Presidential leadership for nations in distress

IT can be generally agreed that leadership, for nations in distress, is the ability to help frame the issues without aggravating the problems and inflaming passions. This is especially true in a multi party democracy.
To begin with the President or Prime Minister must be aware of two indisputable facts. One, not all the citizenry are members of his or any other political party. The vast majority cast their votes and will be led by whoever emerges as the elected ruler. Second, once elections are over, the national leader is expected to shed a great deal of his partisanship and attempt to forge unity of purpose among the people – including his political opponents.

This is imperative whenever the nation faces hardship. The leader as statesman must realise that the campaign was over on voting day and collective governance takes over from the minute he is sworn into office. Partisan rhetoric must be muted; party propaganda toned down and outright inexactitudes avoided.
It is in this context that President Buhari’s statement on Sallah Day, at his home in Daura, can be regarded as unfortunate. Buhari’s declaration that he inherited nothing from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, after sixteen years’ rule has stretched exaggeration to the breaking point. Apart from fellow Nigerians who were around during those sixteen years, there were large numbers of people from the international community who would have received that message with concern. A few examples will be sufficient to illustrate that this president was unfair in his comment.
Jonathan’s administration left approximately $38 billion in External Reserves, which have now been depleted to under $29 billion since last year May.
In addition, $2.3 billion was left in the Excess Crude Account, ECA. Apart from financial legacies, Buhari recently flagged-off the Kaduna-Abuja rail line – which was not started in May last year. The Abuja Airport to Central Business District Expressway went from four lanes in May 1999 to what it is today and many of the physical structures along that route alone were not there in 1999.
Yar’Adua started the Abuja-Lokoja Expressway expansion now nearing completion and paid for some of the power plants now adding thousands of Mega Watts to our national grid among other additions he made to infrastructure in his short stay.
Obasanjo, like him or not, opened Nigeria to the global ICT network when he registered the first three GSM networks. It is inconceivable for Buhari to run government today if all the network service providers shut down at once. Not even a civil war can equal the tragedies that would occur if that occurs.
But we need not list all Buhari inherited from the PDP to prove the point. Granted, there are serious questions about massive corruption and whether Nigerians received value for the trillions spent. But, that is another issue. Buhari cannot expect support from Nigerians on fighting corruption by making statements which call his own truthfulness into question. The President should watch his utterances before he brings his office to ridicule.