Waiting for the President

Maik Nwosu

Six months after President Umaru Yar’Adua came to power, the rhetoric of his presidency no longer suffices. In the way that he presents himself, Yar’Adua is a welcome breath of fresh air compared to his uncouth predecessor. Obasanjo’s bolekaja presidency was matched or accentuated by Obasanjo’s fighting talk, even when the fight was between Obasanjo and the demons of his own making. In this era, however, we have a president who is so metaphorically soft-spoken that the danger is not in his noise driving us deaf but in his whisper not being heard at all. Yar’Adua came to power promising to be a “servant leader.” So far, he has mostly functioned as if he is only running a caretaker government.
Every remarkable government is usually organised around a grand idea, an intellectual re-imagining of the world. Yar’Adua seems to have no such idea, except it is the grand idea of stasis. Not only does the President not radiate the aura of being in charge, which is not very reassuring, whatever dynamism his government possessed at the beginning seems to have been overtaken by somnambulism. Whatever happened to the Energy Emergency that Yar’Adua promised us as a presidential candidate? Or the fight against corruption? And what about the application of our spiralling oil wealth towards solving our innumerable social and economic problems? Yar’Adua’s budget projection for 2008 isn’t even principally geared towards building or repairing the infrastructures that can actually drive this country forward. The question arises and persists: so, what exactly does President Yar’Adua stand for? What is the grand vision of his government?
Nothing, immediately points to this lack more than the recent request President Yar’Adua made to the British government at the Commonwealth Heads of State summit in Kampala, Uganda. When the British Prime Minister “kindly requested” what assistance his government could render to Nigeria, the President reportedly told him that “he would appreciate any support the British Government could give us in the matter of improving the security services of this country.” And the President sees “the Police Force as the point element in the security services.” What exactly does the President expect the British government to do for the Nigerian police? What, in real terms, can the British government or police even do for the Nigerian police? If anything, the Nigerian police needs to outgrow its legacy as a British colonial force that was set up to secure British interests in Nigeria at the expense of Nigerian citizens. Almost half a century after 1960, the year of our flag independence from Britain, the Nigeria Police Force still functions like a colonial terror machine in the manner that it intimidates and harasses the very people that it is supposed to protect.
In making that request, Yar’Adua suddenly seemed like an Obasanjo without his bluster, ever worshipful before their European and American Excellencies. His action is reminiscent of the manner in which Obasanjo sought US assistance for the Nigerian military. Then, I wondered, and now I ask: if the British government is still such a father-figure to us and such a locus of efficiency, why does Yar’Adua not consider stepping down altogether so that his efficient Britons can run the entire country? But that will not do at all. Yar’Adua is the Nigerian president, with a four-year term, and it is up to him to find a way to deal with Nigeria’s problems, not attempt to contract them out. A president is also a national symbol, and President Yar’Adua should be a symbol not so much of what is wrong with us – our dependence on foreign aid – but of our ability to rise above our problems and our lesser selves. A president should radiate an aura that points the nation in positive directions. The whole fight for political independence was about taking charge of our destiny. There is nothing that we cannot do for ourselves, and better than the British government will actually do it for us, if we set our minds to it. And that is the spirit that Yar’Adua needs to invoke in us.
Yar’Adua requesting for assistance from Britain also points to the sad face of Africa – a continent immensely blessed with natural resources but which has become the world’s most shameless beggar, forever begging for everything from millet to wisdom. We keep missing the lesson that foreign aid will never solve the problem of Africa. Aid helps, of course, especially in bringing immediate succour, but international aid often seems custom-made for the television – all those images of distended stomachs and Red Cross trucks that have become almost iconic of our continent. Yet Africa has incredible human potential. What it sorely lacks is the political vision and muscle that will put that potential to work or at least create an environment in which that potential can work towards spectacular changes. And that is where President Yar’Adua and other African heads of state should register, not in continuing the farce of parading the world with begging bowls.