An old soldier and the scarcity of change

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great novel, The Great Gatsby, is regarded as an epic of that era of creative decadence, the Jazz Age. The Jazz Age was that period between the turn of the century and 1929 when the New York Stock Exchange collapsed, signaling the beginning of a new Ice-Age in America business and finance. Before the collapse, millions of Americans have put their entire life savings into stocks. They bought shares and shares and profits were declared year after year. A new life of leisure was bestowed on the American people and they believed that one could live happily ever after without work for the stocks work for you and your investments were growing every year. It was chimera. Then change came one day in 1929 and the stock market collapsed signaling the beginning of the Great Depression.

Many people blamed the collapse on politicians and bankers. The people hated the politicians and they hated the bankers, with their secret codes and greedy appetites and never ending charges, even more. But there was a man who decided to do something about the bankers. He was John Dillinger, a competent criminal who specialised in robbing banks and portrayed himself as a Robin Hood. Everyday, American newspapers would carry his exploits, robbing one bank after the other. Dillinger’s picture was everywhere, especially on the wall of post offices, rail stations, bus stops, as America’s Most Wanted. Twice he was arrested. Twice he escaped from jail and then led his gang to sack and rob four police stations.

John Edgar Hoover who was appointed the head of a new crime fighting agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1924, regarded the capture of Dillinger as his greatest challenge. Then one day in 1934, Hoover was lucky. One of his agents had gotten an informant who was Dillinger’s mistress. Dillinger was accosted in a cinema house and shot dead. The following year 1935, Hoover was appointed the pioneer director of the new Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, a post he was to hold until his death in 1972 at the age of 77.

Americans were to realise that change does not grow at the Stock Exchange. It has to be cultivated with grit and labour on the factory floors, the wet ground of plantations, the icy room of laboratories and the book-lined libraries of universities. That is what Nigerians are learning now that the oil boom is ending in a slow, sluggish and exasperating rate.

When Franklin D Roosevelt became President of the United States in 1933, he promised his people a New Deal. By this time, millions of adult Americans were roaming the streets like zombies, jobless. Suicide rate was high and businesses were collapsing from the aftershock of the Wall Street collapse of 1929. The people realised that the Dillinger war was not the avenue to bring change to America. They embraced Roosevelt who was to rule America for an unprecedented four terms until he died in 1945.

Like the Americans, Nigerians are coming to realise that change is a long distance traveller. It travels slowly, unsteadily but not always surely. Real change is painful. Every living child must be born crying, enduring the profound but painful process of change. It is that change that President Muhammadu Buhari promised us during the historic campaign of 2015. Now, he is in power for one year and the change is not dramatic. It is coming surely. We had not suffered a Wall Street collapse, but the national treasury had suffered great hemorrhage in the recent past.

In his struggle to bring New Deal to Nigeria, Buhari has focused on three main areas: security, the economy and the fight against corruption. The three are interwoven and the methods and styles Buhari is employing show how much he has changed from his days as Nigeria’s military ruler. On Monday, while receiving the leadership of the National Assembly at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja, he restated his commitment to respect the principle of the Separation of Powers. Apparently, he is not enamoured by the Imperial Presidency that dominated an earlier period of contemporary Nigerian history.

There is no doubt that he has made tremendous progress in the fight against the Boko Haram terrorists of the North East. No longer would it be said that the insurgents controlled some local government areas. Though Boko Haram appears to be active in some areas, its activities is nothing more than the spasmodic writhing and flaying of a freshly beheaded snake. The lesson is that with the right leadership, right equipment and right morale, our military remains the best in Black Africa.

The same military is facing a different kind of foe in the Niger Delta. It is an elusive group called The Avenger. This group, in its determination to hit at the Federal Government, is destroying oil installations and bleeding the oil industry of its life fluid. Unfortunately, it is inflicting more damage to its people than any enemy could ever contemplate. The kind of pollution that the Avengers militants are inflicting on their communities is far, far more damaging than those ones the late Ken Saro-Wiwa complained about to the United Nations. It would take at least 500 years to clean up the mess being created by the misguided boys of the Avengers. They should learn by now that the revolutionaries who have succeeded more are those armed with ideas more than with the machine guns. Vengeance is not an ideology. It is the refuge of the defeated. The Federal Government needs to study reports to similar crisis in the past and come up with a political solution. Using the big stick alone cannot kill the snake of insurgency in the Niger Delta. It can only wound it.

One area where Buhari Presidency has faced its greatest challenge is in the management of the economy. The President has not formally created an Economic Team. Its most important innovation is the creation of the Treasury Single Account, TSA, that has streamlined the management of government income and expenditure through the creation of a single payment and receiving platform. The Remita computer platform for this was created by the Nigerian technology giant, SystemSpecs. For the past one year, the Federal Government and its agencies have saved more than one trillion naira. The SystemSpecs has demanded for the payment of its commission of one per cent, but the government has demurred.

If SystemSpecs is not getting enough attention, not so the war against corruption. Government agents, especially those of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, have been busy ferreting out the accounts of past public office holders and sniffing out hidden loots across the globe. To show his determination, both the President and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo have publicly declared their assets. However, ministers and other top officials of the government have not toe the line. It is good, however, that President Buhari has refused the padding of the national budget. We also expect a more determined response to the herdsmen menace so that it does not morph into something more sinister in a country where trouble grows like the dragon teeth.

Despite his shortcomings, Buhari epitomises the change we need. He is a decent man of steely resolve who is now managing the unpredictable temper of a great country. He is an old soldier who struggled hard to get this job. He is passionate to ensure that his country move into a faster and better orbit of development. He has also shown a capacity to unlearn what he learnt in the past. This is evident for a man who was an unyielding champion of state control in the past who has now become an apostle of total deregulation of the oil sector.

Like Roosevelt, Buhari is presented with an opportunity to manage change at a time when expectations are high. For one year now, he has been struggling to modulate the temper of a boisterous country that is set in its ways and must learn to love itself by doing things the right way. The voyage ahead may not be smooth, but at least there is a more competent captain in charge of the ship.