As
a people, we are adept at passing the buck and blaming others for our failures.
We hardly own up to our misdeeds or take responsibility for our actions and
inactions. We see the faults always in our stars and never in ourselves. “He,” “she,”
“they” or “them” caused it and never “I,” “me,” “we” or “us” that caused it.
When it is convenient, we even blame God, the ancestors, the elemental beings
and any other thing but ourselves.
Not
surprisingly, our leaders have taken this buck-passing attitude into governance
and it is a ready defence for their inactivity, lack of vision and misdeeds in
office.
In
the early 60s after we gained Independence, our leaders blamed the colonialists
for every hindrance or misfortune we encountered in the daunting task of
national building. Even problems that they caused by sheer recklessness and
incompetence were blamed on colonial rule and the colonialists. We accused the
colonialists of sowing the seed of disunity among our geo-political and ethnic
groups. We accused them of planting corruption in our polity, and blamed them
for failing to lay a good foundation for good governance, mass literacy, the
development of science and technology, etc.
In
the mid-60s when the military intervened in our politics, the new military
leaders found it convenient to pass the buck and put the blame of our numerous
social-economic problems on the ousted civilian regime. Naturally, we joined
the chorus and blamed the politicians for entrenching, corruption, nepotism,
divisiveness and all the other negatives.
By
the time the civilians returned in 1999, it was payback time as they in turn blamed
all our woes on years of military adventure into politics. It didn’t matter to
the politicians that they actively participated and indeed were co-travelers with
the military in the governance of the nation.
It
is against this background that we can situate the penchant of the Buhari
administration in passing the buck and blaming previous administrations for the
myriads of social-economic problems bedeviling the country. It does not seem to
matter to this regime that the bulk of its members were active and key
participants in the regimes it loves to blame for our current economic woes.
The
expectation of the citizenry from this administration is understandably huge
and the pressure on it to perform is to say the least, stifling. It does seem
that deflecting the pressure by putting the blame on previous administrations
is an inevitable survival strategy for this administration.
It
must be pointed out that treasury looting and maladministration have been the
hallmark of governance in Nigeria since the 70s or perhaps beyond. It certainly
did not start with the last administration. Ask any Nigerian President or Head of
State alive about the state of the economy he inherited. It is the same tale of
woes, of looted treasury and hopelessness that they would recant. President
Obasanjo for instance, was clear on this when he reminded President Buhari recently
that the national treasury was in a worse state when he took over as President
in 1999 than how it was in 2015 when Buhari took over as President.
It
suffices to say that governance is about problem solving and not problem elucidation
or analysis. It is about the formation and execution of policies geared towards
improving the lives of the governed. Leaders at all time owe the governed the
duty to inspire confidence in them of their ability to find solution to their
common problems. Even when things are patently bad, it is still the lot of good
leadership to instill confidence in the populace and assure it of an imminent,
bright future. But when leaders begin to create the impression that they are
overwhelmed by the problems they were elected to solve and there is little they
can do because so much damage had been done by previous administrations then they
cannot instill confidence in the governed of their ability to lead and solve
their problems.
*This piece was originally published on 8/01/17 in Pointblank News (www.pointblanknews.com/pbn/articles-opinions/governance-nigeria-
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