I have always said that if Nigeria and more specifically President Mohammadu Buhari administration was not able to put the country on the path of rectitude and development, then it would take a long time before we get it right.
My argument then had been that the chief driver of such aspiration is the President, not only by virtue of his position, but based on what we have been made to believe- his strict, ascetic and moral uprightness. This is supposed to count for something in our unending journey to nationhood. Some ‘wailers’ would however doubt such character traits of the president and would prefer to dub it the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s propaganda.
Two years on, I am finding it difficult to still hold on to whether we will ever get it right as a nation. And that would be a monumental tragedy. As Nigerians, we feed daily on hope. ‘E go better’ , as our people prefers to say. My skepticism is borne out of the fact that Nigerians have not seen much to cheer about. Jobs have been lost. We cannot even generate electricity to galvanise our economy. The manufacturing sector is in doldrums.
A recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)paints a bleak outlook. The report states that foreign investment inflow dipped by $4.52billion to $5.12billion. The report also gives an indication of what we have always known, that the government, since its inception, has not advanced the course of the country’s economy on the positive side and if it had, such advancement has been minimal and innocuous. The figure indicates that it is the lowest in nine years.
But I have always held on to a tiny hope that we would still get things right under the Buhari administration. My hope is hinged on what drove him to contest for the presidency of this country on four different occasions. For him to have offered himself and shown such determination, then something must be driving him and I would want to believe that his motives are genuine and positive. I would not even want to accept what some wailers said that he was always contesting because he felt he was not allowed to complete his tenure as a military head of state, having been ousted in a military coup. I refuse to believe such could be the driving force.
But it’s going towards two years now, but the story has not changed. What then are the problems. Some would say the president is old at 73 and does not have the vigour and the juice of youthfulness. But he has able lieutenants in the ministers. So what is the problem? I want to state that the problem is simply that President Buhari came at the wrong time. His coming would have been more appropriate for a country that is already thriving and flying economically.
He would then have been able to stabilize the country or put the country on an even keel, to ensure stability. If it had been a country that had just come out of a war, he would also have been very appropriate, taking the country through a healing process. Donald Trump is acceptable to some extent today, because America is not a developing country, but a developed one in every sense of the word. He cannot do much worse before he is reined in by the US’ democratic checks and balances. What I am simply saying is that President Buhari is quite old for the need of Nigeria. He is not appropriate now. He would have been appropriate based on the aforementioned reasons. Nigeria needs a young dynamic president with the juice and the vigour of youth. I do not want anybody to get me wrong. I admire President Buhari. He has done very well for the country, but he is actually not what the country needs. He has seen it all. He is not likely to dream big ideas and ideals for this country. A friend once told me that the aged hardly ever dreams as their major preoccupation is how to find sleep which is sometimes, if not all the time, amply aided by medication. And we all know that medication-induced sleep does not come with dreams.
I was reading Lee Kuan Yew’s ‘From Third World to First’ and this further reinforced my belief that Nigeria needs a sharp, youthful leadership, someone who has the drive, the knowledge and the dream to take us out of where we are. He should be someone with enough confidence who believes in his own ability and sees potentials in the country. He would not see negativism. He would not see his people as corrupt and bandy that at international fora. He would be angry if anybody describes his country as corrupt. He would acknowledge his country and his citizens’ weaknesses, but he would not amplify such to outsiders. He would not condemn his country in order to curry the favour of others. Believing in his ability, he would debate with his people (ministers) and display superior knowledge. His ministers would not concede to him in deference to age, but based on sound logic. He would have confidence in his own ability, without an iota of inferiority complex due to ignorance. That is the president Nigeria needs.
Back to Yew, the man who took Singapore from the scratch to where it is today, the father of modern Singapore. He was 42 years old when he took over an independent Singapore in 1965. Prior to that in 1959 when he was only 35 years, he had been in charge of the state of Singapore as Prime Minister, before the merger with Malaysia. The merger which was done in 1963 never worked and two years later, there was a parting of ways. The responsibility of piloting the affairs of the country (Singapore) was now on his shoulders. It was not an easy task as he acknowledged, but he had youthfulness on his side. He had no natural resources to work with, unlike Nigeria with abundant natural resources. But he had confidence. He had fears, which galvanized him, but like he noted, ‘my duty was to give the people hope, not demoralize them’.
Today, the story of Singapore is different. He turned around the fortunes of that country. He made a difference. That is youthfulness, he dreamt, he accomplished. He left a legacy of development. That truly is the hallmark of true, great leadership.
In Nigeria, we are not getting it right, not because we cannot, but we have been cursed with uninspiring leadership. A leadership that believes things must continue to be done in the same way. That the state must continue to exist the way they have always been and go to the centre to collect ‘allowee’ at the end of every month, that ministers must exist and ride in exotic cars with retinue of aides. That we must have two level-chambers for law-making in spite of its drain on our purse, that governors and other law makers must live plush lives when the citizens are wallowing in abject poverty. That for every ailment , treatment must be sought abroad.
We have not believed in our strength. As a country, we have weaknesses but we also have strength. We have not seen our strength for what it is, we have not seen the advantage in that strength. There is no country in Africa that has our population. Should that not count for something? The story we hear is that one corporation or the other has relocated to a neighboring African country. To provide employment for people in those countries. Such corporations now bring in finished goods for us.
At the end of the day, they also take away our money. Why should we continue to allow that? Our facilities are inadequate, agreed, but it would be in their interest to also help develop those facilities if they want our huge market. They have to give something in exchange for what they are getting in terms of huge market size.
I say it again. Things must be done differently. There must be creativity in our thinking, creativity in the way we go about what we are doing to bring the country out of the morass it has fallen. We should ensure that any corporation that is bringing in goods into our market, should have a presence here. They should not bring exotic cars into our country without plans to put an assembling plant in place. They should not bring expensive phones into our country without a major manufacturing presence.
We may not have all the facilities they require, but we have something they desire, our market, it is our strength. They should be willing to give something to develop those facilities that are inadequate, also our economy. If they are unwilling to do, then we make do with what we can assemble in the country. And that should apply to every sector of the Nigerian economy. Innoson (Vehicle Manufacturing Company) is assembling vehicles in the country today. The vehicles are good. Nobody has any major complaint. It can only get better. Should that not be the official vehicle for all our government officials?
Give the South East of this country the needed incentive, you can be sure that good phones and the likes would be manufactured from the scratch.They did it during the civil war. They can still do it today.
Let’s exploit our strengths, let’s be creative. Let’s do things differently. That is the only way out of where we are. Any other thing is begging the issue.