Many Nigerians are mad at the country’s political leaders — both progressives and conservatives — and they are voicing their anger, which is understandable. The Federal Government, through no fault of anyone in particular, is paralysed and unable to tackle any of the major challenges facing the country or even accomplish basic functions. Most politicians are more concerned with getting elected or re-elected than with the future of the country.
Whoever emerges President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor will certainly inherit the task of solving Nigeria’s major domestic problems, especially insecurity. So, what kind of qualities should we be looking for in a new president? We need a president who understands the system of government, which the founding fathers of the country bequeathed to the people and the fact that with power divided among the three branches of government, building of coalitions and making compromises are the only ways to ensure a lasting democracy.
Democracy pays if it is allowed to work. Arch-conservatives may want little governance and arch-liberals may want a lot, but many functions of government are critical to our well-being and they can be carried out effectively only if the parliament and the president work together in all sincerity.
Those who believe that compromise is synonymous with selling out or giving up one’s principles need to resit their primary school leaving certificate examination. The next president should have a core philosophy and set of principles, but he or she also needs to be a pragmatic and skilled political leader.
Millennials, for instance, would like the next president to be a young, political insider with experience in government and law. They want a president who will listen to them and understand their yearnings, one who is capable of opening his mind and communicating with them as millennials. To them, that is the change Nigeria needs from the present government.
Certainly the next president needs to speak truthfully to the people. His language and mannerisms must be sober, yet presidential. ‘Spinning’ has been a part of the political process since ancient Greece, but as mistrustful as most Nigerians are today of political leaders, the next president must speak candidly and honestly to the people. One reason so many Nigerians reminisce about the leaders of the First Republic is that they were good at telling it like it is. People love brutal candour, but that candour is too often detached from reality and responsibility; too many candidates demagogically use divisive rhetoric and make grandiose promises that would be impossible to fulfill. Their rhetoric appeals because so many established politicians are viewed as speaking in platitudes and euphemisms, if not being deceptive or even lying. Yet too many candidates are being just as deceptive and dishonest. We have a lot of problems and the next president has to be honest with Nigerians about their seriousness and complexity and how to tackle them effectively.
The next president must be resolute. He or she must be very cautious about drawing red lines among the ethnic groups that constitute Nigeria. He must know that crossing a red line drawn by some selfish politicians will have serious, even fatal, consequences. Everyone must be carried along and convinced that the president’s word is his or her bond and that promises and commitments will be kept and threats will be carried out.
The next President must hold people in government accountable. When programmes or initiatives are bungled, senior appointees should be fired for sloppy performance. He or she needs to have the courage to act in defiance of public opinion when the national interest requires it.
Nigeria’s next president must be a problem-solver. Come the 2023 presidential election, we will not look for one whose agenda is just to make things work. This is a tall order at a time when most of the candidates are highly ideological. But the paralysis of platitudes has been harming the country and putting our future at risk. No wonder so many Nigerians are pessimistic about the direction of the country. We desperately need a bridge-builder who will strive tirelessly to identify and work with members of all political parties and be interested in finding practical solutions to our manifold problems. We need a president who understands that those problems are so complex and so big, yet they are man-made and overcoming them will require non-partisan support through multiple approaches.
Terrorism is Nigeria’s number one security challenge today. It is at the heart of the frosty relationship between the government and the governed. But the next president must understand that it is first and foremost a political tactic. The basic goal of terrorist violence is to provoke a violent response. Because terrorists hide within larger populations of people, governments that respond to terrorist acts often do so to the detriment of large subsets of those populations. The effect is to cause people in those populations to start viewing the government in question as their enemy. It enables the terrorists to say, “Well, we’re the ones who have been fighting this dangerous enemy of yours all along.”
So what should the next President do that terrorists would truly hate? The answer is to build up political alternatives to them. The way to do that is to develop a balanced sharing of power between national, state and local governments.
We need a president who is restrained in rhetoric, avoids unrealistic promises exaggerated claims of success and dire consequences if his or her initiatives are not adopted exactly as proposed; who respects the prerogatives of the other branches of government.
The next president must be restrained from unnecessary adventures and from using military force as a first option rather than a last resort; restrained from questioning the motives of those who disagree and treating them as enemies with no redeeming qualities. He must be restrained in terms of expanding government when so much of what the country possesses works so poorly.
Finally, the next president must be a true unifier of Nigerians. The nation is divided over how to deal with the various challenges confronting us, too many politicians are working overtime to deepen our divisions, to turn us against one another and to play to our fears. They are prepared to place all that holds us together as one people, as Nigerians, at risk for their own selfish ends.
The next president must lead in restoring civility to our political process. We must hope that he will constantly remind all Nigerians of our common destiny and that our fate as a nation and as a people is bound up with one another. Our new leader should appeal to “the better angels of our nature.”
• Dipe, a political analyst, contributed this piece from Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State.
