Softly, softly, Wike

Nyesom Wike, the new minister of FCT, hit the ground running after he and 44 other ministers were sworn in on August 21. He no sooner reached his new ministry than he began spewing fire. He vowed to demolish houses that distorted the Abuja master plan. It is good to see a new minister raring to go to prove his mettle in his exalted new public office. Nigerians are suckers for performances. I am sure there are men and women who are applauding the minister as the performer they need in the FCT.

It will not be the first time an FCT minister will make those who broke the law as it concerns the Abuja master plan face its wrath. Nasir El-Rufai, the accidental public servant and the immediate past governor of Kaduna State, was the first FCT minister to send out the bulldozers to demolish private homes, hotels, office, and other buildings whose owners used their influence to acquire land legitimately or illegitimately in areas out of bounds to buildings in the master plan.

El-Rufai is a surveyor. He must have been pained by the crass distortion of the master plan for the federal capital territory. His decision to restore the original plan resonated with his principal, President Obasanjo, who fully supported him. The president too must have been worried that Abuja was rapidly acquiring the reputation of the unplanned city of Ibadan, Oyo State. The public applauded the minister because he punished those who wore their influence on their sleeves and believed that their wealth and influence put them above the laws of the land.

Wike now wants to walk in El-Rufai’s shoes. He too acquired the reputation as a bulldozer governor. As governor of Rivers State for eight years, he demolished hotels and houses whose owners did not, I think, distort a Port Harcourt master plan, if there is one. It would be more correct, I think, to say that he sent out  the bulldozers after friends or foes who put him in a bad mood on a bad day. The minister wants to do in the FCT what he did in his state. We bid him welcome.

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Wike promised to step on toes; meaning he is not afraid of anyone and will do to the big man what he will do to the small man. Public officers must necessarily step on toes because whatever decisions they make must affect someone’s interest. If I may borrow the dictum of Napoleon the pig in George Orwell’s 1984, let me say to the minister that all toes are equal, but some toes are more equal than others. Wike will do well to bear that in mind.

I am afraid, he is rather rash in his rush to be seen as a performing minister. He is new to the city and the ministry he heads. He does not know what the problems and the challenges of the ministry are yet; nor has he studied how far El-Rufai went to see if there was something he left undone or if those whose houses were once demolished had recovered their land and rebuilt their houses. If he gives himself enough time to study his new environment in the context of his assignment as FCT minister, Wike will probably find that there are more urgent challenges in the ministry that cannot be met by sending out the bulldozers just yet.

Wike needs to tread with caution. He should rush slowly. He is on a turf vastly different from that of his state. The demands of his new office are different from those of a state governor. Here he is playing to a larger local and international audiences, all of which are keenly watching every step the president’s men and women take towards executing his mandate.

As a minister, Wike is less powerful in actual terms than he was as a state governor. Here he has a boss; there he was his own boss. He is one of 45 staff officers to the president. Whatever he and his colleagues in the cabinet do will positively or negatively affect the president and his administration. Macho has its place but there is no room for it where a new president is trying to use his cabinet to carve an image for himself and his administration.

It worries me and it should worry you too, that our civilian leaders have imbed the military culture of inflicting pain and trauma on their fellow citizens as a mark of strong leadership. Those in the position of power daily subject other people to needless pain and trauma by their actions. They ride roughshod over their own people. They throw away common decency, fairness and justice, the glue that holds communities and peoples together. Traumatising people just to show power is not a mark of good or strong leadership. It is infantile nihilism at its worst.

This negative culture will endure in our country. That is sad. It is fuelled by our collective sadism. We are happy to see our fellow citizens traumatised and denied fairness and justice. We applaud the action of the big men because we are titillated when a man falls from grace to grass. When Wike’s bulldozers are sent out there will be huge audiences who watch as the buildings come down. They do not empathise with their owners. They laugh at them because Wike has brought them down from their Olympian heights.

Those of us who are now close to Methuselah will recall the public applause that attended the great purges of 1975 by the mercurial General Murtala Muhammed, the head of state. Muhammed sorely injured the public services at federal and state levels. His successors successively deepened those injuries. The purges weakened the civil services because civil service rules were ignored in the zeal by the generals who continued to act with immediate effect to show their intolerance for dead woods in the services.

The purges made the civil the services and the civil servants insecure. To prepare them against the uncertainties, the civil servants wisely resorted to self-help as personal palliatives to cushion them against the unexpected loss and trauma. This may not be entirely responsible for corruption among our civil servants, but it helped the process along. The civil servants are the mentors of public officers in matters of corruption today. We are still paying stiff prices for a policy that did more harm than good to the civil services of the federation.

Wike will demolish buildings and step on toes. There is nothing wrong with that. Yes, those who broke the law must answer to the law. But he must not act with his ears open to public applause. It will lead him down the slippery slope of infantile nihilism.