What Buhari Must Learn From Tanzania’s New “Mwalimu” Magufuli

Editor’s note: John Magufuli, Tanzania’s newly-elected president, has become a sensation after announcing that the money allocated for Tanzania’s 54th independence anniversary celebrations will be spent on sanitation, new equipment for hospitals and tackling cholera. Alkasim Abdulkadir says Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has a few things to learn from his Tanzanian counterpart’s approach to ruling the nation.

Nigerians, like other Africans on the continent, have been caught in the maze of the newly-elected President John Magufuli’s radical budget cutting-actions in Tanzania.

Foremost Nigerian editor Abang Mercy remarked on Twitter recently: “Since his election, Tanzania’s John Magufuli has been implementing radical changes; exactly what I expected of President Buhari”.

The latter is in comparison to the avowed Spartan lifestyle the supporters of Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari said was going to be introduced into governance.

Indeed, Tanzania is not new to such systems. Retrospection into the ascetic period in the history of Tanzania under the austere Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, or Baba wa Taifa – “father of the Tanzanian nation” is in order.

Thirty years later, another political leader has appeared on the Tanzanian political horizon with the similar-looking disruption that heralded the East African nation into a maze of Afro-socialism that it is yet to recover from. John Magufuli, Tanzania’s new leader, was one year old when Nyerere came to power and a young adult when the statesman left.

In Nyerere’s Tanzania was the concept of “ujamaa,” that near coercive system where economic familyhood and togetherness was preached as a policy of uplifting every Tanzanian citizen.

The debate on whether the villagisation or forcing the population to become farmers in clusters that came to be known as the collectivization system succeeded is still the subject of ideological treatises where ever the merits and demerits of socialization are discussed.

In the end however, ujamaa created a new class, those in the upper echelon of society became the wabenzi – people of the Benz, and this was in reference for their proclivity for the Mercedes Benz models of the late 70s and 80s. The people thus became poorer while the richer got richer. With collectivization agriculture only giving an output of 5% and a huge deficit in grains and a failing economy, it was indeed visible that ujamaa had a limited success.

However, there has been a consistent argument that valuable gains were made in health and education – with massive investments in hospitals and dispensaries all around Tanzania and increased enrolment across basic and tertiary educational institutions, resulting in one of Africa’s highest literacy and life expectancy rates.

But in the end, the BBC 1999 tribute, celebrating the life and times of Nyerere, summarized that, while he united his nation and made major advances in the fields of health and education, his African socialist ujamaa collectives proved disastrous for Tanzania’s economy

Back to John Magufuli, his first foray onto the Tanzanian scene was in 1995 as a member of parliament, over twenty, he played pivotal roles in several ministries especially during the government of President Jakaya Kikwete.

Since his swearing-in into office on the 5th of November on the platform of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi political party (“Party of the Revolution,” the ruling Tanzanian party and the longest reigning ruling party in Africa), his austere and radical cutbacks to regular, systemic and sometimes mundane national activities and lifestyles caused eyebrows to raise from across the African continent – this includes a memes and viral hashtag #WhatWouldMagufuliDo.

A practical cost-cutting measure was saved funds from the low-key MP’s inauguration celebrations where the appropriated sums were used in upgrading the Muhimbili National Hospital in the capital anniversary celebrations. From cutting back on foreign travels, more than a hundred million dollars is expected to be ploughed back to tar roads in the country, a much needed infrastructure.

The president promises to take Tanzania back to the days of high quality healthcare and education, it seems from his body language that the golden days of Tanzania are here.

Herein are lessons from Nigeria, where the government has consistently said there are not enough resources for the greed of its citizens but only for their needs. Nigeria is in dire need for an efficient management of its resources to bring down exploding unemployment figures, tackle its decayed health and educational sectors, sustain the fight against insurgency, bridge its infrastructure deficit amongst the myriad of issues bedeviling it.

It has become imperative that the change movement of President Muhammadu Buhari must learn key lessons from the hapa kazi tu (“work and nothing else”) movement. Indeed we have one or more lessons to learn from #WhatWouldMagufuliDo.

Alkasim Abdulkadir, a journalist and social entrepreneur, has worked for the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera. He is the 2012 recipient of The Future Awards Excellence in Service for Journalism. Follow him on Twitter @alkayy.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Naij.com.

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