By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi

March 30 was my birthday. Although I don’t celebrate
birthdays, people close to me—especially my children
and my wife—make it a special day for me. They take
me to a dainty restaurant for a nice dinner. But this
birthday was different. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep,
either. Although I knew that the balance of forces
favored a Buhari win, I was nonetheless gripped by
crippling anxieties about the election. I’d feared that
Goodluck Jonathan would rig himself back to power
and plunge the country into a fratricidal upheaval.
Even though I live in America and will not be affected
in a direct way by what happens in Nigeria, I love
Nigeria too much to be unconcerned by what goes on
there. I knew that Nigeria would never be able to
survive another four years of Goodluck Jonathan’s
ineptitude, and the prospect of Jonathan forcing himself
back to power by any means terrified me to no end.

That was why I stayed up all night monitoring the
election on Facebook, Twitter, and Channels TV. My
heart stood still several times during the night.
Thankfully, my worst fears didn't come to pass.
I was also deeply touched when I discovered that my
American students who are enrolled in my Global
Journalism class this semester got equally emotionally
invested in the election. At least two of them stayed up
the night monitoring the results of the election on
Channel TV’s livestream. You’re probably wondering
why young white Americans would be so invested in an
election taking place in a distant place to sacrifice their
sleep.

Well, in several discussions in the class, I sparked their
interest about Nigeria—and about the elections that
just ended. But, most importantly, Goodluck Jonathan
has become a known name in America in the last few
months for the wrong reasons. The worldwide “Bring
Back Our Girls” protest caused several Americans to
find out who Nigeria’s president was. What they found
out—and say about him—isn’t flattering. First, they
think he’s too incompetent to be president of any
country. Second, Americans find his name and ever-
present fedora hilarious. (There is a popular comedic
children’s TV show here called “Good Luck Charlie,” so
when President Jonathan’s name is mentioned in the
news, they think of the TV show, which causes them to
laugh).

In any event, as I wrote on my Facebook timeline,
Buhari’s epoch-making electoral triumph in the last
presidential election is the best birthday gift I’ve ever
received in all my adult life. I’ve been ecstatic since it
became apparent that Buhari had won the election.
This is undoubtedly a great moment for Nigeria and for
Nigeria’s democracy. But after savoring the afterglow
of the victory, President-elect Buhari needs to come to
terms with several things.

First, as he himself has recognized in his acceptance
speech, his honeymoon with Nigerians won’t last too
long. In light of the blight and venality that has
characterized the past few years—and the enormous,
some would say unrealistic, hopes that Nigerians have
invested in him to right the wrongs of the past—there
is bound to be what sociologists call the crisis of rising
expectations. So when Nigerians get impatient with
him, he shouldn’t be irritated.

His relationship with the media would be crucial. The
media will get under his skin. Columnists like me will
excoriate him, not because we hate him, but because
we care, and because we know that to perform well
and be in touch with the masses of people who elected
him, we need to help hold his feet to the fire. When
Thomas Jefferson famously said, “Were it left to me to
decide whether we should have a government without
newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I
should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter” he
was acknowledging the importance of the media to the
sustenance of democracy.

President Buhari should expect to be scrutinized and
criticized and even “attacked” by critical media outfits
like the compulsively contrarian Sahara Reporters,
which robustly supported him throughout his campaign
for the presidency. Recall that the same Sahara
Reporters vigorously supported Jonathan against the
late Yar’adua’s “cabal.” Before then, it supported
Abubakar Atiku against Obasanjo. It will turn against
Buhari the moment he officially assume duties. It’s not
personal. Sahara Reporters understands its role as a
comforter of the afflicted and an afflicter of the
comfortable.

Many of us share this “adversarial” philosophy of the
press and shouldn’t be made to suffer for it. I want to
be able to visit Nigeria without being harassed by
security forces because I wrote critical articles against
the president and his government. That’s one area I
give President Goodluck Jonathan some credit. I was
the first person to call him “unfathomably clueless” in
my recounting of his first American visit when he was
acting president. “Clueless” has now become his second
name. Yet I have never been harassed in all the times I
have visited Nigeria during his presidency.
Where he erred, however, was in choosing vulgar,
abusive, ill-bred philistines like Reuben Abati and
Doyin Okupe as his mediators with the Nigerian public.
Buhari should never make that mistake. He should
make it clear to whoever he appoints as his
intercessors with the public that their role is to explain
the president’s policies to the people, not to insult and
denigrate critics of government. Employing Abati- and
Okupe-like media reps is the fastest way to deplete any
president’s goodwill.

Lastly, Buhari should resist the temptation of falling
into the trap of provincialism. He won an
unprecedentedly national mandate. His “kitchen
cabinet” should reflect this.






www.farooqkperogi.com/2015/04/after-euphoria-what-president-elect.html?m=1