BUHARI: THE RETURN OF BABA DISCIPLINE

Our national power generation is said to have peaked at 4, 600, an impressive threshold not ever attained before now….Observe the feverish battle to sustain the value of the Naira, plus the gladdening news of accretion to the foreign reserve, a reserve that had laid dormant some eight months earlier. And we keep hearing the cheering news of the refineries firing back to life, some happy news of talking about Nigeria’s refining capacity, an object of discourse that had been absent on the menu of public debate over the last 10 years or thereabout.

And what more, not a few Nigerians had raised their brows one twitch more over the sudden increase recorded in money made available to the three tiers of government through the Federal Account Allocation Committee since June despite the volatility that has continuously buffeted the international price of crude oil, the national economic mainstay.

On the security front, the threat of territorial incursion by the Boko Haram insurgency is fast receding with the now constant cheery news of victorious engagements over the insurgents by the Nigerian armed forces. Plus this, the Nigerian national pride! Gradually, the Nigerian brand… ‘strong mental outlook, confidence and unputdownable,’ the true characterisation of the Nigrian personae is in resurrection. Nigerians are telling the world again, after the last six years hiatus, that ‘they are back’ to reckoning in the international space.

This is a brief of Nigeria’s progression under President Muhammadu Buhari in 90 short days. it is curious, however, that some interests talk glibly of the president’s administration not taking off yet. Particular reference is made of Bishop Mathew Kukah’s rage on Channels Television over the President’s preponderant focus on the fight against corruption and a direliction of designing and making public a national blueprint for development.

Perhaps Kukah’s outrage is representative of some other individuals’ sentiments in evaluating the performance profile of President Buhari’s administration. Kukah, in that interview, declared that the President’s predilection for his anti corruption fight should be mellowed in favour of providing good governance, accusing the President of lacking an economic and developmental blueprint in the same breathe.

As it were, Kukah’s declaration has also roused a tangential outrage in the public space. Not a few concerned Nigerians have raged over Kukah’s condemnation of the President’s concentrated fight to redeem Nigeria from the pangs of corruption.

Indeed, in present day Nigeria, especially, of the insipid sort inherited from the immediate past administration of Dr Goodluck Jonathan, no policy pursuit is significantly profound than hunting down those privileged Nigerians that had expropriated their privileged positions to steal the nation’s collective wealth blind.

If Nigeria had not taken off 55 years after its political Independence, the direct culprit is unrestrained, monstrous corruption. The corruption that has supplanted the cherished values of the Nigerian universe, a permissive corruption that permeates the nooks and crannies of the Nigerian space, an all consuming corruption that decapitates the essence of good governance. This is how fundamentally perfidious corruption has been to the nation’s collective survival over the years…And why it must be treated with the unbridled malice the present Nigerian is deploying against it.

Rather than deride Buhari, he should be applauded, celebrated and appreciated. The truth is that if stamping out corruption is the only success his administration can record, it would go down in history as Nigeria’s saving grace, the author of a new Nigeria where values and ethics have taken pre-eminence over the shenanigans of the past.

As the President goes about the business of bringing to justice the tribe of those that had brazenly dipped their hands in the collective till of the people at whatever level, most Nigerians are thrown into a reminiscence of the first coming of Buhari as military head of state. That time when the term Discipline first made its way into the Nigerian arena in the equivalence of a liturgy so righteously enforced by the then Major General Buhari fondly reverenced back in those days as Baba Discipline.

Here we are, 30 years after, the Baba Discipline nostalgia is catching on with the re-enactment of Buhari’s principled battle against corruption. Thankfully, this constitutes the basis of the mass of Nigerians voting for him. By April 2015, Nigerians were out rightly exasperated with the old order of impunity and crass abuse of power. Most Nigerians rallied around Buhari because of his representation of modesty, frugality and a publicly acknowledged hatred for corruption. These formed the pivot and the philosophical essence of the Change Nigerians truly voted for.

But then, and gratefully too, this President is giving much more, in terms of policies and process implementation. Now, for the first time since 2003 when the lucrative business of petroleum importation and the attendant subsidy regime commenced, a Nigerian government has declared that only the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation will now be responsible for petroleum products importation even as all refineries are revving for increased production capacity. This is a clear headed policy position, one that tackles corruption in that government agency at the roots.

And so is the battle to sustain the value of the Naira through the various policies the Central Bank of Nigeria have introduced to contain the raid on the value of the Naira.

Yes, so the President is yet to announce his cabinet, and a number of people in the psychological docket of Kukah had disclaimed the purpose of the government. Curious perspective, what has a servant-master cabinet got to do with the efficacy of a government?

Obviously, the President’s head sits finely on him with his obvious decision to first understudy the Ministries and Agencies for proper understanding and appreciation of their status and capacity. As Chief Executive, the President determines the direction of his government and must, therefore, be enabled enough to decide the briefs and targets he will be handing over to his Ministers when he eventually appoints them.

Deriving from this is the fact that it is wrong to ascribe sloppiness to this government because of a perceived lateness in constituting his cabinet, it’s simply another mechanised blackmail against a government that is working.

Written by Niyi Akinsiju..