Kaduna State Governor,Mallam Nasir El- Rufai, in
a 29-page memo dated September 22, 2016 and
entitled: “Immediate and medium term imperatives
for President Muhammadu Buhari,” wrote on the
inability of the All Progressives Congress (APC)
government to meet expectations of Nigerians
Background
In April 2015, I sent a short memorandum
to you, Sir – then as president-elect. We
never discussed the memo in detail and I
am not even sure you got to read it
bearing in mind the levels of human
traffic visiting you in those heady days.
I crave the indulgence of Mr. President to
please read the memo (attached herewith
as Annex II) and see how like every
aspect of life, the memo was sometimes
presciently accurate and at the same time
off-target! It is on the basis of that
message, and my commitment to write
anytime I feel compelled that matters of
urgent national importance confront you,
that I address this with greatest respect
and humility.
Mr. President, Sir I address this and other
past memos with all sense of
responsibility for at least three reasons.
First, I owe my modest political
ascendency so far to you. Without your
adoption and trust reposed in me and the
recognition you have shown in spite of
attacks on my person by some people
around you, I will not be where I am
today.
I remain eternally grateful for this.
Secondly, Sir, poll after poll in Kaduna
State before and after the 2015 elections
clearly show that my fate politically and
otherwise is uncannily tied to yours.
If you do well, I stand to benefit
immensely. If you do not do well Sir,
whatever I try to do in Kaduna matters
little to my present and any future
political trajectory. Finally, Sir, I am of
the strong opinion and belief that you are
our only hope now and in the medium
term of saving the Nigerian nation from
collapse, and enabling the north of
Nigeria to regain its lost confidence, begin
to be respected as a significant
contributor, and not the parasite and
problem of the Nigerian federation.
Mr. President, it is also clear to many of
us that have studied your political career,
that so long as you remain in the political
landscape, no Northerner will emerge
successfully on the national scene.
All those wasting time, money and other
resources to run in 2019 either do not
realize this divinely-ordained situation or
are merely destined to keep others
employed and rich from electoral project
doomed for certain failure.
As I explained to you shortly after your
election in April 2015, you have to run
again in 2019 if your objectives of
national restoration, economic progress
and social justice are to be attained in the
medium and long term.
You must therefore succeed for the good
of all of us – individually and collectively,
and particularly those of us that have
benefitted so clearly from your political
ascendance.
Mr. President, Sir As stated in my April
2015 memo, you have inherited serious
political, economic and governance
problems that you had no hand in
creating but now have a duty to solve.
These inherited problems were
aggravated by the continuing slide in
crude oil prices and the renewed
insurgency in the Niger Delta that
reduced oil production by more than 50
per cent!
In my honest opinion, we have made this
situation worse by failing to be proactive
in taking some political, economic and
governance decisions in a timely manner.
In very blunt terms, Mr. President, our
APC administration has not only failed to
manage expectations of a populace that
expected overnight ‘change’ but has failed
to deliver even mundane matters of
governance outside of our successes in
fighting BH insurgency and corruption.
Overall, the feeling even among our
supporters today is that the APC
government is not doing well.
It is in light of all the foregoing that I
intend to analyze where we are, and
present some suggestions for Mr.
President’s consideration and further
necessary action in three areas – Politics,
National Economy and Governance.
Political Situation:
Mr. President would recall the
tribulations we went through with
membership registration, congresses and
the first national convention. And with
the games played by various groupings
within the party, it is correct to assert
that you got elected in spite of our party
leadership, and not due to its
wholehearted support.
At the moment, with the appointment of
B.D. Lawal and Dikko Radda to executive
positions in the Federal Government, we
have no more than one or two clear
supporters or sympathizers in the NWC
out of 20 members.
We have no footprint in the party
structure today and this situation can
remain unchanged until the national
convention of 2018! Mr. President, Sir
Your relationship with the national
leadership of the party, both the formal
(NWC) and informal (Asiwaju Bola
Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Rabiu Musa
Kwankwaso), and former Governors of
ANPP, PDP (that joined us) and ACN, is
perceived by most observers to be at best
frosty. Many of them are aggrieved due to
what they consider total absence of
consultations with them on your part and
those you have assigned such duties.
This may not be your intention or
outlook, but that is how it appears to
those that watch from afar. This situation
is compounded by the fact that some
officials around you seem to believe and
may have persuaded you that current APC
State Governors must have no say and
must also be totally excluded from
political consultations, key appointments
and decision-making at federal level.
These politically-naive ‘advisers’ fail to
realize that it is the current and former
state governors that may, as members of
NEC of the APC, serve as an alternative
locus of power to check the excesses of
the currently lopsided and perhaps
ambivalent NWC. Alienating the
governors so clearly and deliberately
ensures that you have nearzero support
of the party structure at both national and
state levels. It is not too late to reverse
the situation. You appear to have neither
a political adviser nor a minder of your
politics.
The two officials whose titles may enable
them function as such generally alienate
those that contributed to our success. The
SGF is not only inexperienced in public
service but is lacking in humility,
insensitive and rude to virtually most of
the party leaders, ministers and
governors.
The Chief of staff is totally clueless about
the APC and its internal politics at best as
he was neither part of its formation nor a
participant in the primaries, campaign
and elections. In summary, neither of
them has the personality, experience and
the reach to manage your politics
nationally or even regionally.
Those of us that look forward to
presenting you again to the electorate in
2019 are worried that we need to sort out
the party’s membership register, review
the primaries system to eliminate the
impact of money in candidate selection,
and reduce the reliance of the party on a
few businessmen, a handful of major
financiers and state governments for its
operations and expenditures.
A surgical operation is needed in party
machinery, financing and electoral
processes if the future political
aspirations we desire for you will not be
made more difficult, if not impossible, to
actualize.
Mr. President, Sir It is a constitutional
reality that to succeed, the Federal
Government must work harmoniously
with two other arms of government; the
National Assembly and the Judiciary.
These relationships need improvement as
well.
The relationship with the Senate was
marred by the betrayal the party suffered
at the hands of many of its members,
while the recent ‘padding scandal’ has
created tensions with the leadership of
the House of Representatives.
These challenges are difficult, but not
impossible, to fix once the Judiciary
concludes the Saraki cases in a timely
manner. The paralysis within the National
Judicial Council in the face of the current
worrying state of the Judiciary,
compounded by the lack of harmonious
relationship with the Supreme Court,
Court of Appeal and the all-important
Federal High Court, make the expeditious
disposal of the Saraki cases not only
unlikely, but puts the administration at
risk of a humiliating loss of some key
anti-corruption cases.
Once again, it is not impossible to reverse
the situation. Mr. President, Sir The
public service we inherited is the product
of one and a half decades of doing
business in the mould of the PDP.
The senior public servants are largely
corrupt, with a sense of entitlement that
they have a first claim on the country’s
resources, before any is spent for the
benefit of the 99.5 per cent that are
ordinary Nigerians (and voters!). Persons
on director grade today in the federal
public service were mere Grade Level
9-10 officers when President Obasanjo
took office in 1999, so PDP’s way is the
only way they know and are comfortable
with.
Due to these orientational and ideological
differences between the federal public
service and what you believe Mr.
President, most of them are unable to
serve you with integrity, dedication and
commitment. We therefore generally have
an uneasy relationship with the
bureaucracy as well.
This state of affairs is far more difficult to
reverse immediately, but must be
attempted if you are to succeed, as no
nation develops beyond the capability,
competence and capacity of its public
service. It is within the realm of both
politics and governance that you must
navigate to extract the best out of the
public service while suppressing its base
desires. Mr. President, Sir This memo
started with the state of our politics
because it trumps everything else.
If we don’t get the political machinery
smooth and working, it will be a miracle
if we are able to get the economy and
governance right. The distraction of
genuinely unhappy political actors will
affect our ability to face our national
problems; we need to pull together in the
same direction to resolve them.
We have been incredibly lucky and
successful so far without the support of,
and in spite of, the prevailing patron-
client political system, Mr. President. We
are now in power and in a position to
shape our national political culture in
your image through active stakeholders
and process engagement. We are not
engaging at all, and taking things and
important matters for granted. The
consequences can be negative.
TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW
0 comments:
Post a Comment