The Wednesday June 12 Inauguration was a much better affair than the strange Brechtian drama that took place on Wednesday 29 May. The president’s Inaugural Address announced his ambition to consolidate on the achievements of the past 4 years and to expand the foundations for peace, security, growth and development. Here I want to focus on what I think his priorities should be.
First, we must frontally tackle terrorism and insecurity. The first duty of government since Aristotle is to secure the common peace. A government that fails in that elementary duty has lost it all. We must therefore mobilise our security forces on a total and all-out onslaught against those monstrous creatures that have turned our country into a hell on earth. We must train and equip a Special Forces crack team to smoke out the bastards and bring them to judgement. This government must also prove to all Nigerians that they are not driven by a secret agenda of “Fulanisation and Islamisation” as alleged by former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.
Secondly, we must address the imperative of nation building. Nation building is the most important responsibility of statecraft. The state, in the language of the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, is a work of art. Nations must be designed, like magisterial works of art, with passion and dedication. Nigerians are more divided than ever. Through his gestures and substantive policy, he must do what it takes to make all Nigerians feel that they belong and that they are not excluded from the heart of the administration.
Thirdly, we must wage a renewed war on poverty and unemployment. While some of us welcome the social investment programmes that have been initiated, we look askance at the poor planning and bias that informs implementation. We need to train an entire team on social policy planning and administration. There must be rigorous monitoring and evaluation. Any slippages must be redressed. And there must be proper accountability for results and zero-tolerance for corruption. Greater efforts must be focused on rural women, who make up the bulk of the poor and vulnerable. We must aggressively empower them with affordable financing for SMEs and micro-enterprises. Training is vital, particularly for the youths, so that they are in a better position to help themselves either by way of employment or entrepreneurship.
Fourthly, we must embark upon a programme of mass electrification and revamping of our physical infrastructures. The president announced that over 2,000 kilometres of federal road and bridge projects are in progress, in addition to critical feeder roads as well as rails, seaport and airport projects that are at various stages of completion. But we need to ensure that many of these projects, dominated by foreign construction cartels, are accompanied by a “public works dimension” that creates employment opportunities for our youths, including employment, training and transfer of skills. We need a state of emergency on the power sector. Those DISCOs that are not performing up to expectation must be re-nationalised. We need to also unbundle the downstream; opening up transmission and distribution to local and foreign investors.
The President should pass an Executive Order requiring all government buildings to have solar panels and renewable energy systems installed on them. It would be a vital stop-gap solution.
Fifth, we need an agrarian revolution to ensure food security for all our people. Some progress has been made via the CBN Anchor Borrowers’ Programme. But many will question the actual costs and the fact that it comes at the expense of a weakening of the apex bank’s core mandate. We need to implement an agriculture-based mass industrial revolution involving building of rural infrastructures, land reforms, extension services, and institutional support to farmers through subsidised fertilisers, pesticides, tractors and affordable credit. Rural banditry must be addressed as part of a comprehensive strategy of agrarian reform. Much of the lawlessness in the rural countryside is because of the absence of governmental authority at the local level. We need security in the rural countryside and we need to protect farming communities so that they can flourish and prosper.
Sixth, we must develop a more constructive solution to the human capital deficit. Many of our graduate youths are unemployable – lacking in basic skills of literacy, numeracy and IT. We must therefore retrain and retool them for an increasingly competitive global marketplace. We must create a new knowledge economy anchored on the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We must invest in research and innovation; harnessing local knowledge systems to produce new products for local and world markets. We must become a scientific society where science and technology have pride of place and where we no longer have to rely on oil for the bulk of our foreign earnings as well as government revenues.
Seventh, we need a new approach to tackling corruption. The current fire-fighting approach leaves much to be desired. It is both partisan and lacking in credibility. A more holistic, systems-based approach should focus on building strong institutions and strengthening monitoring and evaluation and ensuring financial accountability at all levels. Strengthening the Office of the Auditor-General could do far more in reducing corruption than all the moralistic grand-standing that we have seen in the past four years. Many Nigerians would tell you that corruption has actually increased within the corridors of power and with more impunity than ever before.
Finally, putting together a credible economic team is vital to ensuring policy credibility. What we have today is not working. We need a team of technocrats who understand the foundations of macroeconomics and who can put together a credible economic strategy to drive reforms, ensure rigour and effectiveness in implementation of the government’s economic programme. They must pay careful attention to public finances; raising revenue while mitigating waste. They must aim to bolster accelerated growth while confronting our most pressing development challenges. A strong, courageous and credible team sends a clear signal to the international community that Nigeria is open for business. It is the only way President Muhammadu Buhari can redeem his legacy in the eyes of history.
Obadiah Mailafia
