APC and Buhari’s Example

There is no doubt that we are coming out of the full throes of a rotting country. It was reported some days back that governors of the All Progressives Congress, APC, are arguing that they are not bound by any law to publicly declare their assets. And they are right. But considering the moral high-ground on which they rode to power, one would have thought that assets declaration should not be a problem to anyone in the righteous party.
What’s more, APC governors comprise of high profile politicians likes of Nasiru el-Rufai and Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, both of whom should be working in earnest in their states to inherit the reins of power from PMB whenever he decides to pass the baton, be it after four years or eight, one term or two. But the governors have refused to shed the weight of the previous administration in which everything admittedly goes unchecked.
It is amid this troubling governance process, that when the President and Vice president who have already publicly declared their own modest assets have been sounding the trumpet from all political platforms, urging their troops in the field to get oil in their lamps and prepare for that great and glorious day when Nigeria shall become born again, that the public expects the governors to tow the line of their forerunners.
But, very disappointingly, the governors who would prance and pontificate and do all in their power to win or retain power, by sharing the billboard space with Buhari, are now showing that all is not well in that wronged political jungle called Nigeria. Up until yesterday, our health care system has been in a parlous state, to put it mildly.
The Ministry of Health-managed facilities have revealed what many knew, or were not surprised to know, that we have all broken infrastructure and that the health of the ordinary Nigerian is in a more perilous position than might have been thought. For reasons best known to themselves, the ministry and its officials have not made any efforts to stem the medical tourism that this country has become famous for.
In the eyes of the world, we are a stupid country with a foolish leadership, until the Buhari aura began to swing things towards the positive barometer. Healthcare delivery, bad as it is in Nigeria, where hospitals have become mere consulting clinics since Buhari’s first ascension to power is not Nigeria’s only headache. But it is one of the areas where government money goes after it is stolen.
Every big man, even some small men want to buy medical treatment abroad, because everyone wants to stay alive. Crime,another debilitating phenomenon in our polity, has been on an upward trajectory as kidnappings have increased throughout the country. The prize of man, like the market value of goats, have fallen. Kidnappers now look away from high profile hostages and are taking journalists or their wives.
The police force once demoralized has risen to the occasion though and have been marching in a sure footed way as a sign that change has come to the land. And still the police are poorly paid and the environments in which they have been forced to live and work are substandard and psychologically depressing.
Yet governors expect the police to work miracles and protect them from criminal networks that have become distinguished by their barbarity and unconscionable assault on the lives and property of citizens. But the same governors would not tell Nigerians what they are worth. It is this same scenario that gave birth to Jonathan’s famous“I don’t give a damn” posture.
Apparently there is no real departure from that terminus. In the midst of a crumbling social fabric and moral infrastructure, PMB is waging a brave battle to sustain the fiscal and macroeconomic viability of the country. Frankly, his worth represents the only glimmer of hope, the only cacti growing in a desert of fraud, incompetence,brazen theft and non-performance. Buhari’s best efforts are not without their own sets of problems as the Government cannot pay its bills, the physical and social substructure of the country is rotting, and more revenue is being demanded from an already over-relaxed population.
This is why I think the refusal of the governors to publicly declare their assets is vexing to a disgusting degree. But at the same time that they are crooning over the legality or otherwise of such declaration, the Senate President Dr. Bukola Saraki is battling to retain his credibility which has been under the weather since he assumed office as leader of the red chamber.
Bukola Saraki has been clinging on straws since becoming Senate President. His asset declaration saga, which is coming at the heels of the Buhari example which has become the benchmark for politics is the latest of his many political travails, all of which are tightly linked to high wire politics. But the Buhari example has proved that nothing just happens in politics. The initial thinking was that PMB would give an account of his stewardship after hundred days in power. Instead he opened himself to public scrutiny.
And since then, the worth of Nigeria’s politicians has become the rubric. Nothing just happens in politics. If something happens, you can be sure it was planned that way, according to former American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. I find the events taking place in the APC quite worrying.
It seems a number of its members in parliament and in the Government Houses, good ones among them, are facing serious credibility challenges since they won their elections. A candidate who tells potential voters that he was not into handouts and that the era of impunity was over should have nothing really to fear.
Ordinarily, what the Buhari phenomenon has brought into politics is the search for honest men of education and training who are prepared to put their skills to the service of the public to move the country forward. Those politicians are yet to emerge and by the time they do, many politicians in power today who would aspire to return to power in 2019 are more likely to lose their deposits.