There are clear and present signs that the much-hyped Muhammadu Buhari ‘transparency and change’ Presidency may end up a big hoax. And if that happens, it would be the biggest tragedy of Nigeria’s warped political experience. There is nothing wrong with a gentle reminder for those who care to listen that Buhari did not become Nigeria’s President by default or by a stroke of luck like some of his predecessors. He is not, in any way, an accidental leader foisted on a sleeping nation by sheer providence and neither did he sprout into the presidential seat as a result of the selfish machinations of a band of powerful godfathers. Buhari happened because the nation saw in him a vision of hope, integrity and a refreshing beginning for a country tethering in hopelessness. Buhari happened because, for the first time, a determined populace was battle ready to shove off the incumbency factor and plant a trusted leader on the saddle. Buhari happened because his script couldn’t have been written at a better than a period when the nation was bleeding from all pores, groaning under the weight of an insensate, financially reckless and abysmally clueless leadership. At that time, hurricane Sai Baba was an inevitable reality in our national life and it did come to pass.
Sadly, Nigerians are increasingly confused about who or what they actually voted for. They crave for change but what they see is ‘the same of the same’ as they put it in the local parlance. Some, in the absence of a better word, have dubbed the Buhari change train as tantamount to boarding a ‘one chance’ bus. And, if the truth must be told, the despicable shades of shenanigan that Nigerians are being treated to today in governance is far from the lofty ideals that Buhari promised us in his inaugural speech on May 29, 2015. In case he has forgotten, let me hasten to remind the President of some key nuggets in his inaugural speech before questioning his seeming inability to walk his talk some 28 months into the saddle. Did Buhari remember his vow to ensure that Nigerians do not succumb to hopelessness and defeatism with his determination to change the narrative by fixing the problems without let or favour? Did he still remember how he wowed his audience with that famous quote of being everybody’s but nobody’s friend? Surely he couldn’t have forgotten that he chastised some past leaders for behaving ‘like spoilt children breaking everything and bringing disorder to the house.” We need not remind him that he promised to devote his energy to rebuilding and reforming “the public service to become more effective and more serviceable” and ensure that they “apply themselves with integrity to stabilise the system.”
You know what? Buhari’s pontifications would be nothing but cheap talk if he does not start taking decisive action to rein in the errant charlatans that hover around him. There are some things that simply don’t make sense and those things are beginning to define the governance architecture of this administration. It is an unfortunate truth that we must bring to the attention of Mr. President before his administration self-destruct. An unsavory example of this was the leaked memo a key member of his cabinet and Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, wrote to the President, complaining about the act of sabotage and insubordination by the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru. If we had doubts that the NNPC is yet to wean itself of the moniker as the cesspool of corrosive corruption, Kachikwu’s letter simply attest to the fact that nothing has changed beyond the window-dressing and peripheral act of replacing one set of personnel with another clique with a mandate to be loyal to the government of the day. That, by the way, is not the change that would inject some semblance of integrity and stability in the system. Why, in any case, did the electorate suffered to remove the Jonathan administration from power only to embolden another set of economic plunderers and egoistical characters in power.
In his memo which has since gone viral and has thrown spanners in the good leadership poster boy image being portrayed by the government, Kachikwu fell short of accusing Buhari of condoning the arrogant, utterly disrespectful and atrocious management style of Baru. Although he did not directly trace Buhari’s seeming softness to wield the big stick against Baru to some primordial ethnic affiliation which has become a recurring decimal in the President’s appointments, the internal memo drips of such innuendoes and more. It is also instructive that Kachikwu’s reference to allegations of graft against him underscores the viciousness of the politics at play. Our people say there is no smoke without fire. If that memo were to be a normal routine in the life of an administration as the bureaucrats in the Ministry would want us to believe, then there wouldn’t have been any need to resort to reporting the slimy details of the many sins of Baru for the President’s attention. They would have been discussed at a high level meeting with the President. Unfortunately, nothing was left to our imaginations.
Hear him: “Mr. President, in over one year of Dr. Baru’s tenure, no contract has been run through the Board. This is despite my diplomatic encouragement to Dr. Baru to do so to avoid wrongfully painting you as a President who does not allow due process to thrive in the NNPC. Given the history of malpractices and the public perception of the NNPC as having a history of non-transparency, the NNPC Tenders Board (NTB) cannot be the final clearance authority for contracts it enters into. As in many cases of things that happen in NNPC these days, I learn of transactions only through publications in the media. The question is why is it that other parastatals which I supervise as Minister of State or Chair of the Boards are able to go through these contractual and mandatory governance processes and yet NNPC is exempt from these? I know that this bravado management style runs contrary to the cleansing operations you engaged me to carry out at the inception of your administration. This is also not in consonance with your own standards of integrity.
And so, we got to learn that this bravado management style has led to the awards of contracts worth $25bn and still counting. We have also learnt that Baru told the Minister of State that he is, at best, a meddlesome interloper in the affairs of the NNPC as the substantive Minister of Petroleum Resources and President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari (GCON), was always at hand to grant approvals to all proposals tendered to him. It is not even impossible to assume that the imminent collapse of the oil sector only exist in the jaundiced imaginations of Kachikwu who confessed to being ‘blocked’ from seeing his boss even as attempts made by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to compel Baru to consult with Kachikwu before initiating contracts and appointing top personnel into key positions were rudely rebuffed. Is it not safe then to conclude that Kachikwu was just a lame duck cabinet member merely filling the quota as stipulated by the Nigerian Constitution? Is this why this exceptionally brilliant man was poached from one of the country’s leading oil firm? To be used and dumped after Buhari has taken a firm grip of the milk factory and appointed his trusted eggheads to take charge?
And what exactly is the shape and form of this bravado management style? Is that a new one in the lexicon of our economically-raped nation? No, not really. The only thing that has changed is the personality not the style. In the immediate past, we were told how a minister saddled with that responsibility, buoyed by the assured backing of her boss in Aso Rock, fleeced billions of dollars from this same NNPC. We have seen how some oil chiefs stockpile raw dollars in millions in hideouts while others invest their stolen oil money on properties scattered across the globe. With the inception of this administration, we had thought things would be done differently because the new sheriff in town was a no-nonsense and an unbiased statesman whose sole focus was to drag the nation out of the hellhole it has found itself for many years. That was what we thought but, sadly, that was not what we are getting going by the latest shocking revelations that the rot persists with a presidential approval to boot!
