Wednesday, January 16 was a very busy day for Journalists in Nigeria, especially those who are paid to follow the trend in the political circle. The social media was also not left out of the flurry of activities around the key political figures jostling for attention ahead of the February 16, presidential election.
It was the day President Muhammadu Buhari, the candidate of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) was selected to appear before a live television audience which was beam live to millions of viewers in what the organisers said was a town hall meeting with presidential candidates and their running mates.
In Lagos, the candidate of the main opposition party, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar equally was hosted to an event coordinated by the Organized Private Sector (OPS).
The two top candidates were in the companies of their top aides and supporters at the two separate gathering to cheer them up.
At the Abuja town hall live television show, candidate Buhari was busy dogging questions from kadaria Ahmed, the host of the programme and at some point his deputy Professor Yemi Osibanjo has to interpret or rather break down the questions to enable his principal effectively digest it. Even with that, the president was unable to decipher meaning out of many of the questions asked him by the host; he was mostly off the range.
Buhari refused to answer question on his next move concerning his most trumpeted anti-corruption campaign, he was most of the time off-key when asked what he would do differently in the fight against corruption if he was elected again.
The best the president could mutter was to go into how difficult it has been to prosecute the war against corruption due to lengthy legal procedure, resistance from the accused, etc.
He evaded the question on what he will do if he lose the forthcoming election, he rather preferred to inundate the audience with the story of the previous loses and how he went to court to challenge the result of past elections.
He was also not forthcoming on the question on his state of health and his capacity to continue in office due to his well known health challenges.
During the interview session, the president came on as someone who was tired, that could be understandable considering his age and combining the rigour of running the country with ongoing electioneering. How do someone explain away his illogical responses to many of the questions asked by the host.
Overall, the president appear not to remember many things, even with the help of his deputy, he was far from being articulate on many of the issues raised by the host at the town hall meeting.
If the live television broadcast were to be a job interview for the country’s chief executive officer, our president will not only have lost his chance to complete his tenure but would have been denied any opportunity to get a fresh mandate to continue in office.
No reasonable member of panel of interviewer would have offered him a second chance at the job from the appraisal of his past performance and prospect of the next four years.
If I was a member of such panel, my verdict would have been; “Mr President Thanks for coming, but you needs to go home and rest in the company of your children and grandchildren, you really deserve it.” .
However, the candidate of the main opposition party, Atiku Abubakar has remained the more vibrant of the two top contenders to the position of Nigeria CEO. His speeches were well delivered; his position on many issues was articulated and well passed on.
At the Lagos event, he reiterated his position that he would privatise the country’s oil behemoth, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). He was also bullish on his determination to restructure the country and other sundry issues.
The turn off of his response to many of the issues raised at the event was his blatant claimed that he will enrich his friends and not family under the privatization programme as long as it is not done under any corruption tendency. He asked his audience if his friends are not qualified to be enriched.
Atiku, as he is fondly called by his supporters simply confirmed the damning verdict on him by the global political analysts and consultancy group Eurasia on his tendency for corrupt enrichment of self, family and friends.
In its report on the forthcoming general election, Eurasia described Atiku as “another gerontocrat who would focus on enriching himself and his cronies, avoiding the difficult and politically unpopular tasks necessary for reform.”
The same Eurasia equally described President Buhari as “an elderly, infirm leader who lacks the energy, creativity, or political savvy to move the needle on Nigeria’s most intractable problems.”
Atiku who is banking largely on his promise to restructure the country to gain the votes of the electorate in the southern part of the country is mostly seen as merely playing to the gallery so as to win the heart of the core southerners who have chosen restructuring theme as their major bargaining issue.
Atiku may have warmed himself to the heart of some of the private sector operators with the way he attended to the issues of multiplicity of exchange rates, which is one of the major banes of the slow growth in the economy.
Also with his promise to reduce the size of government and promote private sector driven economy, some people within his audience may have also decided to give him an average mark for his performance at the event.
Going by this presumptuous average score if the event in Lagos was to be an interview to select a chief executive for the country, Atiku would perhaps be smiling home by now as the possible candidate for the post in view of the fact that he outpaced his major contender, Buhari.
However, the snag is that both Buhari and Atiku are just two out of many candidates jostling for the position of the chief executive of the country; so narrowing the choice down to the two of them was a misnomer and should not be allowed to continue to fly.
The two candidates are the least qualified in terms of academic, records of performance and proposal to turn around the wheel of the country’s economy so far made to the electorate or interviewers as the case may be.
Although the two main contenders score higher in terms of followership, ability to induce those who will decide their fate and experience on the job assessment; nonetheless, they failed woefully using other parameters to judge them.
Other candidates lining up for the top job include; former vice president of the World Bank and a minister in the regime of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, Oby Ezekwesili, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Kingsley Morghalu, publisher of the raving online news, Sahara Reporter and a former student activist Omoyele Sowore and a motivational speaker and entrepreneur, Fela Durotoye, among the scores.
As it is today, a leader that Nigeria needs is the one who is knowledgeable about the economy and understand what should be done to revive the floundering ship of the nation.
Nigeria definitely needs a young, very agile and intelligent chief executive officer who will not be encumbered bypass misdeed, have less garbage and have the flexibility to adapt fresh method to tackle the many challenges facing the country.
Nigeria requires the service of a CEO who will be creative, innovative and not bug down by loyalty to primordial tendency, someone who could empathise with the yearnings of the majority of Nigerians irrespective of tribe, religion and political affiliation.
Nigeria needs someone who will be bold enough to confront the behemoth of corruption irrespective of whose horse is goaded and with the capacity to break the shackles of oligarchy dominating every facet of the economy.
If I was to be a member of the panel interviewing candidates for the position of the chief executive officer for the country, both Buhari and Atiku will not have any opportunity to proceed further beyond the campaign period. I would have long bided them out of the boardroom in preference for one of the egg heads who have demonstrated capability within their field of endeavors.
For Atiku, the testimonial of his former boss, ex president Obasanjo on his corruption tendency, his divisiveness and his inability to rein his cronies’ appetite for dipping their hands in our commonwealth is sufficient to disqualify him.
On the part of Buhari, his abysmal performance in the more than three and half years he has been in the saddle is enough evidence that he lacks the right skill to direct the ship of the country.
Unfortunately, Nigeria is not a progressive-minded country; many members of the panel of interview, of whom I am one, are not sensitive to good quality but are rather driven by sentiment and affiliation to other unimportant parameters than the best for the country.
Many members of the panel; the electorate are focused more on appeal to their political orientation, who is more aligned to their godfathers and who could perhaps pay more attention to line their pocket than the other. It is almost certain that both Buhari and Atiku are likely going to be the predominant choice for the job and one of the two is on his way to grab the job and be on the driver seat for the next four years at the end of the contest.
Those who are parading more quality credentials and possibly the energy and capability to be in the driver seat may not and never get there with the way our politics is structured unless there is a miracle soon.
* Mayowa is a Lagos Based international financial journalist
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