SHA’ABAN 25, 1429 A.H.
TUESDAY AUGUST 26 2008
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Straight talk to Nigeria (I)
By Leonard Karshima Shilgba, PhD
I returned to Nigeria from a trip abroad only few hours before setting to write this article. I returned with a hot heart and a burdened soul over some ominous things I have observed about my country, Nigeria - a country I have grown to love so dearly and defend so fiercely in my little ways.
While in Europe, I read a report on the internet as May 29th drew near and President Yar’adua’s people scratched their heads for what to point to Nigerians as tangible achievements of their principal in one year since he was sworn in on May 29th 2007 as Nigeria’s president.
In that report, Yar’adua’s Communications Adviser, Segun Adeniyi claimed that his principal, President Yar’adua was only being methodical and clinical in his planning, which explained his barren year of unfruitfulness in power.
However, in the May 29th 2008 issue of Thisday newspaper (Segun Adeniyi was an Editor of this newspaper until he was appointed last year as Yar’adua’s Communications Adviser), I read the following: “Fresh facts are now emerging on why President Umaru Musa Yar’adua has found it difficult to move faster in the implementation of his agenda. 365 days after the change of government, Yar’adua has still not received any formal handover notes around which his plans and actions can be anchored.”
It appeared curious to me that no other major Nigerian newspaper carried that report. Which of the two should Nigerians believe. That Yar’adua is slow on purpose as alleged by his Communications Adviser, Adeniyi or that he is slow because his predecessor, Obasanjo refused, failed, neglected, or ignored to give him handover notes, as Mr. Adeniyi’s newspaper reported?
I will not waste time engaging in a discussion on the truth or otherwise of the allegation that Yar’adua did not receive any handover notes; neither will I discuss the impact of lack of handover notes on a president’s plans or on the lack thereof or on the absence of actions on those plans after one year in office. What I must tell Yar’adua and his collaborators is this: You don’t have the luxury of time. Yar’adua is not levelling with the Nigerian people; he has refused to own up to his duplicity, distractions, destructions, and waste.
Duplicity, because he has failed to keep his promises; distractions, because he has successfully deflected attention from himself; destructions, because he has reversed, suspended, or delayed projects, policies, and ideas that were very relevant to Nigeria’s development; and waste, because President Yar’adua has wasted the expectations of many a Nigerian.
In the words of Senator Obama, we have seen this movie before-a leader who pursues the wrong course, who is unwilling to change course, who ignores the evidence.
The Nigeria Labor Congress, (NLC), described Yar’adua as having a deficit of visionary objectives relating to some of the serious challenges of governance, especially in the areas of industry, employment and poverty alleviation, infrastructure, and social services, election management and democratic leadership.
The Afenifere described the last one year of President Yar’adua as being that of inertia, lack of focus, policy reversals, rule of law, underdevelopment, and breakdown in governance.
Let us consider President Yar’adua’s 7-point Agenda:
Tackling general insecurity to life and property.
Tackling nation-wide shortage of energy and power.
Alleviating mass poverty by wealth and employment creation.
Providing qualitative, functional, and affordable education for the people.
Improving mass transportation.
Improving food security and agricultural production.
Initiating a general land reform.
Judging President Yar’adua by his personally set agenda, it is difficult to say without a tinge of guilt that Yar’adua has demonstrated sufficient understanding, wisdom, and practical commitment in tackling any one of the above listed points.
You can tell the commitment of a leader by the people he brings in to work with him. Let me recall here an excerpt in my article of August 29, 2007, entitled, “On new Naira policy and hostage theory”. In that article, I wrote:
The hostage theory states that a leader could become a hostage of his employees, aides, and hangers-on when he surrenders leadership to their professional counsel, expert views, and scarecrow analysis without sufficient efforts at personal investigation, deliberate delays, and rigorous debates of views before actions are taken.
I must advise President Yar’adua to watch out and beware of pressure from within and without. I am afraid that the façade of "rule of law" may be used by the government of President Yar’adua to weaken institutions rather than strengthen them.
President Yar’adua should remember the advice given him by former President Obasanjo on the night before his swearing-in. The former more experienced President had warned President Yar’adua that all manners of people would come to him with all kinds of counsels; but he must listen to his mind. The burden of all who seek advice is to be their last Adviser before the proposed action is taken or otherwise.
The throne is as strong as the quality of people surrounding it in official capacities.
However, the king must be blamed for the quality of people that are around him. In seeking to make new friends, a wise man must remember old ones. The focus of error remains the leader. He must take the full responsibility for all things done or left undone under his watch.
Looking back now, I can’t be surer those were words holding up to any measure of truth. The presidency of Nigeria has been hijacked by a group of people that were either on the fringe of governance or hemmed-in in the previous government.
Nothing good can come out of this government until the needed political surgical operation is carried out to stop the gangrene from further spreading and wasting away the few gains of Nigeria’s recent past.
No other foundation can be claimed to being laid other than the one that was laid before May 29th, 2007. We do not need to keep reinventing the wheel in Nigeria. The same old movie is boredom to many discerning Nigerians. The tune is all too familiar.
A student of mine asked me this question one day, “Sir, should you become the president of Nigeria, what would you do first?” I have had another ask me this abrupt unexpected question when I walked into the classroom for a session, “Sir, what has Yar’adua done to you?” To the last question, I simply said, “Nothing; he has not done anything to me but to himself”. Let me tell you what my answer to the first question was and still is.
For Nigeria to develop both for ourselves and children, every federating unit must be freed to become what they can joyfully strive to become without any feelings of injustice or drawback. I told my students that I would initiate a communication to the National Assembly for the full operationalization of Section 162 (2) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, setting the derivation at 50 per cent (This section provides for a minimum of 13 per cent, not maximum of 13 per cent).
The remaining 50 per cent will then be shared according to an approved formula which must reflect internal revenue generation, which the section contains as one of the allocation principles.
When the president of Nigeria undertakes to do this instead of talking of a useless summit of the Niger Delta, then we shall eliminate waste and distraction (the Niger Delta crisis) and unleash all the mental resources that are required to create the renewable wealth that can make Nigeria to stand tall among nations.
Any members of Nigeria’s National Assembly that are averse to this may maintain their contrary position only because of an erroneous thinking that there are parts of this nation that lack in natural resources from which 50 per cent derivation can be obtained.
What amount of research have we done to arrive at this conclusion? I produce below an excerpt from the Epilogue of my upcoming book entitled, FROM MY HEART: The Black Race-Myths and Complexes:
Oil producing countries in Africa, like Nigeria, have not shown convincing evidence that they are preparing for that time in the future when this natural resource is no more in large commercial quantities beneath their soil.
It appears to the contrary, that oil has rather created a distraction from rather than an inspiration for growth.
We cannot afford to live our lives whether as individuals or nations, completely oblivious of the lack and loss of tomorrow those things-tangibles and intangibles-that we swim in today. The black race must wake up to take seriously-more seriously-those warnings that attract only cavalier responses from our leaders and opinion framers.
Life is about initiative, investigation, information, and investment. A man truly lives who takes the initiative in the desert of idleness. He lives who chooses the path not trodden before; a path prisoners of fear dread.
