Tuesday Column By VICTORIA NGOZI IKEANO
vikeano@yahoo.co.uk 08033077519
Nigerians are said to be difficult to govern. There is no empirical evidence to back this but one thing is indisputable. It is that Nigerians are hard to please. Each succeeding government is considered worse than its predecessor in the opinion of the average Nigerian; from the Shehu Shagari era down to the present time, it has always been the same. General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime that is considered generally as harbinger of Nigeria’s economic predicament is viewed upon hindsight as being better off than what we are experiencing today.
“Things were much better then than today”, the average person would tell you. Yet during his time Babangida’s government was vilified for ‘bastardizing’ our economy and polity with the structural adjustment program (SAP) and the weird two- party political system that was a hybrid of civilian parliament (national assembly) and military executive. Subsequent administrations save for those whose tenure were short- lived, were similarly vilified only for their successors to suffer similar fate later. The Goodluck Ebele Jonathan government was viewed as not good enough for us and the general consensus was that the government should be booted out of Aso Rock Villa to halt the ‘downward slide’. So, he was roundly defeated in an election that was generally considered to be free and fair. Some years into the Buhari administration Nigerians that sang ‘hossana’ when it birthed, began to sing a different song.
Most people began to have a second thought about the Jonathan-led administration, saying that it was not that bad after all, given what was being experienced under the succeeding regime. The country’s fault lines which were considered to have reached a crescendo at that time became amplified during Buhari’s rule. Criminality become hydraheaded and pervasive. The All Progressives Congress party which rode to power on the wings of popular support began to be seen in a different light. Some of us felt sorry for the then president, seeing that history was ‘dishonoring’ our once revered Mohammadu Buhari.
However, I had in 2020 written in black and white: “I can wager that whoever and whichever party comes on board in 2023 would after a while also face complaints of not performing well enough. For, things seem to be getting worse and worse. Just when you think things cannot be any worse than they are or that we have seen it all, new challenges emerge while old ones take on new forms. Thus today’s ‘villain’ may be tomorrow’s hero. Such appear to be the way of our world” .
Alas, many are now beginning to make comparisons between the previous regime and the current one and to rate the former higher. Despite the economic pains we are currently experiencing, I think we should ideally wait till end of Bola Tinubu’s first tenure before making a proper assessment. More importantly, given the administration’s assurances that these pains would begin to ease by next year, we should wait and see. In judging any administration Nigerians should consider what tools, essentially monies, it had to work with at take off point. This government met a depleted cash reserve. I am not holding brief for it though. The bottom line is that given its promises, we should have an indication of where the country is heading to (for good or bad) next year. Am saying that we should give them benefit of the doubt while wishing our country the best. We should never wish our country evil since it’s progress or otherwise affects us all.
Nigerians are genenrally fickle minded, fastidious, armchair critics. When they urge you to follow a certain route and you do, they will still be the ones criticising you for taking that path. Such a difficult people as we are often thence, confuse decision makers that have no strong convictions.
