President says the guys in charge aren’t in charge

’Tunji Ajibade;   tunjioa@yahoo.com;  08036683657

The United States’ former president Barack Obama made an observation the other day. His reminds me of the known fact that ideas respect no borders. What one person thinks here, another thinks there, and it’s a matter of whose idea comes to the public space first.  One example I once cited on this page was how I watched on TV an event in one of Nigeria’s communities. I jotted down, based on the event, a synopsis for a play. Within two years during which I developed other scripts (some of which had since won literary awards), a Nigerian filmmaker came out with a film with exactly the same title, the same protagonist, and used the same locality I had jotted down.

The latest example of this phenomenon was Obama’s comment, essentially a corroboration of a conclusion I had reached even in my teenage years. But his comment also points to an encounter. There was a time I was discussing my field research with one of my lecturers when I was doing my doctorate programme. As he explained a point, he said, “We (lecturers) too don’t know the answers; we only make suggestions.  It’s when you go to the field that you find out these things.”  I didn’t expect my lecturers to have all the answers. But saying it to me clears my view the more, making me realise once more the constraints under which people that others look up to might be operating.

What was the conclusion I had reached and which Obama’s latest comment corroborated?  He was addressing graduating students in the US when he commented on the current political leadership in that nation. According to him, “More than anything, this pandemic (coronavirus) has fully finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.” Obama’s observation was a conclusion I had reached as a teenager, and which had always informed my view of what we called government. I suppose any introspective student would come to the same conclusion if their academic pursuits have mainly revolved around ‘Government’ and ‘Political Science’. Both essentially demand that you write papers or take exams in which you link theory to realities of governance. So, as a teenager who took both ‘O’ and ‘A’ level Government, you would quickly begin to see the gap between the ideal and the reality.  You see political leaderships who aren’t interested in the ideal, all action being focused on political survival. You see guys in charge who don’t even have an understanding of how best to use the powers they have.

As such by the time I was writing the final year ‘A’ level examinations, I had observed guys in governments long enough to be discouraged from putting my hope in the political leadership. It remained like that for years until a minister arrived Abuja in 2003, and embarked on reforms that I could immediately relate with in that city. He thereby made me believe in political leadership once more, and the enormous amount of good it could do society if the person at its head would lead and push in a specific and positive direction.  He made me see the huge difference one determined leader could make. Nevertheless, we mostly have in positions non-performers, so the effect is that I’m reticent regarding a majority of the guys who run government. It’s obvious they don’t have all the answers. A majority of them aren’t interested in finding the answers needed to move this nation forward. In the event, I’ve learnt to let any little positive step that a government takes impress me. The overall effect is that I’m not in a wholesale manner dismissive of any administration that we have.  To me, no government ever gets it 100 per cent right. It’s been my standpoint long before my columns began to appear in newspapers almost two decades ago. As such, I find it off-putting when any person, especially columnists, in a wholesale manner dismiss a government.  Such approach isn’t helpful to government officials who don’t have all the answers themselves. What is the use of a write-up in which those being criticised don’t see the exact point being made?  A more focused issue-based criticism is what they can use to make amends, if that’s the aim of the critic.

I’ve given this treatment to every administration from that of Olusegun Obasanjo to Muhammadu Buhari. When a policy measure or comment is helpful to the polity, I applaud. When it’s unacceptable I state so. To me, if anyone criticises an administration, it should be on a specific issue, not those generalised dismissive comments that I would feel embarrassed to have linked to me. When commentators generically dismiss an administration, I don’t take them seriously.  For dismissing any administration wholesale indicates a few things. One, you display lack of appreciation of the strengths and the challenges of any government. Two, you may be discussing from a partisan and ethnic-driven position, which makes it improbable to see anything positive about the administration formed by a party other than yours. Three, you may be a paid voice for some people who are out to discredit a government no matter what it does. Four, you and your comments potentially threaten this polity, as you’re more than likely to peddle half-truths and make unsubstantiated allegations basically to present the administration you don’t like in negative light. This is irresponsible of anyone in a nation that is fraught with pre-existing fault lines which constantly threaten its peace.

There was a writer who displayed such tendencies in 2007, engaging in wholesale dismissal and insult of the administration at the time. I responded to him that the more mature approach was to state it when a policy was fine, and state when it was not (Daily Trust. “Nigeria: The small things that matter”, April 16, 2007).  Under the Umar Yar’Adua government, I praised policy measures that I favoured and deplored the ones I didn’t. When that administration forbade a major currency measure planned for introduction by the then Central Bank governor, Chukwuma Soludo, I stated that the government shouldn’t have thrown the baby away with the bath water (Daily Trust. “CBN: After Yar’Adua made his point”, August 31, 2007). I recall this for the simple reason that one of Yar’Adua’s younger sons called me, asking why I wrote that piece about his father. He sounded to me like a teenager so I carefully explained that it was my view on a policy measure, and it wasn’t that I had anything against his father. I believe the boy called his father’s attention to my piece and the late president sent me a comment which indicated he read my piece but didn’t agree with my view.  Yet, a few weeks earlier, and at the time he arrived office, I had applauded him as the first university graduate Nigeria had as president (Daily Trust, “Now that we have a graduate as president”,  June 5, 2007).

This pattern of criticising and applauding characterised my treatment of the Goodluck Jonathan administration, and I knew the former president took note of it at the time. I’ve had the same approach in regard to the Muhammadu Buhari regime.  Criticising or applauding any administration as I do is based on the fundamental outlook I’ve always had –the guys in charge don’t know it all. They are, within known human limitations, only trying their best. Sometimes, they don’t have control over certain occurrences. It was this same understanding Obama gave voice to lately.

Obama in his speech told the graduating students they should take their fate in their own hands. He says they need to take the nation to where they want it to be, rather than expect government to wave a magic wand when government doesn’t even know how to hold a wand. Aside from other nuances in Obama’s comments, I understand him to mean the guys in charge are limited as all humans are. Sometimes, they don’t have a hold on the handle even if they purposely pretend they do. I’ve known all about that for a while. It has informed how I express my view with regard to the actions of each administration in Nigeria, and it will continue to.