President Buhari would have done a damn good job as a celebrity host of a prime time television reality show, akin to the British television series, the Dragon’s Den, hosted by Evan Davis, in which political office seekers, those Ozumba Mbadiwe famously described as timbers and calibre, face the camera and klieg lights constantly shifting between their faces and their not-so-distant-past, searching out murk, dirt and malfeasances as they pitch their ideas and visions in order to secure ministerial appointments.
Imagine Buhari perched on the high stool of a cozy studio, his face bright in the camera and shorn of laughter, firing questions at the political office seekers: “can you tell the nation what ‘public office is a trust’ means to you? Have you ever taken someone else’s property?”.
Imagine the political office seeker shaking in his shoes and the camera panning every fissure of the face, twitching of the eyelids, lips, muscles, fingers, hands and picking up the panorama of fear. The political office seeker stammers, then struggles to find his berth or answers. “You are fired”, thunders Buhari as he helps him out of his misery.
Buhari is not your typical politician who plays to the gallery or who, like the American impressionist, David Blaine, forges impressionist moments to wow his captive audience. Presidential appointment is a serious business of state governance, a serious exercise of power to be contemplated far from the klieg lights of a television reality show.
Buhari means business. Though Buhari had not intended a job makeover or a circus out of his ministerial appointments, it must be stated, but the methodical way he is going about his appointments sires a circus of its own.
Everywhere, good names are dropping into hats, bad names are dropping off at the drop of a hat and the ugliest of names are being sin binned for official misdemeanor. Come on, give it to Buhari. He has opened up the bell jar for our collective scrutiny.
Here is the evidence: those who for a long time took the bell jar of power as their place of permanent residence and enjoyed the permanence of power, privileges, pomp and spoils, while the rest of us merely looked in, now know that the bell jar can be opened, lifted or smashed and that they can no longer be shielded by power or protected by the law.
If you have ever stolen something in the past, Buhari certainly gives you the assurance of a place outside his government. Hear him: “the process (of appointment) is difficult to finish. So, we would continue the screening to come up with people that deserve to hold the positions. This is because, what I see daily in terms of the damage inflicted on Nigeria in the last ten years is enormous. Only God knows its magnitude. There are people that deserve to hold the positions because of their knowledge in either financial issues or oil sector or even in governance, but you discover that one way or the other…they were dragged to such unwholesome practices. Bringing such people will be tantamount to leaving your doors open when you have gone to rest in your apartment. Putting such people in either financial, petrol or works Ministry would be dangerous”.
Brilliant.
Our broken politics and shambolic governance needs to be fixed. We don’t need Bob-the-builder to fix our politics and governance for us. Help is here! For the umpteenth time Buhari has declared his commitment to fix our politics and governance and the stated commitment to keep the doors of our quarters of governance shut against thieves is gladdening. Who would blame him? Witness how politicians and their hirelings now take to image laundromats to look good. This is one example: “The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers state has declared Rotimi Amaechi as clean, spotless and untainted by corruption”. It’s all good, my country folks!
As the laundromat drama continues to unfold, one significant contribution Buhari has made to presidential governance, and perhaps to our understanding of the exercise of power, is the promotion of integrity above other considerations in the appointment process. One must be “clean, spotless and untainted by corruption” before one can keep vigil over our acres of sleep and dreams. Or one must be honest enough to be entrusted with the shut stable doors and not be tempted to open them to bolt with our horses! The era of gamekeepers turning into poachers is gone.
I have also observed two other contributions to bureaucratic governance. First is the depoliticization of presidential appointments. Politicization of appointments comes with its own problems, not least the conflict and tension it enthrones in the bureaucratic environment. Professor David Lewis argues in his groundbreaking work, ‘The Politics of Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance’, that presidents politicize appointments to secure control over government and to gain enormous political patronage. This is not the case with Buhari, looking at the presidential appointments without Senate confirmation (PAWS) that he has made so far.
Second is his attempt at expanding the turf of appointment beyond the party political. Conceded, one can only make sense of the unfolding narrative when Buhari finally completes his six thousand also presidential and “invisible” bureaucratic appointments.
The scholar, Peter Schraeder warns of the dangers of patronage-client relationship in his book, African Politics and Society: A Mosaic in Transformation. A system which ultimately exalts the leader, he argues, possesses the capacity of birthing the cult of personality.
I am enthused by Buhari’s desire to fill his government with patriots who share his vision and dream, but I am a little worried by the concentration of power in a single leader and the deification that often comes with power in our part.
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