A Quick Message To Nigeria’s APC Government

Editor’s note: Almost six months ago, Japheth Omojuwa, the Naij.com columnist, got an opportunity to exchange a few words with Muhammadu Buhari, the then-president-elect. It seemed that Buhari instantly understood the message delivered by Mr Omojuwa on behalf of the majority of Nigerians. Thus spoke Buhari: “I will either perform or I will be shown the way out!”

Today, the time has come for a more thorough assessesment of the APC government and President Buhari’s performance. So far, it does not look like they have started implementing the election campaign promises, Mr Omojuwa says.

You have already spent at least 20% of the apparent time available to deliver on the promises of your mandate. Twenty percent because it is five months into your mandate, and more than half of 2018 and half of 2019 are bound to be lost to the shenanigans of the 2019 elections, not to mention the other distractions along the way.

In these five months, you have talked more than you have acted; you have blamed the previous administration more than you have accepted the responsibility of leadership. Yes, a few APC states have gotten on track and are showing signs of great things to come in the coming years. The general truth is that your party has been much more about its internal politics than it has been about the delivery of the realities of the change you promised Nigerians. The goodwill you enjoyed during the elections has since waned, and it is only a matter of time before you come under the very fire your predecessor, the PDP, had to go through, the fire that eventually burnt it out of office.

Now, there is a delusion common for most governments. One that gets them seeing messages like this as being “sponsored by the opposition,” or, as in recent times, a reflection of the thoughts of the “elites,” and not essentially the voice of the masses.

I’d not address the “sponsored by the opposition” rhetoric safe to say that if you, the APC, by any chance, fall into the warmth of delusions that had the PDP drinking itself to stupor on its own kool-aid, you’d not last as long as the PDP. This is nothing but a much-needed mirror for your government to see that we are not impressed.

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And if this is termed as just “the elite” voicing their biases, you’d not need any empirical evidence to believe that it is “the elites” that run the SMEs that employ the masses. It is the elites that bear the burden of the masses who cannot pay school fees, house rents or even food for basic survival. If the elites are crying for help, rest assured, the masses are definitely in pain, too. What you don’t want is a situation where the masses no longer even enjoy the charity of the elites anymore because they, the elites, no longer have to give.

In that situation, only one thing is inevitable: a mass revolt. When the people are down to nothing but a desperate need for survival, the government itself will be down on its blood count of legitimacy.

The APC government and president Buhari cannot continue to rationalize the state of things to fit into what they wish was the case. It is a mess as it is. Yes, you inherited an empty treasury from the previous administration, but who didn’t know that was going to be the case? You confirmed your mandate on the 1st of April 2015; seven months down the line, your party is yet to form a cabinet.

This can be excused under many names, but there is only one word to ride with this: unacceptable! It is not global best practice, it is not even local normal practice that an executive who knew about the new job two whole months beforehand is yet to form a cabinet five months after taking over. Nigeria cannot move forward if those in power are disconnected from reality, and it is increasingly looking like the APC is getting disconnected from the reality it seemed so connected to in its messaging during the elections resonated with the yearnings of most Nigerians.

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The APC was not handed a mandate for the sake of itself and its party members. You were handed a mandate for the sake of our country. That your party has spent the better part of the early days of this historic mandate on intra-party battles and scramble for power shows that the essence of the mandate seems to be lost in the party’s interpretation.

As the psychosis of “I voted APC” wears off and majority of the people come to terms with the fact that the elections have truly ended, and the only party to root for is the collective Nigerian party, the APC will come under critical scrutiny. So far, we are not impressed.

The year 2015 is a lost year. Nigeria spent the first half on the elections and the latter part on the reality of transiting from one government to a wholly new one. As it is, 2016 will mostly be about recovering the losses of 2015. We must even do the extraordinary to avoid an outright recession.

Yours is not the first government to take over from a disastrous one. The Obama government had to deal with negative numbers across the board. But a time comes when a government must answer for itself and not excuse its reality on the government it succeeded. We already paid the last government for its incompetence, it is your responsibility to have them pay for their corruption.

You cannot deliver change in five months, but five months is more than enough for one to start feeling the breeze of the coming rain of change. That you succeeded a government that institutionalized incompetence and raised the bar of corruption has helped your government to be compared against the canvas of what really was a disaster.

But we didn’t vote the APC in order for it to just better the mediocrity of the Jonathan-led PDP government. We voted the APC to shift the paradigm. That shift is what is yet to happen. Five months in, we should at least confidently say: “This is the direction of the new paradigm”.

The APC and president Buhari need to dance to the tune of the streets; at the moment, the disconnection is getting too real to be ignored.

Japheth Omojuwa is a renowned Nigerian social media expert, columnist and Naij.com contributor.

The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Naij.com.

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