President Buhari: This Is What Nigerians Are Waiting For

The ascendancy of Muhammadu Buhari to the exalted office of president and commander–in–chief of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has been heralded by great expectations from the citizenry. And it is for good reason that Nigerians look up to him and his team for remediation of the presently suffocating conditions of living for a cross-section of the society.

That was why the mantra of ‘change’, which drove the campaign of his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), enjoyed widespread acceptance across the country, as the results of the recently general polls proved.

As he is sworn into office today, hard-pressed Nigerians will assert the liberty to see the ‘change’ in the fortunes of the country, as promised by his political party.

Change, in the context yearned for, is tantamount to an improvement in the status quo for a majority of Nigerians. It will, therefore, be a monumental disaster if the incoming administration allows itself to be goaded into misreading the imperatives and dimensions of the envisaged change by the flurry of expectations that have trailed the victory of the APC at the polls.

Even from a cursory perspective, the complement of expectations confronting the administration in the wake of the polls qualifies for a most discretional appraisal in order to separate the grain from the chaff. In the context of the expectations, the options open to the administration constitute a paradox of sorts. On the one hand, the less than rosy state of the country’s finances may be seen to restrict its capacity to manoeuvre in the traditional practices of governance. On the other, the same situation challenges it to think outside the box, in order to evolve novel ways and means to further the democratic ethos, which is the main task Nigerians handed over to it at the polls. 

In this respect, Nigerians will look forward to see a new deal, which demands that the administration fashions a more responsive framework of relations that will provide better life for the citizenry among the three arms of government and at the federal, state and local levels.

That is why the administration has to open shop with, among other goals, a mindset of restoring the long eroded confidence of the governed in government throughout the country. This it has to do by adopting a holistic perspective of its mission, even without losing sight of the individual areas of intervention, where immediate impact is demanded.

Typical areas for immediate intervention include its avowed commitment to fight insecurity, tackle corruption and address poverty, as well as promote good governance. Other areas are the review of the energy and power sector, improve the political culture and foster the promotion of good governance in general. Yet these goals may prove elusive if the main facility for their attainment – the public service bureaucracy – remains in its present corrupted state of disorder and inefficiency.

Fortunately, the outgoing Jonathan administration is leaving behind legacies of reforms in the public service, even if their full play-out is yet to manifest. They, however, provide valuable stepping-stones (short of re-inventing the wheel), which the incoming administration will find useful in actualising its own political agenda.

Even as the journey before the incoming administration may offer remarkable challenges, a road map built on a vision of reinventing the Nigerian nation will be most rewarding.