BY Adeola Akinremi
Tomorrow is significant in President Muhammadu Buhari’s life, but he seems not to know how to manage milestones. For every leader, whether in business or politics, the first 100- day matters. It may be an arbitrary benchmark, but it offers a good window of opportunity for any serious-minded leader to increase his social capital with the people. It is this social capital that President Buhari’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu, is trying to fritter for him. Can we evaluate the success and otherwise of a man or a presidency in 100 days? Not all the time. But 100 days of a presidency can reveal so much about the future.
The 100-day standard, a legacy of America’s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who assumed power at a time America’s economy, was on recumbency, has been used over and over across the globe. By coincidence, Buhari also assumed power at a time Nigerians expected so much. The Boko Haram insurgency, naira depreciation, hunger, collapsed economy, unemployment, corruption and many more are the issues Nigerians want Buhari to deal with. The admirable trait that brought Buhari to power has been this: that he has the guts to fix things quickly, but that has not happened 100 days after.
I have not heard of any bill that has been sent to the Senate by this government in the last 100 days. How can that happen, when ministers have not been appointed? The war against Boko Haram insurgency appears to be like the parable of a sick child whose condition will go back and forth, between high and low temperature. For such a child nobody is sure whether he will survive or die. For all you care, naira did not respond to Buhari’s ascendancy to the throne. It has been rising and falling just at a marginal level. And since naira has failed to respond well since Buhari came on board, we can imagine why businesses have not responded well too.
But did Buhari promise so much? Yes he did. So it’s disappointing that Shehu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesperson, Lai Muhammed will come out to tell people not to hold Buhari to account. Of course, Muhammed is one man too difficult to restrain, when he lets loose. In fact, Muhammed has been so stuck in his past role as an opposition party spokesperson that he goes about in the same regalia, even though APC has since become a party in power. Muhammed tries to attack everyone at every opportunity.
I expect Buhari to know that denial and defensiveness are a sure recipe for disaster, but he appears unperturbed about how Shehu and Muhammed are going about the whole thing, even in the face of evidence that Buhari indeed had the 100-day “covenant with Nigerians”.
This is what I think. President Buhari just wanted to grab power at all cost, at least if anything, to fulfill his destiny as a man who had tried three other times. So he became a willing horse in the hands of the APC organisers. He allowed his name to be used without restrain on any document that will make him realise his ambition. Now that he’s the President, Buhari must be ready to answer those who put him in power, the electorate. If anything, he should remember that millions of people had vigil to pray for him, some slept at polling booths and others defied rainfall to vote him into power.
In his inaugural speech, Buhari acknowledged that much when he said that “I would like to thank the millions of our supporters who believed in us even when the cause seemed hopeless. I salute their resolve in waiting long hours in rain and hot sunshine to register and cast their votes and stay all night if necessary to protect and ensure their votes count and were counted. I thank those who tirelessly carried the campaign on the social media.”
For me, there is but only one way to thank Nigerians during this 100-day, it is to spell out his little achievements so far such as organising the meeting of Lake Chad Basin Commission and other shuttle diplomacy he has undertaken, with reassurance that things will move with speed in other areas. To deny those promises he made, because he has not been able to achieve them is to create a problem for his future. His handlers should know better–especially since they have been President of editors themselves—that lies will not make a good future of Buhari’s presidency. So far, Buhari’s men have lied about his asset declaration statement and his “covenant with Nigerians.”
I have one intervention here, it is to make a parody of Kcee Fresh’s song, Buhari Pull over, reflect, Buhari Pull over, look at your promises, Buhari pull over.
This article first appeared in THISDAY