While crisis management and reputation
management are public relations functions, conflict management is
another process of limiting the negative aspects of conflicts while
increasing the positive aspects.
An interesting feature of President
Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet and in fact his ruling party, All
Progressives Congress, APC, is the amalgamation of good fighters and
good managers.
The fighting skills as well as
managerial expertise of some of the members catapulted the party to
victory in the last general elections. For instance, Rotimi Amaechi
aided the emergence of the Buhari government when he successfully
initiated a fight, as the governor of Rivers State, against President
Goodluck Jonathan. He tactically joined forces with other members of the
People’s Democratic Party (PDP), including Senator Bukola Saraki of the
National Assembly and Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State among
others in fighting the government. This helped to bring PDP down to its
knee after 16 years as the ruling party.
Rotimi Amaechi, even as the current
transport minister has never stopped been a good fighter. He recently
took on his fellow cabinet member, petroleum minister of state, Dr. Ibe
Kachikwu on some issues in the troubled Niger Delta region, in the
southern part of Nigeria. Both men come from the region.
The two ministers are the unique faces
of good fighters and managers in the Buhari administration. While
Amaechi, as a politician believes in taking decisive actions on critical
issues, Kachikwu is an advocate of managing any issue to a logical
conclusion rather than through confrontations.
At a recent federal government town hall
meeting at Uyo in Akwa Ibom State, Amaechi defended the decision of the
Muhammadu Buhari administration to scrap the Maritime University
project on the ground that the previous administration of Goodluck
Jonathan had paid too much to acquire a land for the university.
Describing the project as a
“misplacement of priority”, Amaechi said, “My argument about Okerenkoko
[Maritime University] is that the land alone is N13 billion. If you give
me N13 billion, I will buy half of Lagos. That N13 billion has built
the university already.”
He added that anti-corruption agencies
should be mandated to recover the N13 billion already paid for the land,
then he would build the university for the Niger Delta region.
Like a bull in China shop, Kachikwu rose
to defend the university project adding that he would source for the
money to complete the project.
Kachikwu said; “I disagree with the
minister of transport. Any facility that is located in the South South
we should work closely to develop it. I don’t care the circumstances
under which you are placed. It’s not in my position to determine whether
land was valued at N3 billion or N10 billion. The appropriate
institution, which is at the costing system, will determine that. That
has nothing to do with development of infrastructure. And as far as I
know, so much has already gone into the university.”
The drama must have generated heated
debates but the great lesson is that we can fight some of the time to
win but we should also devise ways of managing victory. Skilled managers
rather than good fighters are required for political stability and
economic growth.
Amaechi started his political
warriorship from the University of Port Harcourt, when he fought his way
to become the president of the National Union of Rivers State Students
(NURSS) after fighting for students’ rights. After his graduation, he
joined Pamo Clinics and Hospitals Limited owned by Dr. Peter Odili, his
political godfather who became governor of Rivers State and facilitated
Amaechi’s election into the Rivers State House of Assembly where he
emerged the speaker in 1999.
Their harmonious relationship was
truncated when Amaechi launched a campaign against the state government,
and fought benefactor, Peter Odili, in an effort to succeed him as
governor in 2007. When his name was substituted as winner of PDP’s
primaries for Rivers gubernatorial election that year, Amaechi fought
his way to the Supreme Court where he was pronounced the rightful
candidate of the party and became the governor on October 26, 2007. He
was re-elected for a second term of four years in April 2011 with less
fight.
Meanwhile, Dr. Kachikwu has never been a
typical Nigerian politician who can fight his way to power and
reckoning. He is an outstanding manager who has proved his worth in the
media, academics, and corporate world. Apart from bagging a first class
degree in law from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Nigerian Law
School with multiple awards, he also obtained outstanding master’s and
doctorate degrees in law from Harvard University. He had worked with the
Nigerian/American Merchant Bank, Texaco Nigeria Limited from where he
joined Exxon-Mobil where he rose to the position of executive vice
chairman and general counsel of Exxon Mobil (Africa).
Apart from his deep involvement in the
politics of Niger Delta, Amaechi as transport minister has succeeded in
the extension of rail lines across Nigeria and the completion of ongoing
rail projects initiated by the previous administration, especially the
Abuja-Kaduna route that is likely to be commissioned in July 2016 by
President Muhammadu Buhari.
Meanwhile Kachikwu as petroleum minister
and group managing director of the state-owned Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, was able to cut operational losses,
deregulate the downstream sector, initiate a creative means of meeting
the Joint Venture (JV) contributions and ensuring prompt payments of
revenue to the federation account among others.
Kachikwu’s endorsement of first class
engineer and thoroughbred bureaucrat, Dr. Maikanti Baru, as the new
Group Managing Director of NNPC, is quite encouraging as the minister
now the chairperson of the NNPC board of trustees to oversee the complex
oil sector and undertake critical consultations with stakeholders
towards political and economic stability.
While we urge the fighters and managers
in the cabinet of President Buhari to work closely and collectively
towards political stability, national security and economic advancement,
they should limit the negative aspects of their conflict and increase
the positive aspects of the struggle. What Nigerians want now is more
focus in managing the economy and security situations rather than
in-fighting and internal-agency rivalry.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
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