"Ladies and gentlemen", Alhaji Samaila Isa Funtua, the then President of the Newspapers Proprietors of Nigeria (NPAN) angrily scolded the full-house audience at the Arewa House in Kaduna, "you have to behave yourselves!"
The sniggering laughter that had elicited this sharp admonition quickly turned into an angry buzz, the kind of sound that comes from a beehive when an unwanted visitor strays into it. Many people wanted to walk out on the conference unless Funtua was made to apologise for his discourtesy to the throng.
The trap was deliberately (and with mischievous intent), laid for him by the retired Colonel Yohannah Madaki, the former radical military officer-turned lawyer, and the first military officer to dethrone an emir. The event was the conference organised in Kaduna by the New Nigerian newspaper and the Nigerian Television Authority in 1996 to generate the ideas and momentum for the Abacha regime’s counter-propaganda programme. You will remember that the document that came out of that workshop was creatively termed: Not in Our Character.
What happened was this. Both Madaki and Funtua were invited guests billed to speak at the talk shop. Madaki spoke ahead of Funtua, and he decided to pull Funtua’s leg. You remember that Funtua was the publisher of The Democrat newspaper based in Kaduna. By 1996, Abacha’s dictatorship was in full steam. Some of the victims included some newspapers, particularly The Guardian and The Punch, which were proscribed. Madaki, rather maliciously, accused Funtua of lobbying the Abacha regime to close down rival newspapers based in the South. Madaki knew his remarks would provoke Funtua’s hair-trigger temper. For reasons known to Madaki, that was exactly what he wanted to achieve. And he scored a bull’s eye. When Funtua eventually took the centre stage, he unloaded a mouthful of unprintable verbiage in Madaki’s direction, and the reaction of the audience indicated that he took Madaki’s sour joke too badly. Eventually, Funtua piped down, apologised and proceeded to defend himself and his newspaper and make other useful contributions. All was well that ended well.
On Wednesday, November 24, the revered Nigerian Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, found herself in the ugly situation of a costly outburst. She had been summoned by the House of Representatives Committee on Finance to explain aspects of the 2005 Appropriation Bill, now in the process of being passed into law at the National Assembly. When a member of the committee, Dr. Usman Bugaje, remarked that the heavy amount of money claimed to have been spent by the Federal Government has not made commensurate impact on the people of the country, the minister reportedly flew off the handle. She was reported to have accused Nigerians of ingratitude for the efforts the present administration has made to tackle the economic problems of the country.
A lot of people were surprised and disappointed that such a respected person as Dr. Okonjo-Iweala would speak like that. I have had a couple of encounters with the Finance Minister. When I read about her remarks, I was surprised but not much. Let me explain.
What I found out about this lady is that she tends to burst out sporadically. But it is not like the typical outbursts of tantrum throwers. There is no vice or evil attached. It is more of an expression of frustrated rage than anything else. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala is the type of person who argues her point with passion, especially when she doesn’t seem to be making a headway with her audience on a matter she considers simple enough a word for the wise. But she usually pipes down soon enough. If in the heat of argument you were able to hold your opinion intelligently, you will become her friend even if you don’t agree on procedural issues. She has the ways of a baby - absolutely no guile. A person like her is, therefore, very easy to misunderstand, if you choose not to read between the lines or study the context within which utterances occurred.
Could she say Nigerians are not showing enough gratitude for the Obasanjo regime’s efforts at mending the economy? Even though I was not there, I think so. Even when she was less than a year old in Obasanjo’s cabinet, she had already started sounding surprised that Nigerians were not taking adequate note of the government’s economic exploits. It showed in the interview she granted me. She really believes this regime is doing a lot. If it were possible to have a Prime Minister under a presidential system of government, she is the one holding that portfolio right now. She heads the President’s economic team. And for sure, we now get government figures on how much is coming into the Federation Account, how it is being shared among the various levels of government and how much excess funds we are getting from the sale of crude oil in the international market. Transparency, especially in these and the areas of contract due processes and greater effort towards respect for appropriation law implementation, is very evident.
But the Obasanjo regime still has a long, long way to go before whatever it is doing in the name of deregulation peculates down to the people. So far, on the economic front, the only Federal Government policy that has dividend that could elicit "gratitude" from the people is the GSM phenomenon. All other economic reform processes, such as fuel deregulation, the restoration of the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), the reform of the banking sector, pension, health, housing and other reforms, as well as "poverty eradication" programmes, are still government paper work. Even the so-called "agricultural revolution", which the President often boasts of each time he gets the opportunity, is not yet being felt among the people.
It is not even true that Nigerians are a bundle of ingrates. This assertion is not supported by fact. In fact, Nigerians are often over-grateful. Little effort impresses them. Nigerian people are very quick to commend, just as they can be swift to condemn when they have to. Nigerians have become adjusted to a situation of expecting little from government. But whenever government goes out of its way to carry out people-oriented programmes, Nigerians are quick to come forward with praise.
There are concrete examples in the past and present. During the First Republic, we had three very effective regional governments. Nigerians still remember the exploits of Dr. Michael Okpara’s government in the East, Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s in the West and Sardauna Ahmadu Bello’s in the North. The people of the old Bendel still remember with great nostalgia the golden years under the government of their beloved former Military Governor, Dr. Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia. People still try to win votes with the names of these great leaders. Nigerians still remember the short-lived reign of General Murtala Mohammed, as well as the Generals Muhammadu Buhari/Tunde Idiagbon programme of War Against Indiscipline (WAI). We recall with nostalgia, General Sani Abacha’s Petroleum Trust Fund, and the chances are very good that even if Obasanjo’s second coming will be remembered for nothing else, two things will count very strongly in its favour:
the GSM revolution and Dr. Dora Akunyili’s war against drug and food products fakers.
If Dr. Okonjo-Iweala wants to know the truth, the head of this administration has generated more pain and anger in the land in his handling of national affairs than pleasure. It is not easy for an unpleasant person to earn public applause, even if sometimes he gets some things done right either by design or accident.
It is all very easy for people sitting in the insulated confines of government offices in Abuja to expect cheers from the Nigerian crowd for their every move, but it does not quite work like that. Nigerians want to feel the impact of all those "big grammar" in their daily lives.
The moment any leader is able to make things work better, Nigerians will feel it, and they will become that leader’s greatest defender.
