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By DAN AMOR
Undoubtedly, there is a lamentable and disturbing magnitude of violence in Nigeria today. So are other vice crimes. The country is constantly on the boil. The atmosphere in the country has been nothing but a tawny volcano. The situation conveys at once the chief features of the Nigerian spirit: it is vertical, spontaneous, immaterial, upward. It is ardent. And even as tongues of fire do, it turns into fire everything it touches. What we are experiencing today is induced by poverty, hunger, frustration, apathy and desperation. Desperation to use religion to achieve ethnic expansionism and land grabbing. Nigerians are frustrated because of the leadership which is not measuring up. The country has grown faster than the capacity of its leaders. Even those who helped to bring the leadership to power, including politicians, artisans, commercial bike operators, etcetera, are regretting their impudent adventures.
There is no more thermometer to measure the degree of frustration and desperation in the land than the wanton destruction of lives and property of Nigerians by Nigerians and rented foreigners. The #EndSARS protest of October last year and its aftermath were also partly caused by chronic idleness, hunger and frustration, among our youths, the result of many years of unaccountable leadership. The last June 12 protest across the country which was halted by government shows that Nigeria is not practising democracy. As we write, Nigeria is still on the boil. In the midst of the misery or lack, that is the lot of our youths and other Nigerians, a few politicians are still swimming in affluence and under the best security system and protection one can think of. It hardly seems a time for timidity and restraint. Nigerian are being killed in geometric progression. There is no day that passes without hearing that tens of hundreds of innocent Nigerians are being kidnapped, killed or raped across the country by terrorists being pampered as “bandits” by the government. It is an evil day, and the story is everywhere. It is like smoke that cannot be buried. We have no image to protect abroad. The world is a global village. Everybody knows what is happening in Nigeria, minute by minute.
In fact, unbridled activities of fraudsters, narcotics couriers, swindlers and the emergence of a class of billionaire idle politicians, have diminished our international stature to an embarrassing level. The net effect of this has been the sorry spectacle we have cut for Nigeria and Nigerians in the international arena. The reality is that the corporate image of the country is almost indubitably steeped in crises. It is therefore no more news that the high rate of criminality in the country is traceable to the endemic corruption which has enveloped the land like a cankerworm. The unbridled corruption and wanton denigration of corrosive state power cut across parties. It is even very present in the private sector. Nigeria’s name is synonymous with corruption and vice crimes all over the world.
It was agreed that with the emergence of General Muhammadu Buhari as President since May 29, 2015, given his much vaunted integrity and principled stance against corruption, the international image of the country would be redeemed. But it seems, from the reality on ground, that the change mantra of the APC-led Federal Government is fraught with contradictions and ironies. More than six years of his regime in the saddle, Nigerians are gasping for relief. There is discontent in the country as hunger and lack rule the land. And one can sense the fear of the unknown. The signs are not too difficult to see. They are the signs of internal decay; the dry rot of apathy and indifference. Nigerians had mistaken baboon for monkey.
The whole scenario is unwholesome: the decadent and despondent social institutions, the comatose and unacceptable state of the once vibrant economy, the decaying infrastructure, and the unnerving bout of high cost of energy in the sixth largest producer of crude in the world. Petrol was selling for N86 per litre when this government was inaugurated on May 29, 2015. It now sells for N175 per litre. In some parts of Nigeria, a litre of fuel is now bought for more than N300. Yet, they are still talking about further increases. The average middle class man with chains of degrees cannot remember the last time he filled the tank of his jalopy car with petrol. All this could not have been mere speculations by whatever standards. Indeed, it was speculated recently that more than 80 per cent of Nigerians are living below the poverty line. Economically, there can never be anything more humiliating and even frustrating than the current exchange rate of the Naira. Anyone who had witnessed the strength of the Nigerian currency against the dollar in the late 1970’s would realise that the slightest tinkering with the economy spins off a frantic palpitation which may lead to a cardiac arrest.
This is why wiser nations often fix their gazes on the enigmatic ups and downs in the stock market. They are wise and experienced enough to know that an ostensibly inconsequential drop in the currency rate of a nation may precipitate a phenomenal fall of any government. How does President Muhammadu Buhari feel when he sees the Naira exchanging for N500 to the US Dollar? Does he ever remember his campaign promise to Nigerians when even the Dollar was exchanging for N187, that he would make the Naira at par with the Dollar within his first six months in office? This is not all. Hundreds of thousands of our graduates and school leavers still parade the streets of our cities in search of jobs that are not in sight, and the communal bonds that once held our various nationalities together have been rendered taut by the forces of annihilating and devastating poverty, banditry and inter-tribal wars.
Nigerians now keep a feeding regime that skips meals as even the price of everything has qua-dropped. Yet the country is said to be one of the most endowed in the world. Buhari must set targets for his ministers. It is curiously shameful that Nigerians are experiencing untold hardships under Buhari’s government, an administration that boasted of so much goodies for the poor and downtrodden. It is awfully disappointing that market women were forced by circumstances beyond their control to stage a peaceful protest in Lagos recently. More than six years after his inauguration, Nigerians are yet to see any sign of change in their standard of living. Rather, things are deteriorating to their nadir by the day. The president must be reminded of the fact that anything not accomplished by any government this year can never be done in 2022 which is a pre-election year. Apart from a few state governors, such as Ezenwo Nyesom Wike of Rivers, Oluseyi Abiodun Makinde of Oyo and Babagana Umara Zulum of Borno, to mention but a few, many have not achieved nothing since the past six years.
The Federal Executive Council meetings must generate fresh ideas and must bring to a logical order fresh initiatives for the effective implementation of budgets in ministries and other strategic government departments and agencies. Why is there so much hunger in the land and our network of roads terribly bad whereas our debt stock has risen to about N33 trillion from N6 trillion in May 2015? The Senate last week approved another loan of $6. 9 b for President Buhari. What is the government doing with the long list of loans and incomes generated from the sale of oil, taxation, customs service, immigration and other sources? Why did the government say recently that it is very broke, with no money to pay salaries of its workforce in more than 400 departments, agencies and parastatals? What is really happening? Governors seem to agree with Boko Haram terrorists that Western education is evil; which is why over 1,000 schools have been shut in the North because of the activities of “bandits” who capture school children for ransom everyday.
Nigerians, on their part must ask Buhari what his administration’s blueprint is. Despite its high-profile intentions, not many Nigerians are impressed with the President’s propositions. The alarm raised during the immediate past administration and also during the administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo by some budget monitoring groups and agencies over the low performance ratings of Federal ministries, departments and agencies would have been enough to jolt the present administration from illusions into stark realities. It would be recalled that General Theophilus Danjuma, Defence Minister in former President Obasanjo’s cabinet resigned his appointment alleging that Obasanjo was not implementing budgets, which was accountable for his abysmal performance in office. This is exactly what Buhari is doing. Budgets are not implemented as the country is constantly being run as a private estate with so much military praxis or braggadocio. Is this a civil rule?
Also, the fact that the phenomenon of “unspent budget” was padded into the nation’s over-bloated political lexicon and became public knowledge even during the administration of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua would have been enough cause for President Buhari to set targets for his ministers. Yet, a point too potent to be over-stretched is that with the sudden collapse of public infrastructure across the country and the alarming rate of poverty among Nigerians since the past six years precipitated by mass unemployment, no sensible minister would need to be reminded to work hard. Therefore, why are the ministers not working? What have they been doing? Why is Nigeria living on borrowed times?
Again, the President and his advisers must note that even though liberal democracy can thrive only in a relatively prosperous national economy, the economy itself can only grow in a relatively liberal and accountable atmosphere. Therefore, while the government takes an unflattering look at the corruption and squandermania of the past office holders, if only to serve as deterrent to the present ones, the anti-graft war must not be seen to be selective. And since the menace permeates all sectors of the national economy, the only thing that will serve as a bulwark against corruption is beaming the searchlight on the business sector also and ensuring that this highly inflated economy is reflated. Added to this is the urgent need for government to support manufacturing and agriculture. But the first task before the Buhari administration is to halt the cascading insecurity in the country. Does the government want hapless Nigerians to resort to self help? Who formulates policies for this government?
Only exceptionally viable and favourable policies can make the nation produce competitive goods and services that can earn hard currency for the economy. The current effort at revamping the power sector which started with the Jonathan administration must be taken to its logical conclusion. A high premium on agriculture will make the country at least self-sufficient and secure in food production. Emphasis should thus be placed on long term lending and low interest rates for farmers, manufacturers and small and medium scale entrepreneurs. The value of the Naira can only be strengthened if the government summons the political will to scrap the parallel (black) market and break the continuous monopolization of the Afex market by the Central Bank of Nigeria. A state of emergency should be declared on our failing network of roads and other infrastructure to attract foreign investors into the country.
Good roads and bridges engender economic activities and their construction creates jobs. But investors can only come into our shores if security of lives and property is guaranteed. Consequently, while the Boko Haram insurgency which has refused to be defeated is brought to its knees, government must halt the heinous killings of people by Fulani herdsmen and bandits across the country. Rather than creating and fighting enemies at every twist and turn, the government should create time for sober reflections. The Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO, an arm of the United Nations, circulated recently that there is severe hunger in 16 states and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja. This is very disturbing. Whatever kite Buhari was trying to fly recently when he said that he would hold on to power till 2023 and even beyond must be allowed to walk into its grave. That kite will not fly. Nigerians are not impressed by his performance so far.
President Buhari should be told that if there is any magic for 2023 to come faster sooner than later, let that magic propel itself now. There is no peace in Nigeria, even peace of the graveyard. His politics of tribalism and religious bigotry has widened the dividing line between savagery and barbarism. The absence of peace is affecting the pace of development in the country. A surgical operation should be undertaken in the health sector while government should be seen to be encouraging private sector participation in the building of modular refineries. Above all, Nigeria must be returned to its original federal republican structure of the 1963 Constitution, to make the centre less attractive, for peace to reign. Without all these in place, no amount of propaganda can change Nigeria. Not even the planned dubious sale of our national assets to willing buyers who looted our collective wealth into their private pockets would do.