He was not famous for humour, but the late Muhammadu Buhari once delivered a punchy reply to those who called him Baba Go Slow in his early days as civilian president. Chief Michael Otedola, Governor of Lagos State in the Third Republic, earned the same nickname, coming as he did to Alausa years after “Aksiyon Govno” Lateef Kayode Jakande left the same seat. Buhari however had a question for his critics. He said, “Those who were in a hurry, where did they go?”
The answer is, some went somewhere and some of them ended up nowhere. There are many obstacles to getting things done in Nigeria, from bureaucratic bottlenecks to not cashed-backed budgets to contractors’ greed to fake building products to quack engineers to dubious payment of compensation to pressure from legislators to selfish security agents to It Is Our Turn attitude of family members, townspeople and old school mates.
As Buhari asked, where did hurry take many other people? No Nigerian ruler ever was in a greater hurry than one military ruler in the mid-1970s who announced all sackings and policy measures “with immediate effect.” He created more states; moved the Federal Capital; decongested the ports; declared that “Africa has come of age;” repudiated a US President’s circular not to recognize Angola’s MPLA; and he thoroughly purged the public service of “deadwoods.”
On the day he announced the report of the probe of previous military governors, he said, “Those of them who wore uniforms betrayed the ethics of their professions and they are a disgrace to those professions. They should be ashamed of themselves. They are therefore dismissed with ignominy and with immediate effect.” It was the biggest ever hurry in Nigerian rule.
For trying to get rid of the Maroko slum in a hurry, newspaper editors nicknamed one Military Governor of Lagos State “The Bulldozer.” Maroko had turned into a huge slum, and clearing it of squatters in order to prepare the site for demolition and reconstruction was a very painful affair. The Bulldozer did it in a hurry, for the good of Lagos.
There was the military governor in Oyo State who went all out to crush anti-government protesters. After rounding up the leaders, he said, “All those who were captured will be held as Prisoners of War!” The hurry didn’t pay off because one of the captured men later succeeded him as Governor of Oyo State.
During the military era, one powerful Second in Command was in such a hurry to decongest prisons that he asked why there were 900 people on death row throughout the country. He was told that it was because of the reluctance of civilian governors to sign death warrants even after appeals processes were exhausted. He then ordered military governors all over the country to sign all 900 death warrants for prompt executions.
There was once a Military Governor who was in a hurry to end obesity in his state’s civil service. He ordered all civil servants to report to work by 7am every morning for a rigorous one hour’s physical exercise, before they sat on their desks. However, the state branch of the Nigeria Medical Association stepped in and told him that any elderly and obese civil servant who went from doing no exercise at all for many years to a sudden, vigorous exercise could easily drop dead! He subsequently became a Governor Go Slow.
One civilian governor was in such a hurry to develop his state’s huge agricultural potential that he banned the wearing of native gowns and demanded that every civil servant should dress smartly, as in going to the farm. He showed an example by appearing in a T-shirt and jeans trousers to deliver his budget speech, but has since reverted to wearing flowing agbadas.
One minister in Nigeria was in a hurry to teach Nigerians to learn to go to work on bicycles as a form of exercise, instead of entering vehicles. He probably borrowed the idea from Denmark, where the Prime Minister rides a bicycle to go to the King’s Palace and parks his bicycle by the door. The hurry didn’t pay off here because a speeding car pushed the minister to the ground.
One civilian governor was once so eager to restore efficiency in the Nigerian public service because he could not find his name in the Voters Register, that he said, “The British, our colonial masters, should come back!!” There is no shorter shortcut than that.
