EXPRESSO By Steve Osuji
This column has determined that any leader who cannot reverse Nigeria’s drift in four years may never be able to do so in 40 years.
Peter Obi, the frontliner of the National Democratic Party, NDC, has vowed repeatedly that all he needs is just a term of four years as a President and he will initiate a new Nigeria that will stand irreversible. He has also said over and over that he has both the capacity and acumen to change the current morbid trajectory of the Nigerian state for good – in only four years!
But his political opponents have mocked him saying his postulations are at best, a desperation for power. They say he will spend the first six months trying to understand the maze that is Aso Rock, the seat of power and another six to set up his cabinet. Some of his kinsmen from the east are up in arms, saying they would not let him abridge the Igbo turn and tenure. They argue that other ethnic groups have had eight, even 16 years on the saddle as number one.
But Peter Obi insists that it’s not about the number of years one sat on the throne, but the impact made. He says that governance is not rocket science; that it’s all about able and visionary leadership. He has continued to tell the world that he would simply set the current rudderless ship of state called Nigeria on the right course. He would wring critical institutional changes that would remain irrevocable and upon which a new Nigeria would be anchored.
TO DISLODGE A ROGUE SYSTEM
Many Nigerians are not listening to Obi. Many listen but are skeptical. Yet many more are inured by the rogue system which has prevailed since independence and gets worse as the years roll by. Many are they who are benefitting hugely from the now pervasive roguery and they fight the change.
EXPRESSO here encapsulates some of the points Mr Obi has been trying to explain.
ONE: FREE AND FAIR ELECTION IS EVERYTHING AND IT IS ACHIEVABLE
Imagine such a day when the Nigerian voter is the lord and the voter’s card is the ultimate instrument of democratic change? Obi believes that in four years as President of Nigeria, he can set the electoral law right and ensure electoral integrity in Nigeria’s democratic system.
We have seen how the Presidency and the ruling party resisted and actually sabotaged the will of the people during the recent review of the electoral laws.
Obi insists his presidency and his party will lead such a change and make the laws perfect for Nigeria’s democracy to thrive.
He also would work to ensure that Nigeria adopts a one-term tenure of five or six years for the president and State governors.
Once these two critical objectives are achieved, Nigeria’s ruinous politics would become normalised as obtains in advanced democracies.
This is not an impossible task, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was on the verge of achieving this paradigm shift.
TWO: REDUCE CORRUPTION DRASTICALLY
A sincere leader who is imbued with integrity and is driven by the power of personal example doesn’t need eight years to curb corruption.
Obi says he and his family would shun corruption. That alone would have eliminated the canker by half.
Most importantly, fighting graft is not so much about chasing thieves all about the town but more about making sure thieves are preempted and therefore prevented from stealing. The system has numerous checks against official corruption (like the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federal) but the presidency and the ruling cabal stymies such checks. Obi says he can fight, and indeed curb corruption drastically without the current accompanying hoopla!
THREE: FIX ELECTRICITY
Obi believes that a sincere president who is not himself corrupt can fix Nigeria’s power deficit in four years. The major problem with the seeming intractable electricity snafu in Nigeria is corruption. Most of the funds budgeted for fixing this crucial problem are simply stolen. There’s a current example of Mr Mamman Saleh, a former Power minister jailed for siphoning N500 billion meant for the Mambilla Power project.
Obi believes that under his watch, such a project would have been delivered in less than four years.
FOUR: CUT COST OF GOVERNANCE
All around us, all we see in every aspect of governance today is a humongous waste of public resources. Over one quarter of Nigeria’s budgets at all levels of governance are deployed to frivolities. This huge sum would definitely be deployed for the development of Nigeria. In only four years, the difference would be glaring.
FIVE: DRIVE AGRIC PRODUCTION
Successive Nigerian governments have either neglected agricultural production or they don’t really understand what it means. The situation is worse under the incumbent.
The little gains made by his immediate predecessors (Good luck Jonathan and Mohammadu Buhari) have been obliterated. Nigeria is a net importer of food under President Tinubu. Huge investments made in rice production particularly, are being wiped away right now.
Obi thinks a perspicacious president can lay the foundation for semi-mechanised and mechanised agric production, processing and exportation in four years. Nigeria can actually leapfrog into a net exporter of foods and agro-based industrial needs. This will create massive employment.
SIX: GALVANISE SME GROWTH
Small and medium scale enterprises would be supported to sprout and grow. This remains the fulcrum of industrial production and job creation.
SEVEN: DRIVE EDUCATION, FOCUS ON STEM, TVET AND IT
Education is of course, the driving force for any society’s growth and development. Intensive investment in STEM, technical and vocational education as well as information technology over four years would lay such foundations that would be difficult to dislodge by succeeding governments.
EIGHT: UNLEASH THE POTENTIALS OF NIGERIA’S FEMALE POPULATION
Nigerian women are among the most educated population to be found anywhere in the world but they are also the most relegated. In four years, all the legal and institutional structure, holding down Nigeria great women population would be torn down to unleash the limitless potentials in them. This doesn’t require all of four years to achieve.
NINE: MAKE NIGERIANS BELIEVE IN NIGERIA AGAIN
Obi has always said that he will run a Nigeria where merit, equity and justice would be the abiding codes of government.
You don’t have to know a governor or senator to get a job in the CBN, NNPC or the Customs, for instance. Opportunities would be created for all and the very best among us will benefit. In just four years, Nigeria’s japa syndrome would be reversed. Nigerians will begin to believe in Nigeria again.
TEN: FIGHT INSECURITY HEAD ON
The only reason Nigeria remains among the top most terrorised countries in the world is because successive leaders have been shy from confronting the evil head on. A lack of will, corruption and all sorts of irrational reasons have allowed evil to thrive in Nigeria for nearly two decades. A serious government will simply set a deadline of two years to completely stamp out the evil of terror in Nigeria and properly rehabilitate the victims across the country.
These things are the basic minimum a president would be expected to achieve in four years. Any president who cannot pledge to these standards is really not fit to be.
LAST LINE:
N3 TRILLION METRO RAIL AND ECONOMIC GENOCIDE AGAINST IGBO
The APC government seems to have an unwritten genocidal agenda against the Southeast. It’s genocide of the economic kind. If there was any doubt about this, the recent approval of a N3trillion metro rail projects in the northwest and South west that excluded the southeast is a proof.
This pattern has been consistent since the time of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Southeast has about 70% of Nigeria’s gas deposits but the resource is piped and deployed in every part of the country but Igboland.
Cabinet appointments, federal jobs and just any opportunities and privileges that can be denied Ndigbo is brazenly denied them in the APC era.
It’s common knowledge that people of the Southeast travel the most both locally and across the world. But the federal government have most wickedly denied these people a proper international airport. Even a cargo airport developed by Imo State for over 40 years is now being used for pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem instead of the economic purposes it was developed for.
The entire Southeast has been shunted from the national rail programme in the last 20 years. Knowing the importance of railways to growth and development, we can conclude that what’s going on is a predetermined ill-will against the Southeast. This doesn’t augur well for Nigeria’s peace and unity.###
