Will Buhari heed warnings on restructuring?

Segun Ige

Up until now, the concerned few on the disconcerting political juggernaut which Nigeria has been ensconced with have lent eminent impassioned pleas to President Muhammadu Buhari. To be sure, the developmental agenda of restructuring – or recalibrating – the fiscal federal system may not be easy to come by. Earnest patriotic citizens, such as the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, E. A. Adeboye, have particularly pointed out the putative and perverse practice of our political processes. Again, will Buhari heed warnings on restructuring?

By the way, what is Buhari meant to restructure? The grundnorm of a federal system of government grossly steeped in systemically racial and discriminatorily institutionalized tensions? Is that what the president is supposed to restructure? I’m afraid it would be some herculean task requiring a holistic effort of comity of nations. Yes, that is to say that we ought to, very clearly, grasp the fundamentalism of this kind of restructuring country faithful are warning or advising the FG to deploy. To start with, I’d like to provide a typically thematic consideration noted in what T. S. Eliot describes as the “historical sense”. I do believe that’s the bedrock and backbone of what the “elders” should have clamored for, instead of a groundless bias for an unstructureable system of betrayal rather than leadership. Now, what is this ‘historical sense’? Of course, it is not the snail-sense mechanism or feminism described by Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo. Far from it! Indeed, it is some wasp-sense weaponry of metamorphosis and morphological mechanism of survival. It is a guarded approach of going back to the past, because the questions of the present are answered by the past. It is going back to the past to tap from the autochthonous wells of wisdom and inspiration in order to unravel the riddles of federalism sphinx, phenomenal particularly in the 21st Century.

That’s what we should be diehards for as it were. Rather than trying to get a grip of a baseless democracy whose founding fathers find practicably mind-boggling, we should fine-tune finer ways of restructuring our dead-end traditional methodologies of leadership and governance. Surely, we need to travel to the past, before the presence and efflorescence of the imperialists at the time, and resurrect the solutions to our existential problems and social plagues. That’s the historical sense which should serve as the penchant to profligate the tremendous delinquencies of the president.  That’s the foundation that needs restructuring. That’s the foundation that needs resurrection. That’s the foundation that needs recalibration before a fruitful federation of Nigeria can be a sociolinguistic reality. And that’s the beginning of nationhood or nation-building.

Can we continue to clamor for restructuring without any thing to build on? It’s high time we stopped the screeching for the FG to build on mere sand. Nigeria is meant to be built on solid practicable, productive and profitable principles before we ever talk about restructuring. I mean, restructure what? Restructure corruption? Restructure venality, cupidity and hypocrisy? Restructure turpitude and brazen brigandage? All these are unconscionable acts that would mar the entire definitional nomenclature of Nigeria. Take it or leave it!

So how do we start restructuring? Simply, we start restructuring by building on the foundational principles of values-based leadership outlined by Harry Kraemer – that is, self-reflection, balanced perspective, self-confidence, and genuine humility. Taken one after another, self-reflection is the ability to look inward, what will call introspection. It is a means of soul-searching our inner recesses – essentially to determine how we can adjust or pattern our temperaments and sensibilities after the productivity and profitability of our nation. When a leader brings to bear a balanced perspective, it means his/her leadership styles are hinged on the sub-principles of empathy and inclusion. Empathy is the power to penetrate the minds of the people, discover the common denominator of their demands, and to proffer solutions to their perennial, existential problems.  Inclusion itself is the comprehensive coverage of the sure-footed leader, who always ensures that those under him, irrespective of their age, background, religion and ethnicity, are carried along, so that there could some ‘symmetric persuasion’ among all.

Julius Caesar says “Cowards die many times before their death. Only the brave taste of death but once.” To be sure, Caesar’s statement is against the backdrop of self-confidence. To me, without self-confidence, one is self-crucified. You may notice Kraemer’s self-confidence is, ultimately, an alternative terminology for courage. Particularly, 21-st Century leaders oughtn’t to display ‘cowardly silence’ and ‘stinking hypocrisy’ in their dealings with political matters. For this to happen, they have to ensure that their watchword is, as well, pivoted on the sub-principles of honesty and sincerity. Summarily, to be honest and sincere is to tell the whole truth from the heart. It is being truthful amid pressure to be cast into the furnace of fire.

With genuine humility, the leader wins the heart of the people. This immediately reminds me of the present epidemic of masochism and mayhem ravaging Belarus, for example. Belarus is as yet witnessing some political turmoil over the August 9 disputed presidential election. The main opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who claims gross imbalance in the election, accuses President Alexander Lukashenko of untold rigging of the votes. Even though Ms. Tikhanovskaya argues that she won the election, Mr. Lukashenko continues to debunk her bone of contention. What’s more, the burgeoning Belarus unrest has resulted in other opposition leaders, namely, Maria Kolesnikova, being surreptitiously bundled and driven away by masked, mean men in Minsk. Again, genuine humility is very key for fruitful, favorable firmament of federalism.

The pro-colonial mentality of thinking the white as supremacists of the fountain of knowledge and ideas could crackdown on our pre-colonial mentalities to primitive and aboriginal leadership, not ‘rulership’. A leader, unlike a ruler, is bent on putting the people first in his priority. Yes, we had historical sense. Yes, Africa had historical sense. Yes, West Africa had historical sense. Yes, NIGERIA does have her historical sense with which she can independently operate without ‘plagiarizing’ any of the so-called world leaders. Think about what’s presently happening in the U.S and U.K., for example. These are powerful countries with their unflinching delinquencies and deficiencies.

Ige, a graduate of English, University of Lagos, writes via [email protected]