13 May 2007 |
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Yar'Adua: The New Man What is certain for now about Umar Musa Yar'Adua, Nigeria new President in 17 days, is that his style will be different from that of his Godfather and predecessor in office, President Olusegun Obasanjo. The personalities are different and this should have a corresponding impact on the style and content of governance. But the issues go beyond this. Obasanjo is the gregarious, boastful and flamboyant type, very argumentative, never allows an insult to pass, defensive and larger than life. He was a President who was supremely confident about his own stature, his place in history, and he pushed his importance in the face of everyone else. He started his tenure as Uncle Sege: an avuncular, folksy figure with whom one could have a good repartee, he is finishing up as Baba: a father figure deserving only of reverence. Yar'Adua is the quiet type. He is soft-spoken, almost self-effacing, totally uncomplicated. There are no strong objections to his personality. At 56, he is not a father figure, nor can he boast of any antecedents, other than the accident of birth, that would necessarily make him feel overtly important. Obasanjo as former Head of state, and an international statesman, knew the story of virtually every one else in the Nigerian community, and he could stand up to anybody. Yar'Adua is a younger man who belongs to an emergent generation of Nigerian leaders, and who must relate with bigger men, as well as his more accomplished contemporaries in the Nigerian society. He has no military background either. His father was Minister for Lagos in the First Republic. His brother Shehu Musa Yar'Adua was number two man to Obasanjo in his first coming as Head of State, and later a major political figure. He and his Vice President-to-be Goodluck Jonathan, are generally seen as unobtrusive political figures. Jonathan, for example, is anybody's kind of regular guy. A former university teacher, the most important events of his life have occurred in the last three years. From being an ordinary Deputy Governor, he suddenly rose to become Governor of Bayelsa state, following the impeachment of his more colourful boss, and now he is Vice President-elect. He is also a quiet personality, a friendly, unassuming guy with whom you can back-slap, share a drink and a joke and feel that you have not committed an offence. He is almost completely without ego. Whoever selected both Yar'Adua and Jonathan must have been convinced that they will not give the Nigerian power elite, that is the vetoists whose will predominates, any problems whatsoever. Yar'Adua, for example, would have been happy to return to his job as a teacher of Chemistry. Goodluck Jonathan would have preferred to be the Governor of Bayelsa state. Yar'Adua is not likely to tell people to shut up openly at meetings. He is not likely to take a whip and threaten to flog anyone for disagreeing with him. He is not likely to abuse journalists or traditional rulers. And other people's wives and daughters may not be treated to lecherous winks from him. And so they were both recruited for the job, as two harmless figures who can be instructed to sustain a certain culture and tradition as established and directed by their sponsors, seen and unseen. This was the issue at play in Nigeria's 2007 Presidential elections, not democracy at all. Obasanjo is the arrow-head of this recruitment process but it will be na?ve to think that he acted alone. On May 29, the Yar'Adua-Jonathan Presidency will step into the belly of time. They will become leaders of oil rich Nigeria, a country of great geo-political importance. Will Yar'Adua and Goodluck Jonathan remain humble? Will they do the bidding of their Godfathers? "This office is just a responsibility". Yar'Adua told the Los Angeles Times on May 10, "It's routine work. When people talk about power, I don't see where the power lies. If you are honest with yourself, the power lies with the law." Being President of Nigeria is not "routine work", and in due course, if Yar'Adua is not pretending at the moment, he will "see where power lies". He will soon realize that running Katsina state, a sleepy, rural state is not the same thing as running Nigeria: a very complex country where every Okon, Achor and Laraba has strong ideas about how the country should be governed. The second challenge that he faces would be the need to re-create a legitimacy basis for his government having come to power through a flawed election process. The key solution in this regard is performance. The way to impress Nigerians is to bring about the change in their lives that they have been seeking since they drove away the military in 1999. The third challenge that Yar'Adua faces is to be his own man. He has been talking about continuity, and has gone as far as saying that he will focus on the economy. But the relevance of his government will lie in doing something else. Nigeria first and foremost, should be re-organised. And if I were Yar'Adua, I will begin with the provision of infrastructure. Nigerians want roads, they want to be able to drink potable water; they want good schools and hospitals, they want security for their lives and property. They want to live like human beings. Of what use is a so-called economy that has brought the people nothing but a lower quality of life? But before he gets to this level, Yar'Adua will have to correct the anomalies that he is benefiting from. He does not have to admit the fraud, but he must show from day one that he does not intend to extend the culture that brought him to power. General Abacha stayed for many years but nobody respected him as President. The same thing could happen to Yar'Adua. People could go to the election petition tribunals and lose, but they could go on heckling the government, and if that happens, Yar'Adua will be confronted with shoddy and shabby situations that will distract his government. What am I saying? I am arguing that Obasanjo's influence may have brought Yar'Adua to power but it is also a burden. If Yar'Adua wants to be allowed to rule, he must deal with that burden. He will need to move away quickly from a formulation of simple catch-phrases to real ideas about governance. He must begin to tell Nigerians what exactly he stands for. His own concept of reform must be properly defined. For now, nobody knows what it is. This is important because of the general assumption that Yar'Adua's biggest problem will be President Olusegun Obasanjo who may hope to remain in power by proxy after May 29.. Such a situation needs not arise. President Olusegun Obasanjo has selected Yar'Adua as his successor to be the man who will sustain his government's reform programme. It is a way of expressing loyalty to his late friend, Shehu Musa Yar'Adua who died in Abacha's detention, and whose political machinery, the famous PDM brought him power. Yar'Adua's emergence is also a statement about loyalty: he has made Shehu Musa Yar'Adua's brother President because the late Yar'Adua was a loyal deputy when he, Obasanjo was Head of State. This is a direct message to Vice President Atiku Abubakar whom the President considers a traitor. Once he is out of Aso Villa, however, President Obasanjo, even as Chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees for life, needs not constitute a threat to the Yar'Adua administration. It is presumptuous to assume that Yar'Adua will be a weak President. He may be meek and ascetic, but let no one be in any doubt that he knows the importance of the office of President. Strong Presidents have emerged out of seemingly understated personalities. General Abacha was generally regarded as a weak man, but he later became Nigeria's most despotic ruler. If Yar'Adua wants to be taken seriously, he must speak his own language of governance from the beginning. President Obasanjo in seeking to control the government may find that it won't be so easy to be that overbearing. He will not be the only force that is seeking to own the President. He will have to contend with the Northern Establishment for example which is already making it clear that Yar'Adua is not representing himself or the Yar'Adua family (his late father and brother) but the political North. Obasanjo in the next few months will also invariably be busy trying to live down the odium that the politics of Third Term and the poor handling of the 2007 elections have thrown in his direction. A quietly ambitious government can also keep him busy in that direction through a series of public relations contrivances. Can he drive in Lagos traffic without being booed? Can he go about the South West and not be insulted by his own people? Can he show up at public functions at home and abroad and not be reminded of what he did and did not do? I imagine a situation whereby President Obasanjo may require the counseling services of former President Ibrahim Babangida who, he will be joining shortly in the cold winter of life outside power. However, the people that Yar'Adua must worry about are the hawks that may survive within government beyond the Obasanjo era. For Yar'Adua to get to where he is today, too many ambitious foot-soldiers within the PDP helped to suppress the popular will. They helped to impose the PDP on Nigerians for another term of four years. Those soldiers expect to be rewarded for their labour. The President-elect has raised their hopes by promising that he intends to make only minor changes in personnel. But these hawks are not just expecting positions, they expect to stay on to help protect the reform programme of the Obasanjo government. They see themselves as guardians of Nigeria's economic development process. If Yar'Adua does not assert himself, we may be entering the era of super-Ministers, very much after the fashion of the Shehu Shagari days, when a weak President gave too much power to his aides. To assert himself and send a signal of originality, Yar'Adua must insist on choosing his own team. He must turn all the self-appointed custodians of official wisdom adrift. In simpler English, he must dump all of them within six months. Yar'Adua will be the first university educated man to rule Nigeria, and there are many Nigerians who are tying some expectations to this. Yar'Adua has a Masters degree in Analytical Chemistry, Jonathan, a Ph.D in Zoology. Political leadership has nothing to do with paper qualifications. Intellectuals have failed Nigeria in positions of responsibility. The least that can be expected is that because of their education, the two men will pay attention to public opinion, and will be willing to listen to alternative view points. We also expect that the two gentlemen will have more respect for education. Yar'Adua says: "I cherish my liberty and freedom. I recognize that others have the right to a view, even if it is different to my view". When Nigerians first assume power, they say all the right things; they fail the test of power only subsequently. "The less you allow power to get to you, the more you are able to adjust when leaving office", Yar'Adua has also said. Not allowing power to get to him is perhaps the most important challenge that he faces. Sometimes the problem with leadership in Nigeria is not with the person but the circumstances of office and ordinary Nigerians themselves. Yar'Adua may have been Governor of Katsina state, he may have watched his brother at work as Nigeria's No 2 man, but as President he will experience power differently; he is in fact already doing so. I noticed that in the last two weeks, his gait has changed. He is even looking very healthy. His much-politicized kidneys have suddenly adjusted. I don't think that it is the drugs that his doctors in Germany gave him that is doing the magic, but the ultimate drug itself: power. This special drug works in many ways. There are people in this country who have built a lifestyle out of misleading public figures with their sycophancy. They will go to Yar'Adua and tell him stories. When they see him, they will prostrate or kneel down and call him their saviour. Very soon, Yar'Adua will be called all kinds of names: deliverer, messiah, Joshua of our time...traditional rulers will start offering him chieftaincy titles; beautiful women will lay ambush for him (hello-ooo-o, alleluyah somebody); books will be written about him; he will be advised to take the national title: GCON; buy a house abroad, send his children to more expensive schools; deal ruthlessly with the opposition and pretend to be innocent; in his name and on his behalf all kinds of atrocities will be organized and he too will begin to "see where power lies"... What this class of Nigerians do to leaders is crazy, only a very disciplined man can remain sane in the corridors of power in this country. The First Lady culture in Aso Villa may, all things considered, become a bit sober. Hajia Umar Yar'Adua is said to be a quiet woman with a modest taste. There have been issues about Mrs Goodluck Jonathan in the media in the past, and not for the best reasons. Vice President Goodluck Jonathan may have to remind his Madam constantly that Aso Villa is a much bigger field than Yenagoa. Everything after all, is still in the belly of time.
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