May 29: Why Buhari Should Not Probe Jonathan

Buhari

 

With all manner of figures of billions of dollars flying around allegedly missing under President Goodluck Jonathan, there are a section of the country goading the incoming President Muhammadu Buhari to embark on massive probe of the outgoing government of President  Jonathan.

While this clamour for probe may be popular and a government in search of populism may easily succumb to it, it is a banana peel that Buhari must avoid if he don’t want to spend the next four years achieving nothing but making more enemies that could undermine his government. The incoming President should remember that when he was head of state in 1984-85 and embarked on such probes which resulted to many politicians receiving hundreds of years of sentences in prison, it was very popular with a section of the population. Soon the public got weary of the treatment meted out to the politicians which in most cases was outrageous. In the end when Buhari was overthrown in 1985 the same population poured out to the streets celebrating his ouster by General Ibrahim Babangida and co. Why did such massive crowd poured out to the streets to celebrate his overthrow? That should be food for thought for the incoming president as he decides whether he is going to spend the next four years probing from one ministry to the other or one agency to the other.

Just two days ago the outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan stated that he was not afraid of being probed but that if Buhari wants to probe, it should be holistic. That is that the probe should not be restricted to his administration but extended also to other administrations before his. He warned that if the probe is restricted to him, he would interpret it as an act of vendetta. That is also how it would be interpreted on the streets of Niger Delta. That could have serious security and economic implications for Nigeria. Niger Delta has been relatively ‘quite’ despite their loss. There are sections of Niger Delta who felt cheated that some major ethnic groups conspired to stop their only son who by chance became Nigeria’s president from enjoying a second term. As far as these groups are concerned it was not because of poor performance that Jonathan was literally chased out of the Presidential Villa, but a determination of a section of the country to get power back by all means fair or foul. The peace in Niger Delta after the election should not be taken for granted.

It is instructive that the national security adviser, Col Sambo Dasuki recently warned the incoming administration on the imperative of sustaining the peace in the Niger Delta region which the amnesty programme engendered. Dasuki noted that there are foreign interests that encourage instability in the Niger Delta region. Anything that could give the impression that Jonathan has been singled out for victimisation may result to a situation where Buhari may not even have oil money to execute his programmes.

 The billions of dollars that are allegedly missing were generated not from palm oil, cocoa, groundnut, cattle, rice etc but from mainly crude oil which nature put over 90 per cent of it in the Niger Delta region. These area of Nigeria should be allowed to have peace so that the country and its economy can also progress peacefully. Nigeria cannot afford having two war fronts; one in the North East, the other in the Niger Delta. Buhari should avoid those who would advise him to ‘deal’ with the militants ‘if they try anything’. Obasanjo tried that tactics and it did not work, similarly President Yar’Adua tried it against Boko Haram, and see where we are today.

That is it about the economic and security implications of probing Jonathan. Now the next one is the fact that probes in Nigeria had always been retrogressive and had never achieved the desired result. A typical example are the several probes initiated by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua against the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo which achieved nothing except generating newspaper headlines every new day. Take the power sector which Obasanjo was alleged to have spent over $18billion yet there was no power that was generated, even though there was policy framework that had already been laid for power generation and distribution. In the midst of the probes all the gains made were jettisoned and for almost three years nothing was done to improve the power sector till Yar’Adua died on May 5, 2010. Nigeria is still paying the price for the three years that Yar’Adua wasted in probing the power sector. With the Obasanjo power framework in cul-de-sac, President Jonathan from 2012 initiated the present power sector reform or master plan which sadly is yet to achieve the desired result. President Buhari could take a holistic view on the power sector reform under Jonathan and improve on it or even change some aspect of it that was not in the interest of the country. But to probe with the intension of throwing away the baby with the bath water would be counterproductive. As it is for the power sector so should it be for the other sectors that need attention from the incoming government.

Therefore the best legacy that General Buhari would leave for the country in the next eight years is to ensure good governance and to make sure that his administration is not tainted by corruption and corrupt people. All his appointees must be above board. The institutions that prevent and prosecute corruption should be well-grounded by the time he would be leaving office in 2023 so much so that Nigeria would be one of the best countries to do business in Africa. President Buhari therefore has a date with history and should not allow himself to be distracted by probes no matter how popular it may seem. What is important is that corruption MUST stop beginning from his administration and going forward.