Now that Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) has been chosen by the
Nigerian people, it is my duty as a patriotic Nigerian to help him
succeed even though my candidate was President Goodluck Jonathan, a
man to whom I will always be loyal and appreciative.
General Buhari is about to mount the saddle and I for one am in a very
good position to tell him some home truths because as a senator-elect,
I have a very fulfilling job awaiting me and I do not need a job or
favours from Buhari so I do not have to play nice.
Looking at the personalities he has appointed to his transition
council, I am wont to believe that General Buhari needs to expand his
circle of friends and advisers.
As a military strategist, the president-elect must be familiar with
the principle that the people you use in subduing an opponent are not
necessarily the same persons you will need in rebuilding the
territories you took. I may be using military terms, but I am sure
General Buhari is aware that politics is war by other means and
therefore many of the rules of war and peace apply to politics.
The General will be best served if he thinks of what is best for
Nigeria rather than what is best for his party, the All Progressive
Congress (APC), and its chieftains.
He must remember that in Nigeria's subjective politics, it was his
person that the people voted for not his party and he should therefore
serve the people the dish they are angling for.
And what are the expectations of Nigerians from General Buhari?
Definitely not business as usual.
The president-elect ran on a promise of change and while that change
was not really defined by its chanters, Nigerians defined it as a
change in their situation.
To borrow from the famously potent prayers of Mountain of Fire and
Miracle members, the Nigerian masses defined change as a situation
where wealth and power must change hands from the elite to the masses
by fire by force and they see General Buhari as the enforcer angel
that will bring about this change.
With this type of expectation, Buhari's honeymoon period with
Nigerians will not last very long if he does not take drastic steps to
adjust Nigeria's economy to the realities of falling oil prices and a
dearth of buyers for the Bonny Light Sweet Crude.
To put things into perspective, when the United States started buying
less and less of Nigeria's oil, we looked to China as an alternative
buyer of oil but it has since come to light that whereas America spent
$101 billion on clean energy between 2012-13, China spent $125 billion
within the same time frame.
The above data should alert Nigeria and other nations that look to
China for oil markets to the fact that China is even ahead of the West
in the search for alternative to fossil fuels as a source of energy.
Buhari may wish he did not win the 2015 elections when the reality of
our economic situation sets in.
In his December 2014 Channels Television interview, Buhari said he was
going to "stabilise the oil market". The General will learn soon
enough that today's oil market is a buyers' market.
And the General's choices are limited because he cannot (unless he is
extraordinarily brave and politically callous) do the obvious and sack
civil servants. Yes, he will eventually have to reduce the over
bloated federal civil service, but before he can do that, he has to
build up political capital by reducing the overhead of the Executive
and persuade the Legislature to follow suit.
Austerity measures must start from Aso Rock. This means that luxurious
multi car convoys must be reduced. The presidential air fleet has to
go, by way of being auctioned off or sold to local airlines. Estacode
allowances must be slashed and the president's entourages should be
lean while non-essential foreign travels should be banned.
The president-elect should not underestimate the big difference these
small changes can make and their capacity to buy him enough
credibility with the labour unions, the kind of credibility that will
see them accepting cuts in the federal workforce and reduction in pay
and entitlements.
A small change like flying commercial instead of by private jet saved
Britain a whopping £200,000 when the thrifty British Prime Minister,
David Cameron, flew to America to meet President Barack Obama on a
regular BA flight.
Nigeria is in for very desperate times if we do not tighten our belts
while our major foreign exchange earner is facing global challenges.
Russia, a nation that many will say is more prepared than Nigeria for
the shocks occasioned by the drop in the price of oil devalued its
currency by 11 per cent in just one day.
Read more at thisdaylive.com:
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/it-doesn-t-matter-if-the-cat-is-white-or-black/208021/
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