This week, on Friday May 29, General Muhammadu Buhari will be sworn in as president of Nigeria. He is the sixth democratically elected leader of Nigeria since Tafawa Balewa became prime minister in 1960, the second former military head of state to become a civilian president, the first challenger to unseat an incumbent president, and, at 72, the oldest person to be elected first-term president in Nigeria. It is an impressive list of personal achievements. However, General Buhari is also the first Nigerian leader to ride to power on the waves of huge popularity and stratospheric expectations. No leader before him was viewed by the majority of Nigerians as the “saviour” who would solve most, if not all, of Nigeria’s chronic and acute problems. Each time I talk to friends and relatives in Nigeria, they are eagerly awaiting the arrival of this “saviour” who would help turn the country around and transform the lives of ordinary Nigerians. If General Buhari is not aware of this, but I am sure he is, the expectations of most Nigerians are extremely high!
And not without reasons! As a popular musical lyric goes, “In times like these we need a saviour”. And Buhari’s antecedents make him the right man for the moment. In a strange but unsurprising twist of fate, the same personal attributes – strict, no-nonsense discipline, zero tolerance of corruption, asceticism and frugality with personal and state finances – that cost him his job as a military ruler thirty years ago are precisely what endeared him to Nigerians in 2015, and partly why they elected him as president. Nigerians want him to deploy these personality traits to help tackle the hydra-headed problems of insecurity, corruption and greed that are destroying the fabrics of this country.
Indeed, General Buhari has been compared to General Eisenhower of the US and General De Gaulle of France, retired military men, who were elected presidents in difficult times to save their troubled countries. In other words, Buhari, like Eisenhower and De Gaulle, has been recruited for a rescue mission, which is not a job for softies or the faint-hearted. This is why, pardon the quick aside, I don’t buy the empty symbolism of General Buhari dropping his military title from May 29, as if being called a “general”, a supposedly professional title, is incompatible with being a civilian president, even though he campaigned and was elected with the title. General Olusegun Obasanjo did the same thing in 1999 when he suddenly became “Chief Obasanjo” after being sworn in as president. But that didn’t stop him from ruling as a strong man, with a military mentality! The truth is that both Obasanjo and Buhari were elected presidents partly because of their military background. In Obasanjo’s case, the powers that be believed in 1999 that only someone with a strong military background could hold Nigeria together and safeguard the new democratic dispensation after the June 12 saga and the recklessness of the Sani Abacha years, and in the case of Buhari, most Nigerians believed that, given his military antecedents and personal characteristics, he was the best candidate who, as president, could stop the rots, including insecurity, that are destroying Nigeria. So, let’s be clear, Buhari’s personality and background, which he himself put on display during the election, are a key reason for the skyrocketed expectations at home and abroad!
Of course, in politics, personality is not enough. There has to be clearly articulated vision and programmes of action that people can also buy in to. And in that regard, the manifesto of the All Progressives Congress, APC, is another reason most Nigerians have high hopes and expectations about the Buhari presidency. No one who has read APC’s manifesto can be in any doubt about the scale of the party’s ambition. From ending corruption to tackling poverty and insecurity, from massive infrastructure investment to a generous welfare system, the APC promised Nigerians a transformational change. Well, Nigerians endorsed the ambitious change agenda in the general election, and, understandably, now expect General Buhari and his party to hit the ground running and deliver on the promised change.
However, over the past few weeks, the president-elect and his party have suddenly become downbeat about the burden of expectations, and General Buhari, in particular, has been trying to manage expectations both in terms of the scope of his party’s manifesto and the challenges of delivering on his party’s election promises. Let’s consider some of what Buhari has been saying about APC’s manifesto commitments.
In a recent interview with Television Continental, TVC, General Buhari made a remarkable statement. The APC manifesto, he said, “is not Quran or Bible” that cannot change, adding that: “whatever we said in the manifesto, people must accept the fact that it’s subject to modification”. Then, a week or so later, the president-elect said the falling oil prices posed a great threat to his administration’s development agenda. He said he would plead with Nigerians to be understanding and patient, adding that “The expectation is too high and I have started nervously to explain to people that Rome was not built in a day”. Taken together, these two comments about the mutability of the APC manifesto and the potential impact of the economy on the delivery of the manifesto promises could be seen as attempts to limit the enthusiasm of Nigerians about the scope and pace of what the Buhari administration can achieve. But, coming after a historic election in which Nigerians believed they voted for transformational change, such comments would rankle among many people. It’s not surprising that the opposition PDP has seized upon the comments, accusing APC of attaching new conditions to delivering on its campaign promises and looking for excuses to justify any future failure. You will, of course, expect PDP to latch onto this and play politics with it, but the faults lie with Buhari and APC.
True, a party manifesto is not Bible or Quran. It would be blasphemous to suggest it is. But a party manifesto is the basis of a social contract, and like every binding contract it cannot be breached or unilaterally changed without consequences. To use a simple contract analogy, the APC made a promise or an offer to the Nigerian people, which the majority accepted by voting the party into power. With the votes, which constitute the “price” (or what lawyers call “consideration”) “paid” for the manifesto promise, a valid contract, a social contract, was formed. Under these circumstances, APC is expected to fulfil its part of the bargain, and cannot unilaterally change the promise or the conditions for fulfilling it without the consent of Nigerians. To do so would amount to a breach of the contract. A breach can be either actual or anticipatory. In law, an anticipatory breach occurs when a party to a contract indicates, by words or conduct, that the contract may not be fulfilled or be fully fulfilled in the future.
What can reasonably be inferred from the comments of Buhari and other APC leaders about the effects of falling oil prices and an “empty treasury” is that they may struggle to fulfil some of their manifesto promises in office. And if this inference is correct, then it would amount to an anticipatory breach of the party’s contract with Nigerians. General Buhari needs to assure Nigerians during his inauguration this week that he will keep all the promises and commitments in his party’s manifesto.
This is about trust in politics. A breach of promise undermines public trust and can have political consequences. Take, for instance, the recent UK general election. The Liberal Democrats lost 48 of their 56 Members of Parliament, and even lost their deposit in 41 seats, because the party broke its promise not to vote for any increase in tuition fees. It did, and paid a heavy price for it! In the same UK election, the Labour party was so keen to assure the voters about its campaign promises that it literally carved them in a giant 8ft 6in stone – talking of a manifesto not being Bible! The party’s former leader, Ed Miliband, was ridiculed by the media for trying to be like Moses, who carved the 10 commandments in a stone. But the truth is that trust is such a precious commodity in politics that politicians should do everything possible to earn and keep it!
Of course, contractual promises can be broken in exceptional circumstances without penalty or reprobation. For instance, in law, a valid contract can be broken or terminated without penalty if there is, as lawyers say, an “an act of God”, that is, an exceptionally severe event that no-one could reasonably anticipate or guard against. The same approach exists in international law, where the doctrine of “rebus sicstantibus” or “fundamental change of circumstances,” which was not foreseen by the parties, can justify the termination or non-performance of a treaty. Now, I have resorted to this technicality just to make the point that there are no unforeseen exceptional circumstances that should cause the APC to change or renege on any of its manifesto promises. The party controls the National Assembly and so can’t use legislative gridlock as an excuse for breaching or modifying its manifesto. Furthermore, there is nothing about the state of the economy or of public finances that the APC did not know about when they drew up their manifesto and vigorously sold it to Nigerians during the general elections.
One of the most significant interventions during the election was the widely publicised article by Charles Soludo, former governor of the Central Bank, titled: “Buhari v Jonathan: Beyond the Election”. In that article, Soludo said that success in the election by either Jonathan or Buhari was likely to be a “pyrrhic victory”, because “none of them will be able to deliver on the fantastic promises being made on the economy”. In particular, he listed a number of APC election promises and argued that the party would not be able to keep most of them because of the parlous state of the public finances. Similarly, I wrote a column titled “The price of APC’s statist agenda”, and posited that “APC has over-promised and is likely to under-deliver in office!” I added that “Given the perilous state of Nigeria’s public finances, an APC-led federal government would either break its promises or run excessive budget deficits to fulfil them”.
In response to the concerns raised by Soludo and others, Kayode Fayemi, APC’s director of policy, wrote that: “Our policy team is looking at all the options, including the worst-case scenario of a completely empty treasury”, adding that, “We are, however, confident that by blocking avenues of wastage and corruption alone, savings could run into trillions of naira that could be deployed for productive use”. In his Chatham House speech, Buhari also said he would use savings from blocking wastages and “proceeds recovered from corruption” to fund his party’s development agenda. So, clearly, APC was fully aware of the enormity of the economic challenges, and assured Nigerians it had figured out the solution to the funding issue!
An American aphorism has it that “politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose”. The APC instead campaigned in prose by making a lot of unfunded manifesto promises but now risks being seen as wanting to govern in poetry by trying to use the state of the economy to manage expectations about what it can actually deliver in office. If you ask me, I would say APC is stuck with its manifesto promises, and should get on with the job of delivering on them.
Of course, Nigerians will be patient and understanding if they are happy with the direction of travel. In particular, they will give the Buhari government the benefit of the doubt if it is genuinely radical and reformist, with some quick wins. But business as usual or cosmetic changes will not cut the mustard with most Nigerians. In that regard, I believe that, to secure the short-term understanding of Nigerians, General Buhari should do three things as a matter of urgency once he assumes office this week.
First, he should do what he said in his TVC interview, that is, “give corruption a bloody nose”. Nigerians and, indeed, the world, will expect tangible results here, not mere rhetoric. If he is not systematic and ruthless on the corruption front his support would begin to dissipate. Second, he should drastically reduce the cost of governance. His first budget will show the world whether or not he is serious about this. For instance, Nigeria can’t have a budget of which recurrent spending accounts for over 80 percent. Furthermore, as a crucial step towards reducing the cost of governance, he and his ministers should take at least 30 percent pay cuts, and he should get his party’s legislators and governors to do the same. PDP legislators and governors would be unwise not to follow suit. And thirdly, he should set up a dedicated fund, where all the proceeds recovered from corruption and other efficiency savings would accrue. The fund should be used solely to finance poverty-reduction and job-creation initiatives. In the end, of course, it is only by generating economic prosperity and private sector growth that the government can create jobs and help reduce poverty and inequalities. But if the Buhari government can take these three immediate steps, without neglecting the security issue, of course, Nigerians would be a little patient if other structural changes appear to be progressing relatively slowly.
I genuinely and wholeheartedly wish General (sorry, Mr) Muhammadu Buhari an exceedingly successful tenure. His legacy will depend on it!
Olu Fasan
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
