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What a man stands for can be deducted from his actions. A man told his friends, “You guys bother too much over what your close pals say to you. You will have far fewer concerns if you all knew a very simple method of getting into people’s hearts. Watch their daily acts and use that to place against whatever they tell you.”
Men are essentially what they do. President Tinubu has severally tried to portray himself as a statesman. Nothing extraordinary about this; indeed men embrace reputation far more than they do character. They love virtue and all that acrue from it but they loathe walking the highway that produce the gains. They love a run on the shortcuts.
Democracy is a culture. Culture has embedded in it principles and practices without which it won’t qualify to be passed on as a culture. Culture is a way of life. Democracy is not a destination rather it is a systematic walk on well accepted principles. We can touch on some of the principles that make democracy what is.
Sovereignty must belong to the people. In ordinary sense power must belong to the people, not to an oligarchy, monarch, or powerful person.
General Olusegun Obasanjo (was our President at some point in time but he wasn’t a democrat, just a civilian in power. So he ruled like a Lord, his wishes approximated the national policy of the country. He could visit the head of the National Assembly in the morning and by afternoon he orchestrated his removal. He could order the national army to wipe out an entire community and they did without any qualms whatsoever.
As far as he was concerned, it was the right thing to do; no citizen had the right to walk against the limits of the intention of the king. It won›t matter that democracy recognizes that acts of deviancy could happen for which the state if properly administered in line with democratic principles would find that remedies already exist through existence of generally acceptable sanction methods. President Goodluck Jonathan wasn’t bad except that he didn’t know the amount of power available to him under democracy.
The other would be mass participation of the people in the governance of the state. This means consultation, dialogue, disagreement, agreement and consensus. This aspect is very vital in a plural society like ours. Of course most of the countries in the world are heterogeneous. This explains the beauty of democracy. It requires that all have imput to how they are administered by those who get power in trust. This critical requirement shows why President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure turned out the biggest nightmare for the far greater majority of the citizens.
He ran a government of the deaf. Defacto ruler. His caprices became national policy. He got up from sleep and went aborrowing and later sought ratification. It worked well for him, naturally people fear autocrats. Under Jonathan and now Tinubu those who could look President Buhari to his face found strength to talk. Because President Buhari took away essentially parts of democratic principles, the nation was led into deep losses and corresponding huge mess.
Politically, the country turned out far more divided than was ever the case before then. Forget the public posturing and pretenses we see, most sections or components of this this union desire a break up. Buhari’s rough play with democratic principles brought out clearly the magnitude of injustice and oppression in the land. The message was strongly passed that a veiled caste system is in operation, the born to rule and the conquered people of Nigeria.
Even after Buhari left power, members of the group still want to overreach themselves by their statements of regrets over power rotation. They have told President Tinubu they regret making him President, an outburst that is not only insulting but highly demeaning, especially when it is viewed from the standpoint of citizens’ rights. Ideally every citizen has the right to vie for any office of his interest in the land.
President Tinubu is one year in office and he has taken few but very cardinal decisions causing many to ask who he is and what his governance style is. In terms of political branding, it is correct to label him a “right of the centre” idealogue. Tinubu, like every conservative, plays tough and sometimes rough. These two qualities got him the party ticket and won him presidential race. Centre right people on the ideological spectrum know the importance of people in a democracy, so they consult. Tinubu in the last one year has most times managed to keep to that especially in garnering support for survival.
Few times our President kept off the track especially on policy direction. It resulted in the major legitimacy challenges dogging his administration. On petrol subsidy he got on the lectern and shouted, «petrol subsidy gone». It was his right to do but would have been done if he consulted. He didn›t and that has left him with big trouble. The economy has gone worse than when he climbed. Last week he shocked all with the intention to bring up the Supplementary Budget and public disclosure of subsidies still running.
This isn›t tidy at all. In other places disclosure of subsidy regime still in place would earn him a sack. Supplementary budget means he wants to keep at borrowing. This is ruderlessness. Next would be minimum wage and its management. In it one will see administrative dissonance. The matter has been lingering until we got into a strike before the President saw need to intervention and give marching orders. Still the Finance ministry came through with a draft meaning that the government has no blueprint, it is more of blind run.
The government is talking of local government autonomy for which it took a recourse to the court, a move that diminishes the National Assembly. There are more issues to the matter than just autonomy, what about federalism and the true place of local government. Should it be about states creating and controlling them or a third tier arm of government? Autonomy without redoing of the mode of election would still leave the local governments at the mercy of state governors. But President is playing the northern hegemony game, keep the local governments the way they are but improve their legitimacy. Hmmmmm!
Finally we don›t have money but we are talking of cattle colony and commissions for cow affairs. Why this should be national concern is baffling. Why can›t governments in places culturally fitted for the business go ahead to establish ranches in their areas and use train and rail to move them for sale in markets in other parts of the country. Religious and ethnic politics in a country lacking cohesion
Some of the challenges of unity would have been resolved by dialogue and political answers, Buhari had no time for alternative conflict resolution and Tinubu after him is toeing similar if not more sinister path. To tell the truth, militarization is the north’s last card. From the look of things that is entering its last stages of potency before it gives way to genocide from where something we have feared would finally happen.
Nature abhors injustice and throwing up inconsistencies. Tinubu has democratic blood but we guess he is not deploying it in the best interest of nation building just like Buhari his predecessor did also. There lies the big danger.
