A Clarion Call to Arms (5)
Watching the Presidency
“The president reads the newspapers closely from front to back and is really better and more informed … than reading ministerial, advisers and committees memos …, that the press was not aware of this validates the argument that it had not been watching the president closely enough.”
Presidential watch is a game that the Nigerian press has refused to play. You could even say that the press never did have the stomach for watching the rpesidency, a curious omission on the part of the press when you consider the fact the nation’s buck stops at the desk of Shehu Shagari. It is difficult to put the thumb on how things got to be that way. When the Second Republic got under way in 1979, a few journalists tried to cover Shagari’s State House. I wrote a few critical articles in the Daily Times on how the press office was then run or not run when I was in charge of page Seven. I was saying in the pieces that not enough of the president’s activities were being told the country through the press. Some people criticized me as trying to gain a foothold in the State House, probably for the position of the president’s secretary. It hardly really matters that was a ridiculous proposition. And I recall that Stanley Macebuh changed hi scolumn from: In the nation” to “The Presidency” in the Daily Times.s His efforts were in the Daily Times, a squeamish news organ which saw itself as some dandified daily gazette for the government. Thus the effort by the press to watch the Shagari State House died a sudden death, and had cost the nation, if you look back, a great deal.
But why? Presdient Shagari is a voyeur of news. He reads the newspaper closely from front to back in the morning on his breakfast table, minutes on them and sends out queries. I saw this when I interviewed the first citizen, and realized that the president was really better and more informed of the events in his government by reading the newspapaers than by reading ministerial, advisers and committees memos. The fact that much of the Nigerian press was not aware of this, a practice that translates into immense power for journalism, validates the argument that the press had not been watching the president closely enough. Had the effort been made, the press could have realized that the Shagari State House was a beehive of news. The minister, the advisers and other presidential cronies were constantly at each other’s throats, and were ready and willing to squeal on each other at any given moment. It was the sort of state of affairs that made the Shagari State House a dream of journalists, veritable nest of “reliable sources.” Almost all the ministers of state would squeal on their senior minister. Power hungry adviser invariably resented the more powerful ministers, and they were ready to release sensitive government documants that could damage the minister they didn’t like. The minister themselves behave like jealous spouses, all of them struggling and running over each other to get the kind ear of the president. The president’s constitution does not help matters. His affinity for court politics, playing man against man, interest against interest, camp against camp, knowing and saying that he doesn’t know, compounds the problem of effective decision making process in the administration.
President Shagari is stoic, and he is proud of the fact that his expression doesn’t betray the humming in the labyrinth of his mind. His aides lay landmines for each other in trying to read the president’s inscrutable countenance. On top of this is the president’s perception of the most appropriate approach to the presidential system, in the sense that Nigeria elected a parliamentarian to run presidential system. President Shagari’s belief in consensus as an article of faith is a monument by itself. To that extent, you might call him indecisive and slow. That is what I meant when I said in an early instalment that President Shagari didn’t seem to understand his job. If a man has lived all his life in a system, if a man has always been an establishment man, then it becomes too much to expect of him an act that could be seen as intending to jettison that system.
Shagari, a parliamentarian’s parliamentarian, a born team player – and a conservative in that sense – a man who believes in the efficacy of the old system – in which the prime minster and his minister all met to agree to disagree to agree – cannot just eb expected to assault that system in favour of new system that perhaps appears to him esoteric and alien. It just couldn’t happen. He he said so himself, when he told the nations news executives one afternoon that in his view the president didn’t enough authority to act decisively. He said the idea of going to the National Assembly to get authority for his decisions continuously stymied his efforts to act with dispatch. If the president’s authority is watered down, it is definitely not by constitutional role of the National Assembly, but by the way he has organized his branch of the government. The mistake started from day one by his appointment of Shehu Musa as the Secretary to the Federal Government. Shehu Musa is an establishment man, a chip off the old block, a sort of replica of the president himself with regards to the perception of power, its use and the view of the function of government as an idea.
Shehu Musa is a man bred by the civil service. If you wake him up in the depth of sleep and you ask him a question, he will consult the G.O. in his mind before answering you. He must balance how the question asked will affect the orderliness of existing arrangements, and his place in that arrangement. He is man of slow motion. The job of the Secretary to the Government is vital and powerful to the way things move. He is the hub of the wheel of government, that is Shehu Musa now, and his men just doesn’t suit the speed required of that job. Oiled or not oiled, Shehu Musa as the hub will squeak. During the interview that the president granted me sometime ago, I asked him his reasons for choice of Shehu Musa as the Secretary to the Federal Governemnt. He kept quiet for one thunderous moment, and then said that the he chose him because he considered him most suited for the sort of transition character needed for such a new system. As he considered the question before answering, I looked at the president carefully and read on his bland face the fact that he might not have made a good choice after all. It was clear that the president didn ask himself the vital question before picking Shehu Musa for the job. He did not ask whether Shehu Musa understood the new system, although he was a child of the system. What the president did was to give a job tailor-mad for a tough-minded politician, albeit one loyal to the president, to a civic servant whose loyalties were multifarious: loyalty to the system, loyalty to self, and loyalty to boss, in that order.
Asked to describe his perception of his role, Shehu Musa told the Concord Forum that he saw himself as a gate-keeper with a human face. That is, explained, he was expected to act as the middle-manbetween the president and all other men and women in the country, within the administration and without. But he added that he was not expected to behave like a robot. He was supposed to exercise his judgment. What that meant was that Shehu Musa decides on which communication reaches the president, in what nature and colour, which communication will not be allowed to reach the president, all depending on his judgment. Ditto for communication leaving the president. A director-general of one of the parastatals who obviously resents the way and manner in which Shehu Musa keeps the gate once remarked that he is in the habit of finding a way to let the president receive from him directly copies of communication that he has already sent to the president through Shehu Musa. That is the crucial role of that office, at least that is the way the president has designed the office, and that is one of the crucial factors affecting the way the president decides, at least obtaining facts on which he bases his decision. The appointment of Shehu Musa kicked a storm in that it started the establishment of fiefdoms in the administration or what you might call power centers. A s already pointed out, the president’s peculiar view of power encouraged the power struggle in the administration.
The first fiefdom to appear belonged to Umaru Dikko who wanted the job to Shehu Musa. In many regards, Dikko’s temperament appears better suited to the job of the Secreatry to the Federal Government than Shehu Musa’s. Dikko probably resolved early in the administration to grab what presient denied him. Thus, he has acted unabashedly as the de facto Secretary to the Federal Government, the man who read and understood the weaknesses in the president and Shehu Musa and took advantage of the situation early in the administration. He is faster, more ruthless and daring than Shehu Musa. Dikko resembles Bob Haldeman of the Nixon presidency than Shehu Musa could ever hope to, in that he is more fiercely loyal to Shagari over and above any other person or factor. His usurpation of the power vacuum he found in the administration, however not endeared him to others in the administration. He addresses his memos directly to the president, and uses a more personal language in those memos than any other person around the president could ever dare. The issues closet to his heart get the attention of the president over and above those of others. And his appointment as the chairman of the President Ttask Force on Rice, of course, started the practice by the president of appointing his ministers to head bodies that are not in their portfolios. In many regards, as in Dikko’s appointment to the task force on rice, the minsters who lose in power in such reorganization resemble people in whom the president doesn’t have much confidence. The ministers who thus pick up the fall-offs from such ministers behave like people of more importance. Thus the situation was created of a government run by task forces and super-ministerial committees.
The idea of the extra-ministerial committees and other bodies could be beneficial in themselves if they were meant to inject new blood decision-making process in the government. The president could have used the method to invite capable Nigerians who were not in government or belonged to political parties to carry out short-term assignment with speed and fresh intellect. But the president did not choose that avenue. Instead, he has resorted to the system of shuffling his ministers around to solve thorny problems, while in essence the traditional assignments of the ministers suffer as they are busy with the new assignments. And the minister whose responsibilities are thus watered down become resentful and burden to the president and, or course, “reliable sources” of information to the press. The formal manner in which the president decides on matter affecting the nation – from foreign policy issues, to oil matters and the economy – is the meeting of the Council of Ministers which takes place once a week in the State House. Ministers who have matters before the President-in-Council bring their memos to the meeting for discussion. Although the president is the chairman at the meeting, he is understood to be overruled by majority of the ministers. However, a sort of protocol exists in which the president states his position for deliberation by the council in written forms, and the ministers usually adopt the position.
An example of this was the protracted argument between the president’s economic adviser, Professor Edozien, who was made the chairman of the task forde to review the issue of private jetties, and Umaru Dikko, the minister of transport. The two of them submitted memos to the president on the matter. The Sunday Concord published details of the argument and how it was resolved in the issue of January 9, 1983. The president presented a memo to the council in which he backed Professor Edozien. It is noteworthy, however, that Dikko succeeded in delaying decision on the issue by his refusal to respond to the memo sent him on the matter by Professor Edozien. The language of Dikko’s memo was foul, and it was not known whether the president chided him for it or not. However, it supports the argument made else where in this instalment that Dikko interferes with other people’s responsibilities, a state of affairs that he would have disallowed with regards to his own responsibilities. The council of ministers also acts as the clearing house for the awards of contracts being considered by any federal government department or parastatal. In other words, the council may be bugged down in any given week with the discussion of a contract award, or any such fiscal deliberation.
Some people close to the mode of presidential decision even say that the NPN caucus, to which a few powerful NPN members belong, slong with some ministers and advisers, ahs a superior authority to the council of ministers. The way that works, according to the information, is that the president’s memos to the council usually reflects the consensus of the caucus. Thus, the Shagari State House is run variously by the task forces, the council of ministers and the powerful NPN caucus. All this definitely doesn’t lend itself to quick decision-making in the presidential system. The arrangement, at best, smacks of the old parliamentary system in which an aggregate of elected representatives acting as equals, with one of them acting as the superior, takes decisions together. In the presidential system, one man is elected by all the voters in the country who expect him to guide and guard their individual and national interests, and not the ministers and advisers appointed by the president to asslst him in running the affairs of the country. And if a sense of direction and a sense of dispatch have been lacking in the way the current economic depression has been handled, if the Shagari administration has failed to anticipate the economic slump, and if President Shagari has failed to issue a clarion call to arms to Nigerians, the president’s style and understanding of the new system are responsible.
©Sunday Concord, Jue 19, 1983
(Pp.220-225)
