What manner of change?

During the electioneering campaign for the 2015 elections, candidate Buhari and his party made so many grandiose promises under the theme “change” that many skeptical Nigerians were persuaded to vote for the president and his party, even when many analysts who tried to cost what it will take to fulfill APC’s promises were reminding us that the promised change was unrealistic and unachievable given the revenue profile of the country. Candidate Buhari and his party never bothered to unveil their planned change agenda, urging the public to just believe them and the promised change. Nigerians dared to hope and believe!

Therefore, on the ascension of President Buhari to office, the nation was in such high spirits with renewed hope and optimism that at last, the so-much promised and anticipated ‘change’ has indeed come and that we have begun the journey to achieving our deferred dream since independence of making Nigeria a great country. Even the markets and skeptical investors gave us the benefits of the doubt as everyone looked forward to the fruits of the promised change. Never, since after independence, had there been such a groundswell of optimism in our collective ability to resurrect the ‘crippled and sleeping giant’ of a nation and begin to position it to achieve its manifest destiny of being the voice and leading Africa and the black world.

But hardly had Buhari taken over power than he began to waver and even discount most items on his change agenda. First, he foot-dragged and refused to name a cabinet or economic team until after six month on the pretext of putting new rules of conduct and good governance in place even when the economy was in desperate need of direction and right actions to steer it away from an impending recession.

Also, against his often repeated promises to use recovered loot to finance his change agenda, the government recently came out to say even the recovered loot is not enough to rescue the country. What is more, the president has gone right back on his word to be “for no one” and to be “for all” to become very provincial in his appointments as if he is the president of only a particular section of the country.

Over fifteen months after his coming to power, the economy has virtually collapsed. The economy is now in recession, inflation is at over 17 percent, the country’s beleaguered currency – the Naira is daily losing value ( N356/$ at the interbank and N420/$ at the parallel market) and has been declared the worst performing currency in Africa and the third worst in the world coming ahead of only Venezuelan Bolivar and Suriname dollar. The misery index is also now at 47.7 – the fifth worst such index in the world. Businesses and manufacturing plants are shutting down all over the country and the total job losses since Mr Buhari took over power have been officially put at 4. 58 million, according to the figures from the NBS. The President’s only attempts to arrest the declining economy is by rolling out cold war era and antiquated “command and control” economic policies that have rather worsened an already precarious economic situation.

Meanwhile, instead of concentrating on the work for which he was elected, the president instead concentrated all his energies on blaming his predecessor for all the ills of the country and showing how terrible things were under his predecessor. Now that the blame game is beginning to sound hollow, Mr President has found another creative way of discounting his change promise. At the launch of the National re-orientation campaign at the Presidential villa, President Buhari denied the substance of his change promise saying change is not about economic or social progress, but it is in terms of citizen’s personal behaviour. How funny! Further, he sought to shift the blame for the current economic malaise on Nigerians. According to the President “If you have not seen the change in you, you cannot see it in others or even the larger society. In other words, before you ask ‘where is the change they promised us’, you must first ask how far have I changed my ways ‘what have I done to be part of the change for the greater good of society”.

Mr President’s attempt to discount his party’s change promise or even blame Nigerians for the failure of the change agenda is a woeful attempt at face-saving. Pray, how can you ask citizens to change when the government itself has refused to change, has refused to be transparent and accountable, has refused to abide by the rule of law, has refused to stop provincialism and back-door appointments of the past?

If the president is now blaming the people for the absence of change and asking them to change, does it also mean they made a mistake by electing him and also need to change him?

We need to remind the President and his party of the timeless words of John Burroughs: “A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”