Excusivism and How not to be a President
Many years ago, the great literary icon Chinua Achebe decoded the Nigerian problem revealing an already conspicuous malady. Using Achebe's, we can argue that there is nothing wrong with our land,salt,water,oil,military,currency or political party, etc rather our problem is the lack of "Able Leadership". This ultimate search for able leadership has led us into several regimes including the good, the bad and the worst of all leadership tendencies - the clueless! A quagmire that we find ourselves presently in.
Nigeria's fourth republic filled us with hopes and greater aspirations which have now fallen short of expectations. We have witnessed the leadership of transformed military men and civilians more gifted in retribution even without the military performance enhancement injections. The first eight years of this republic was in the form of a generous military authoritarianism. Despite the controversies, the reminiscents of those years include the bank recapitalisation and Telecommunications that has provided hundreds of thousands of jobs and means of survival for Nigerians.
One would have thought that the successor of that government luckily under the same political party would leverage on that and consolidate such unprecedented achievements to build a greater Nigeria living up to the aspirations of our founding fathers? But what is the case now? Has the country truly transformed? Or is there a new contextual meaning of transformation, esoteric in the lexicon of this [**]famous government?
There was a Power Roadmap drafted in 2010 with the plan of increasing our power generation to more than ?10,000 Megawatts by 2020. Five years down the line and over 200billion loan support, what has been the result? 4,000 Megawatts "marched forward" anti-closewise to 2,000 megawatts. Except if government decides to rate itself high by including the power generated by individual citizens( via generators & inverters) as part of its transformation agenda in the power sector. If not, electricity from 2010 till date is the worst leadership flop after #Chibok.
Like the Power sector racket, the issue of National security has gulped up to 4trillion Naira for the past 5years without commensurate results. In line with the transformation agenda we may still need to take more loans to fight terrorism.
All the flops aside, one hurting attitude of this government is the ability to either shirk responsibility or give numerous excuses for failure. It is the doctrine I prefer to term "Excusivism".When a government fails in his "section 2" responsibility, it is either the opposition party or the people or the international world that should be blamed. During his "Egbin speech", the Minister of Power borrowed the "Okonjo Iweala excuse", blaming vandals for the drop in megawatts generation for the country. Stolen Watts like Stolen Crude.
For one thing, Excuse is the benchmark of Jonathanism and political economy of okonjonomics. In other words, it is the basic underlining principle characterising this government. It can give excuse to excuse Mr excuse itself. This is "one thing the people of Nigeria is happy with government on" (paraphrasing the Amanpour interview line)
As you read this piece, ask yourself what is it that has happened within the last six years that does not have its own excuse? Even this fuel scarcity has a sweet excuse absolving the government and its cronies. I don't know how I can advise our President to stop reading or quoting Hitler(as he did at one of his media chat) , for there are other great philosophers to learn from. As a recommendation, J.P Sartre's thoughts on "Freedom and Responsibility" can cure the worst of "Excusivism".
Showunmi Rex (@remirex)