I saw a video of the Presidential candidate of the APC talk about Yahoo boys and mobilising them into the manufacturing industry, I smiled. I am confident that beyond the parochial Emilokan mantra he’s been screaming, he’s out of touch with the reality of governance. Or, how could he have possibly forgotten that when people fail to achieve cultural goal despite institutionalised means, illegitimate means invariably develop from a forceful configuration of the people’s survival instincts which leads to social crisis and a breakdown in the regulatory structure of society?
As it stands today, Nigeria is confronted with several woes when considering the fact that she is poverty-ridden with incidences of youth unemployment, increasing inflation, surge in crime and absence of peace which has lead us into battling kidnapping, banditry, drug trafficking, ritual killings, cyber fraud amongst others. It is however not the case that most developed countries of the world are also not facing certain or similar woes, but, ours has been compounded by the absence of accountability and a crooked reward and punishment system which has supplanted the moral fabric of the country.
Nigeria, as presently constituted, you cannot come out and possibly talk about mobilising the youths into manufacturing at a time industries are moving out and folding up while the few surviving ones are retrenching workers without talking about fixing electricity and making refineries work and diversifying the economy. Meanwhile, Atiku Abubakar has promised to achieve a “diversified economy with strong linkages amongst key sectors notably oil and gas, agriculture, manufacturing and MSMEs to strengthen the productive base of the economy.”
Theoretically, Atiku Abubakar has the remedy to make Nigeria work again and recover the economy judging from the content of his policy document. It has been opined that the government should significantly reduce its stakes in the power distribution and generation companies to enable private capital begin the arduous task of giving Nigeria reliable electricity. And, Atiku has stated how he intends to liberalise and deregulate the economy by breaking government monopoly in many sectors. Atiku has also declared to open up the power sector from generation to transmission for private investments and also target power generation capacity mix of non-renewable energy (hydro, solar, nuclear) and other thermal fuels (coal, biofuel) in addition to natural gas.
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The APC has come out to condemn the Public Private Partnership agenda of Atiku Abubakar when in the real sense of it, they (the APC) are the ambassadors of privatisation most especially with their recent plan of selling some national assets including the Tafawa Balewa Square just to fund the economy. But, we all know that privatisation is the best global practice. At least, we all saw how Saudi Arabia raised $30billion through privatisation and then boost their economy.
Unfortunately, the Buhari’s regime holds on to the country’s 4 non-functional refineries that could fetch the country money and stop waste. But, Atiku, on the other hand has promised to privatise all “government-owned refineries and issue new licenses for greenfield investment in crude oil refining.”
Ours is a major oil producer without a functional domestic refinery which has been unable to meet its production quota of 1.83 million barrels per day (OPEC standard). Rather, we have been recording shortfall of 400,000 barrels per day traced mainly to oil theft (according to reports). Just late last year, a vessel conveying thousands of barrels of illegal oil was caught, rather than investigate and bring everyone involved into book, the Nigerian Navy set the vessel alright just to ensure a cover-up. Does that not create a serious liquidity problem for a country in dire financial straits?
These are issues that the APC and their Presidential candidate have refused to address in every of their outing. Rather, they’ve been appealing to the peoples’ sentiments through the lens of ethnicity. And, I personally feel that it is those suffering from the cataract of ethnicity that would fall for such blackmail.
On the other hand, Atiku Abubakar is prepared to provide the appropriate political leadership to implement a robust development agenda and facilitate the realisation of the country’s vision through restructuring.
Kazeem writes from Ibadan, Nigeria.
