Friends and political relations

Wise men speak because they have something to say. Fools because they have to say something. Plato.

 In the last few weeks, voices raised over the administration's management of the economy have become louder and more distinct. Those that sounded like political grudges around the management of the party or the president's apparent decision to ignore calls for substantial overhaul of his key advisers and appointed public officials were no less shrill, but they have been largely treated as traditional irritants by the people whose jobs it is to slap back on behalf of the president. Many of the politically-aggrieved have chosen the path of designing a future without damaging exposure, but have left enough room for notice and speculation which is vital to political health. Spokespersons have been busy countering most of the pointed criticisms, but the way things look, they will now be a lot busier, or become more discerning in choosing how, when, where and what to respond to. The presidency is at that stage when every criticism hurts, and those who say they are giving you advise as friends are instinctively doubted. When the only real friend is one who suffers your limitations in silence, your circle of friends shrink by the day as more and more walk away and tell the world that the nation has a problem in you. There were a few friends of President Buhari who agonized over his wife's publicly-expressed opinion over his choice of company. A few weeks ago, they would have been in the ranks of those who worried how much of that much- publicized outing and the responses were products of insufficient attention to opinions of the most intimate and closest circles around the president. A few have  now taken up more or less the same method of publicly calling attention to serious limitations in the Presidency's capacities to respond to popular perceptions regarding its hold over the nation's affairs. You could be tempted to remove Buba Galadima from this intimate circle now, given the fading quality of his grievances, but the robust riposte by the president's men suggested that even the comments of a man they say was discarded for deep moral limitations and who today may not win an election with his family as voters had hurt the president by  hinting at a character flaw in the inability to sustain and reward loyalty, and for his doomsday scenario that everyone will abandon the president by 2019.

Then former president Obasanjo rumbled in with gloved hands to remind President  Buhari  that he was running low on fuel. For a man known for his poison pen and irredeemable quality of staying right in the face of all power, a few friends of the president will be happy Obasanjo is not writing a letter. He had delivered a lecture at which he upbraided policies around the management of the economy, questioned the wisdom of borrowing $30b, and  protested being lumped in President Buhari's refrain that the last sixteen years of the nation's experience under the PDP have been an unmitigated disaster which his administration is having to reverse. Obasanjo's warning that the march was slow and confused because the president leading it insists on looking back while attempting to move forward was a way of hinting that he can remove gloves. Perhaps to soften blows, Obasanjo threw in a few commendations in the direction of President Buhari, and then his trademark lampooning of the federal legislature as evidence of our penchant for tolerating organized plunder of the commonwealth. Perhaps the rambling, no-holds-barred response of the legislators had encouraged the president's men to hold fire and restrain instincts to hit back. It may not be entirely out of place as well to assume that higher wisdom had cautioned against hinting at a serious falling-out between Buhari and a man who had started with warm embrace and finished in serious scuffles with all other presidents since 1979.

The statement released following the Ondo governorship elections which saw the President and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu lining up behind different aspirants and the triumph of the President's man appeared designed to limit serious depletion in the ranks of the President's friendly circle. It was emphatic on non-existence of any rancour between the two strategic allies, as well the tremendous esteem with which Buhari holds Asiwaju. This attempt at damage control is yet to show dividends, but it does suggest that the president is sensitive to  the dangers of having too many ex-friends and allies. It may have been, at least in part, an effort to  stem the rumoured plans of many pillars of the structure put together to capture power two years ago, to move away and reconstruct political platforms in new territories with different blocks. There will also be some hope that those vigorously working at replacing the inner circle of influence and confidence will take the statement seriously and back away some steps, at least for now. The next few months will be interesting because they will have to reveal how the battles for 2019 will be fought, with and against whom.

The president will have to hope that those who manage his image and strategy are on the same page with whatever his plans are for managing the political contexts of his economic policies and his  political plans in the longer term. Right now, there appears to be a fixation with knee jerk reactions to criticisms and comments that suggest that the post-Ondo elections statement was a glitch. By any standards, the recent critique of the administration's fiscal and monetary policies by the former Governor of the Central Bank and now Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II is significant in a number of areas. First, it is informed and frank, in the tradition of a man who had dared more hostile adversaries and has the scars to show for it. Second, it says a lot about relations between the Emir and the President, two people who have more than a shared history of being on the receiving end of power and of the struggles to end the Jonathan administration, that such comprehensive indictment of some practices and policies of an administration managing an economy in deep recession has to be made in public. The Emir is not an ordinary citizen with knowledge, experience and courage who has no access to power. He occupies a very sensitive position with a tradition of being seen, not heard. He obviously feels it is more important to say what is wrong publicly than tolerate it behind a turban and a tradition he breached under Jonathan, and now does under Buhari. Three, Emir Sanusi would expect that he will be taken up by the President's men, and this is likely to caution that what he said about the economy and its management would have benefitted from his ability and willingness to defend them. A long and bruising engagement with the Emir will do a lot of damage to an administration already neck-deep in criticisms over its performance, even if many are undeserved.

Initial responses to the Emir's critique suggest that it will be treated in the same manner other criticisms are: with a tweet or a paragraph or two more suited to the social media, condemning them as uninformed and mischievous. This will be deeply damaging and counter-productive. A studied response  by those with the capacities to understand the critique and the disposition to address, not the Emir, but the nation over them is what is needed at this stage. The same approach should be adopted in responding to the multiple sources of complaints and alarm being raised over the scale and projections of malnutrition and starvation among displaced populations in the north east. The global community and local groups have rendered invaluable humanitarian service to all victims of the Boko Haram insurgency, working with all Nigerian governments and sometimes going where these do not go. There will certainly be a few among the more than fifty organizations in the northeast who are in it for their pockets, but the vast majority of them represent genuine and valuable sources of relief and assistance to a desperate population. They see and speak in private about incompetence and corruption in a region facing one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world today. They plan to stay, but they also need to be taken more seriously when they raise issues because major stresses between them and Nigerian authorities will seriously hamper more spending that will be contingent on greater levels of efficiency and transparency.