After the elections: The Next Level

Mercifully the elections are over. Phew! Huge sigh of relief. Now we can settle down to the humdrum of our daily lives and let those who have won the elections to do the needful by carrying on to fulfil their promises. One can only congratulate the winners and commiserate with the losers. One also hopes that the politicking activities that have taken over our lives in the last many months will now be consigned to the back burner, where they truly belong. And serious governance should start.

At the federal level the promise is to take the country to the next level. And all aspects of governance must be geared towards that. The President who has won a second term must be aware that the beginning of his last outing was a disappointment to many. He let go the crucial appointments of the Principal Officers of the National Assembly to the naïve attitude of none interference in their affairs. In the end some scheming interlopers high-jacked the process and installed themselves at the helm of affairs and went ahead to have a successful tenure of unbridled spoilage to his entire budgetary plans and caused untold delays to his vital appointments.

He could do nothing to the National Assembly but sit around the Villa sulking. The President’s knack for delays to take crucial decisions at the right moment and making key appointments whether it is to the cabinet or some vital Parastatal became a legend of sorts. On top of all that the country had the bad luck of the sharp fall in oil prices at the start of the President’s tenure and the repercussions that followed particularly the run on the Naira.

However, like many Nigerians who had some knowledge of the science of Economics, I had the nagging feeling that the run on the naira could have been handled better. As a consequence, the entire nation has been left to suffer the after effects of a horribly devalued currency. I doubt it very much if what happened was due lack of good professional advice, considering the number of economists dotting offices in the Presidential Villa. To worsen matters President Buhari periodically fell ill and at a point in 2017 was away for three months attending to health issues in Britain.

Somehow he bounced back and by the time the campaigns started last year there were obvious signs that with his renewed physical vigour, and a national economy that was showing signs of redound, he would give any challenger a good fight. Probably far more than all that, the President’s personal integrity seems unscathed and he went through the campaigns with a popularity rating that was even higher than when he was initially elected. His party, the APC was able to build on that crucial selling point, his integrity, and garnished it with his other accomplishments particularly on security to trounce the opposition PDP.

We now expect the President to draw many lesson from that disastrous outing in the first term and focus on those things that could derail his plans for the second term. Obviously one of the first items in the list should be who emerge as leaders in the next National Assembly. We must all bear in mind that whatever the President has in stock for the nation, the realization of that must be consequent to the kind of leadership that hold sway in the National Assembly. Both the President and the leadership of the National Assembly must be able to work in tandem. Or we shall have a repeat of the disaster that was the eight Assembly where the leadership of the National Assembly and the President were hardly on speaking terms.

It therefore behoves on the President and the leadership of the APC to save us from the agony of another round of raucous relationship between the Executive and the National Assembly. To do that, we expect a close meeting of minds between the party leaders (symbolised by Adams Oshiomhole or is there anyone else really left in the Party Headquarters?), the aspirants and the general membership of the party in the National Assembly to avoid a situation whereby the majority gained by the party in the elections is rendered futile and sterile.

Fortunately, the struggle for the prime positions in the National Assembly has begun in earnest. As there is a zoning formula at work, there may be less frictions when the selection comes to be made in the National Assembly. There seem to be unanimity in the party to lease the position of Senate President to the North-East and already prominent ranking Senators, Ahmed Lawan and Mohammed Ali Ndume are out on the hustings cajoling votes for the plum seat. Both are highly qualified, top-ranked in the peculiar pecking order of the National assembly, where the two have paid their dues to their colleagues in many ways.

Both are great academics. Ahmed Lawan has a PhD in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Service (GIS) and had been teaching in the University of Maiduguri before harkening to the call of his people in Gashua. He first served for two terms in the House of Representatives before moving to the Senate when the late Usman Albishir who represented that constituency left in 2007 to stand in the Yobe State Gubernatorial election. At the resumed sitting of the Senate in 2015, Ahmed Lawan was touted by the Party to the 8th Assembly as Senate President but the process was overwhelmed by other determined forces. Despite the disappointment of being passed over as Senate President and the ranking offices that followed, Lawan kept faith with his colleagues in the Assembly, making himself a rallying point and always making sound contributions to debates. He patiently bided his time, until two years into their tenure when he was crowned House Leader.

Mohammed Ali Ndume came to National Assembly following the self-same route. A brilliant student who shone in every school he attended, Ndume clinched the B. Ed and M.Ed from the University of Toledo, USA, where he was awarded the Magna Cum Laude academic honour and was thus admitted into Phi Kappa Phi academic society for outstanding performance. He was teaching in Ramat Polytechnic, Maiduguri when his people in the Chibok/Damboa/Gwoza Federal Constituency called him in 2003 to represent them. He was elected.

In his second tenure in the House of Representative he was elected the House Minority Leader. In 2011 he got into the Senate by dislodging an incumbent and went on to have a very colourful and eventful time in his first term. He first got enmeshed in a Boko Haram controversy which he fought to a standstill. At the start of the 8th Assembly he was one of the key APC Senators who supported and made Saraki the Senate President against the wishes of the party and was rewarded with the position of Senate Leader.  In due course Ndume found himself on the wrong side of Saraki and got himself suspended for a whole year. Nevertheless, he fought his suspension with characteristic grit, never apologised when asked to and eventually lost the Senate Leaders seat to Ahmed Lawan.

Is it not a good coincidence that these two brilliant men whose paths have crossed a number of times are today competing for the number 1 seat in the National Assembly. Whoever wins will in my estimation be an asset to the flight taking us to the next level. We can only wish them luck.