Why This Presidential Transition Matters, By Dakuku Peterside

 

Dakuku Peterside

 

Presidential transition periods are times of excitement, hope, apprehension, speculation, and drama. It is associated with chaos, complexity, and coordination challenges. The incumbent president is not only saddled with the task of leading the country but also must start winding down its activities and prepare to hand over the presidency to the new president and his team. The incumbent almost becomes a lame duck as all the political activities shift to the president-elect.

The president and his team start to feel the fleeting nature of power and quickly start losing the friends of the president’s seat to the new man and his people in the block. The pilgrimage to the incumbent president gradually winds down, and the expedition to the president-elect goes into the ascendency. These political intrigues and melodramas culminate in the final ritual of power handover – the presidential inauguration ceremony on the 29th of May of the year of the transition of power. In Nigeria, from 1999 till date, we have had six such presidential transition ceremonies but three transitions from one president to another – Obasanjo to Yar’Adua/ Jonathan, Jonathan to Buhari and now Buhari to Tinubu.

There are predominantly two shades of presidential transition: one is a transition from a president from one party to a president under another party; the other is the transition from a president to another under the same party. We have experienced both in our nascent democracy, which can be taken as an indicator of growth and the deepening of our democracy. Each transition poses challenges and brings about different apprehensions, claims and counterclaims. However, the current presidential transition is of the former shade and, therefore, must be assumed to be more accessible – President Buhari of the APC will hand over to President-elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC.

This is the easiest part of this presidential transition steep in controversy and has split public opinion into multiple dichotomies. The dominant categorisations of these dichotomous strands are binary – some calling for the presidential transition to be postponed for different conjectural reasons , and others insisting it must hold, based on orthodoxy and the provisions of our constitution. They are all entitled to their opinion but the law of the land must prevail.

Beyond these apparent differences, most Nigerians are interested in this presidential transition. Some Nigerians see this transition as a symbol of hope for a better future – an audacious hope in the Tinubu team to solve most of Nigeria’s problems and put the country in the direction of growth and prosperity. Others, although cautious , want to see a new government with a change of direction. Still, others are merely pessimistic and predict doom and gloom for the country. The reality is that only the future will tell what the Tinubu/Shettima presidency will mean for Nigeria, and no level of optimism or pessimism will change that. The beauty of democracy is that these differences in opinion and expectations are allowed and even encouraged. Democracy is at its best when and where there are conflicting and opposing ideas and interests in the open market of ideas.