making the ‘change’ campaign functional with desirable results is the need for the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to identify and articulate critical areas of focus. Because of the gross indiscipline among Nigerian in almost all facets of life, the re-orientation campaign would be too vast to be left un-structured. If the guess of this writer is right on the absence of an articulated document on the re-orientation campaign, the NOA is advised to hasten to produce one. But if the guess is wrong, the NOA is encouraged to make such a vital instrument of implementation public so that every Nigerian shall know that which is expected of him or her either as a leader in a position of authority or as a citizen.
It would be to the credit of the NOA which conceived the re-orientation campaign if it defines common manifestations that constitute indiscipline among Nigerian; outlining sanctions for each. This may include but not limited to lateness to work; shunting queues at petrol stations, banks and hospitals; littering of public buildings; un-kept residential surroundings; open defecation.
The NOA could also develop template of the moral responsibilities of a Nigerian in his day-to-day activities. In the area of attitude to public property, the re-orientation campaign could evolve a policy where official vehicles are parked at close work. The privilege that comes with official vehicles has grossly been abused over the years by public officers. Besides using the vehicles at every odd hours, they have also been used for assignments that do not have the remotest link with the official schedules of the officer using it. What would you say of a government ambulance being used in transporting fire-wood instead of conveying a patient?
In the area of respect for time, the re-orientation campaign could evolve a policy where official events begin on schedule whether or not all the ‘Guests’ or ‘Special Guests of Honour’ invited to officiate or grace the occasion have arrived. Lateness to functions especially official events has battered our public image as a people. The personality invited to chair a given occasion could, on the authority of the ‘change’ campaign, be the only determinant in the start of an event. Even the chairman could also have a defined time-limit after which the event should begin without his presence.
Unless those seen by Nigerians as political, traditional and religious leaders individually demonstrate a good sense of responsibility, the re-orientation campaign may fail to go far not only in impacting on the ‘me’ in the ‘change’ slogan but also in bringing about the attitudinal change in Nigerians which the campaign seeks to achieve. May Allah (SWT) guide us all on the righteous and patriotic path of the ‘change’ agenda, amin.