By Douglas Anele

In this regard, APC is certainly not different from the PDP. The way I see it, given what is known about most prominent leaders of the new ruling party, those who believe it can deliver meaningful change nationwide should think seriously of the possibility that they might be mistaken. Consider the President, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari.

Handover : Jonathan presenting handing over notes to Buhari. File Photo

Every competent psychologist knows that adaptability to change and willingness to put on a new thinking cap and do things differently diminishes with advancing age.

Thus as a septuagenarian, the President’s capacity to change his entrenched beliefs and attitudes to governance in line with changing circumstances is less than what it was when he was a forty-two year old military head of state.

Perhaps that was why President Buhari, while speaking to Nigerians resident in South Africa, frankly acknowledged that there are limits to what he can accomplish in office because of his age. Apart from that, Buhari’s core military background and disposition as a devout Muslim encourage conservative tendencies, which would severely restrict his willingness to try novel but effective strategies of effective leadership, especially if such approaches conflict with the command-and-obey military ethos and Islamic teachings.

Irrespective of the vituperations against critics who point to the President Buhari’s rigidity and decisions that refute exaggerated claims of his detribalised attitude, prominent members of the conservative Northern elite such as Ango Abdullahi, Ibrahim Commassie and Junaid Mohammed consider him as President for the North above everything else, whose preeminent duty is to protect the interests of that region.

Now, although one should avoid hasty generalisation at this stage, the notion that the President would likely promote a hegemonic Northern agenda is corroborated by his recent appointments, which heavily favour the North.

Even, some Northern politicians are claiming that in the alliance that produced APC, defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) hitherto dominant in the South West is the subaltern or junior partner to the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the party that fielded Buhari as presidential candidate in 2011. The antecedents of other APC leaders, such as Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in my humble opinion, do not inspire confidence that positive change is about to happen because APC is now the ruling party.

Atiku Abubakar’s record as Vice President to Chief Olusegun Obasabjo was mediocre: for example, his role as overseer of the privatisation and commercialisation programme of Obasanjo created some issues for both men at the end of the day with accusations and counter accusations flying about.  Bola Tinubu was governor of Lagos State for eight years.

According to his traducers, the former governor accumulated so much money to the extent that he is the dominant politician in Yorubaland. An objective assessment of the public service records of John Odigie Oyegun, Bukola Saraki, Yakubu Dogara and others would likely reveal a near total absence of achievements that might indicate capacity or potential for radical transformative social action. Having said that, APC is largely a party of dyed in the wool conservatives who benefitted (and are still benefiting) tremendously from the status quo.

Of course there are ideological differences between the parties that came together to form the APC. Yet, chieftains of these parties have an overarching interest in maintaining existing political and economic structures designed for optimum exploitation of the masses. Those who naively believed the change shibboleths from APC’s vuvuzelas did not reckon with the fact that Nigerian politicians tend to put aside differences in ethnicity, religion and party alleviations in order to protect and enhance their selfish interests.

Based on what is known publicly about leading APC members, it would be easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for these politicians to eschew selfishness and work genuinely hard together to uplift the poor, the unemployed and the downtrodden. The PDP and the APC are like the duck-rabbit image in gestalt psychology.

As we indicated last week, real social change is not a matter of sloganeering and making promises upon promises during political campaigns; it is not a question of excuses or complaining about how terrible previous administrations performed while in office. Progressive change is a very difficult and demanding task.

That is why, historically speaking, positive social transformation is a relatively rare phenomenon. Genuine change-agents or paradigmatic individuals such as Mahatma Gandhi, Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela who were at the forefront of positive social change in their various countries transformed themselves intellectually and morally first through self-discipline and personal sacrifices before taking on the bigger challenge of societal transformation.

I do not know whether APC leaders, as individuals, really spent time to think about the challenge of how to bring about positive changes in key areas of our national life. But one thing is clear from the few decisions taken thus far by the President, the childish bickering about leadership positions in the National Assembly, and ethnic-flavoured responses by some chieftains of APC to crisis in the party – the promised change might not materialise by 2019.

There is hardly any concrete evidence that political office holders from APC are prepared for the kind of personal sacrifices required from them to bring about positive transformation. Tokenisms in the form of shallow reductions in salaries and allowances merely scratch the problem without addressing it from the root cause. It is unfortunate that the new ruling party is not interested in tackling one of the fundamental causes of our arrested development, namely, the skewed federal structure that has emasculated the states by making them appendages of a cake-sharing federal government.

In fact, the present geopolitical arrangement codified in the 1999 constitution is worse than the structure stipulated by the Unification Decree of May 24, 1966. Unlike the situation now, the provinces created by Maj. Gen. J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi were economically viable and not too firmly tied to the fiscal and economic apron strings of the central government. A plausible case can be made that APC’s unwillingness to include restructuring in its agenda for change is informed by obdurate refusal of some key elements of the Northern establishment to allow greater autonomy to the geopolitical zones.

The survivalist sentiment behind the refusal is understandable, although its continuation is dangerous to the overall development of the country. Because about eighty percent of federal revenue distributed to all the states is derived from sale of crude oil domiciled in Southern Nigeria, and because VIP Northerners have more oil blocks than their Southern compatriots, restructuring and fiscal federalism would be detrimental to the pecuniary interests of prominent Northerners benefiting from the system.

But unless Nigeria is restructured along federalist lines that approximate the former regional structure of 1960 to 1966, no meaningful sustainable change would be achieved. I do not see how APC can keep its promise of change without reconstructing the geopolitical architectonic of the country.

Meanwhile, are Nigerians clamouring for change ready to drop their irrational attitudes, bad habits and unpatriotic behaviours? How many of those supporting President Buhari with religious fervour are prepared to be more realistic now that elections are over and recognise that APC might have hyperbolised Buhari’s abilities for the sole purpose of securing victory? As I said earlier, it is too early to pass judgement on the new federal government. Nevertheless, if as my people the Igbo would say, the morning gives an indication of what the whole day would be like, there are good reasons to suspect that expectation of a better Nigeria with the emergence of APC in power might be a mirage. The countdown has begun already.

Concluded.