Adesina Shoyode says:

Tick-Tick: One Month Gone, Buhari and APC Leadership Still Shilly-Shallying.

President Mohamodu Buhari got to the office with a promise of positive change and envision of a better future for Nigerians, and it was with this high hope that most Nigerians ushered him in as the new president. However, a month after his swearing in as the new president, indications on ground for an average Nigerian have not pointed to any positive movement. What is crystal clears to almost all the people right now is the leadership crises rocking the All Progressive Congress party (APC), which might run through the entire period of this administration as the players and their supporters are not ready to cave in for anyone.

Tick-tick, time waits for no one, but the kind of attitude and the actions of APC and that of President Mohammadu Buhari seem to indicate the opposite, the pace at which the administration of Buhari and its APC party are moving do not come close to the level of hope Nigerians had on the eve of the election. To be brutally honest, it looks like the current crops of leadership do not really have solid strategies to lift Nigeria out of the doldrums. Or how would one explain the schemes, plots, and crises going on among the APC members in the National Assembly the first day in office, or how would one explain the abnormal delay in the naming of the cabinets? Is it that president Buhari and his APC leadership did not factor this in before, during, and after the election that put them in power?
As a matter of fact, crisis of any form is inevitable in any organization and society, and could be good for the organization depending on the reasons behind it and how it is resolved. What makes the crisis going on in APC at the party level and National Assembly bad for an average Nigerian is that, it is based on ego, self-centeredness, and personal aggrandizement, and not on how to improve the socio-economic situation of the people.

The argument in some quarters for the poor leadership and stagnant socio-economic situation in the country is that all our past democratically elected presidents/head of government, starting with the first premier – Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar Adua, Jonathan Goodluck, did not really have the ambition, plan nor vigorously work to get to the office, rather they were made the presidents by the oligarchy. The argument is that because they did not really work for it, they did not have any solid plans and strategies to lift the country out of the poor state. The same cannot be said of President Buhari.

President Buhari, unlike the rest of our past presidents had the passion, the ambition and he vigorously worked for it for at least twelve years before he finally achieved it. He saw it and heard it all; he knew what Nigeria and Nigerians needed, and so, he ought to have hit the ground on May 29th that he was sworn in, running. He ought to have had a blue-print of how the country will be rescued economically, also he should have drawn a short-term, medium term, and long-term solution to the country problems while he was planning and vigorously working to get to the office. But assessing his first month in office seems history is bound to repeat itself in his administration, with the slow motion at which things are going, four years will fly by and Nigerians will be highly disappointed because there might be no meaningful and positive socio-economic transformation.

Surprisingly, his APC party has rated him high after one month in office. According to the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, as reported by Vanguard of July 1st, Buhari had made some remarkable achievements, buttressing his point, Alhaji Lai Mohammed gave brief explanation of what President Buhari has achieved so far, starting with his fight against corruption at NNPC, and his action in tackling insecurity and terrorism in the country by traveling to Chad and other ECOWAS countries to rally for support. However, if APC and the administration of President Buhari truly and faily want to fight corruption in the country, they should start with their corrupt members who are parts of the problems facing the country and then extend it to other agencies.

As of today, the president is yet to name his cabinet and the news from some national dailies indicated that his cabinet might be delayed till after July, so indirectly he is running the show alone for now which makes no sense. On the other hand it will be tough if not impossible for President Buhari with the support of the APC leadership to fulfill his promises to Nigerians because the party is almost the same as PDP, it consists of members with conspicuously different political ideologies, people with shady past and no impressive records while in government, majority of whom are only fighting for personal enrichment and will go to any length to make it happen even if half of the nation is sold. To make the matter worse, president Buhari seems to be shilly-shallying as to what to do.

There is no doubt about President Buhari’s integrity and honesty, he is a man that most Nigerians revered, however, his general attitude and actions in the past one month has not really been impressive and the kind of people that surround him are going to clog the wheel of progress. President Buhari should snap out of his shilly-shally attitude of the past one month, he should let the nation knows the direction of the ship and the crew that will run the show with him, and he should avoid the politics of self centeredness going in his party.