Whose expectation?
Everybody talks about it, popular expectations for change.
The key points, dating as far back as the campaign era, revolve around tackling unemployment, addressing the electricity challenge, combating insecurity and a crusade against corruption. By now, it should be clear that these cannot be the usual vote catching campaign promises, telling the people what they want to hear. Undoubtedly, the Nigerian people expect fulfillment of their expectations this time around.
Since March 28, all kinds of experts and Nigerians imbued with the spirit of patriotism, have been throwing their bits into the popular discourse, and lately, the All Progressive Congress put its egg-heads together to give flesh to what it called its Manifesto, Roadmap or Blue Print. For the likes of Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, once the new President fixes NNPC, everything else would fall in place. There is certainly a whole lot more to fixing Nigeria.
It would not be an unfair criticism that from all indications, the APC’s pack of Professors and Technocrats have so far shown, that for them, it is a case of technocracy, isolated from the yearnings, aspirations and the realities that confront the lowliest of the Nigerian people. Other than perhaps Dr. Jubril Ibrahim, no one is sure whether any of those technocrats gathered together by APC have sympathies for the working class, whereas for some of us, that should be the starting point. What runs through and is discernable from their prescriptions is their collective embrace of the “trickle down theory” i.e. once the rich is taken care of (disguised as “National Development), the poor will eventually benefit. This is not surprising, given that it is not known that the APC ever went out of its way to woo the Labour/Prodemocracy Constituency during the campaigns, other than late hour showing up at the ill-fated Delegates Conference of the Nigeria Labour Congress.
Why Government?
For some of us, the reason for the coming into existence of government, the Buhari government in particular must be identified; whether it has come to feather the nests of the rich in hopes that the poor will eventually benefit or it has to come to meet the basic and fundamental needs of the historically deprived, a process that cannot be divorced from the meeting of such basic needs for all members of the Nigerian society, without distinction.
The Buhari government obviously cannot and must not ignore the reality that there is a tiny minority in Nigeria, which is already enjoying more than its fair share of social and economic rights (the right to nutritious food, the right to decent housing, the right to qualitative education for members of their family, the right to health care and the dignity of the human person). The victims of the unjust status quo owe it to themselves to ensure that this denial from which the majority suffers does not continue. The challenge of the moment is how Nigeria extends the enjoyment of these socio-economic rights to those who have historically been denied. Afterall, didn’t the Constitution in Section 14(1)(b) state that the primary purpose of government is the security and welfare of the Nigeria people, all of us?
This issue takes on more importance when it is recognized that roads can be fixed, electricity can be improved upon, state security and the personal security of public office holders can be improved upon, with marginal social gains, while the vast majority of our marginalized people continue to wallow in abject poverty. A few years ago when the Governor Adams Oshiomhole government was breaking new grounds in Edo state, in constructing roads and building schools, some of our people in reaction queried, “Na road I go chop?”. It sounded very cynical but quite profound, because even with all the social and economic advantages derivable from more motorable roads and improvement in the condition of Schools, a whole lot more was obviously called for, and remains so.
The breaking of new grounds and the adoption of a fresh approach to governance in Nigeria is inevitable, if the change mantra is to be of utmost benefit to the long suffering people of Nigeria maximally.
Banishing Idleness
Of all the issues raised by Mr. President and the APC, the greatest challenge is the question of banishing idleness from our land and an audacious march towards full employment. If Labour creates wealth as the motto of the Nigeria Labour Congress proclaims, it becomes unarguable that the more hands that are engaged, the more wealth that is created! The task is to organize all available hands to engage in production, to meet the basic needs of our people for food, clothing and shelter.
Day in and day out, millions of Nigerian people, the youths and the not so old, educated and uneducated, skilled and unskilled, mill around our cities and villages doing nothing! What is called for is a system that mobilizes and empowers them to become part of Nigeria’s production team, to produce one item or the other or render one social service or the other. (Till date, not one city in Nigeria can be said to have an effective and efficient waste disposal system; to embark on a crash program of wiping out illiteracy in Nigeria, with all the advantages that will flow from that, would engage hundreds of thousands of unemployed graduates).
Labour Exchange
The Federal Ministry of Labour should create a Labour Exchange, to register all available hands, and categorize them into skilled and unskilled, and work out the modalities of putting them to work. A special crash technical training program ought to be organized to equip the unskilled with the basic necessary know how for the implementation of the agriculture program as well as the works and infrastructure program. Such a training program would also call in aid thousands of otherwise presently idle hands.
Agriculture
From the Labour reserve registered by the Ministry of Labour and based on collaboration between the Federal and States’ Ministries of Agriculture, cooperative societies can be organized to produce, process, market, store and preserve food, (carbohydrates, vegetable, fruits, beef, poultry and fish), first and foremost to feed Nigeria’s hungry stomachs. Implementation of feasible research findings emanating from Nigeria’s Agricultural Colleges, Universities and Institutes would be an integral part of this initiative
If the initiative can be put to use for food production, it can also be amenable to the production of cash crops. The initiative can focus in this regard on massive production of cotton to resuscitate the textile industry to clothe the Nigerian people with made in Nigeria fabric, as opposed to keeping the textile industries in other countries going, at our expense. In this regard, the Directorate for Reorientation can promote slogans like, “Eat Nigerian Food” and “Wear made in Nigeria Clothes”, which are slogans that our people can be persuaded to embrace.
Laudable as the policy of “one meal a day” in public primary schools is, it should be appreciated that the goal is to put food in the stomach of all members of every Nigerian family, whether in school or not. A significant number of Nigerian people who are otherwise idle right now, can be absorbed into cultivating hay and grazing grounds for cattle which presently rampage through farms in different parts of the country, occasioning great strife that is totally avoidable between herdsmen and farmers.
Works and Infrastructure
Beyond the major highways and the railways, that are supposed to link different parts of the Country, inner-city and rural infrastructure development is an imperative. There is absolutely no reason why the Federal and State Ministries of Works as well as the Works departments at the Local Government levels, cannot be equipped and manned with a patriotic, skilled and unskilled workforce, that can carry out construction of roads and mass housing projects, as well as building and furnishing of hospitals and schools. The reliance on foreign and private construction companies for our construction jobs, cannot continue. Existing shortcomings with Direct Labour can be effectively checked.
Health Care
Another major area that has to be focused upon is health care delivery. In this regard, targets would have to be set for manpower training in terms of looking at the per capita ratio right now, of doctors, in their various specializations, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory technologists, and others, as well as hospital administrators. Targets need to be set and the targets should determine admission levels into health education institutions, and the construction of schools and engagement of teachers, to realize the goal of increase in the numbers of the nation’s health personnel, with a distribution spread that is across the length and breadth of the country.
Co-ordination between the Ministries of Health at the Federal and State levels, professional groups in this sector as well as relevant trade unions and civil society groups in the health sector should assist in the formulation and implementation of this program. For starters, all destitutes must be removed from our streets nationwide and the policy of having relations of psychiatric patients pay deposits before their sick relatives can be attended to, on the bogey of internally generated revenue, must be abolished. A Nigeria that cares, can no longer allow her psychiatric patients to roam the streets, often naked.
A program of massive health education, sanitation and disease preventive measures would have to be popularized and the provision of clean water to all parts of Nigeria is an integral part of this.
Local production of drugs and formal integration of traditional health care delivery into the system are vital.
Administration and Anti-Corruption for a Purpose
If the above are the fundamental issues the government is to take on, the question of provision of electricity, affordable petroleum products and security of life and property as well as civil service reform would be first and foremost for the realization of the above objects and not as ends in themselves. It is in this and for this purpose that the development of urban and rural Nigeria can have meaning.
It is this also, that will give context to the anti-corruption crusade that will place the responsibility of protection of our collectively owned resources as a duty for all Nigerians who appreciate their stake in the goals to be realized.
Indeed, all government Ministries and Agencies at all levels individually and collectively would locate their bearing and relevance in playing their respective roles in the realization of the new vision of a healthy people with food in their stomachs and clothes on their backs with hope and commitment to a continuing brighter future.
A Directorate of Social Mobilization and Reorientation in the Ministry of Information at both the Federal and State levels will have its complimentary work cut out for it, as far as the popularization and realization of this initiative is concerned. The Ministries of Finance at the Federal and State levels should be saddled with the task of working out the cost implications of the meeting of these ground breaking initiative – massive investment in training Nigerians, Agriculture, Health, Schools, Roads and Housing, across the length and breadth of Nigeria. These are the building blocks for a 4 year Development Plan broken down into annual budgets.
It would be for the realization and funding of this initiative that utmost efficiency must be attained in revenue generation, maximization of the nation’s revenue from oil and blockage of all loopholes and leakages. The Buhari Government should, relying on Section 16(2)(c) of the Constitution, revoke all the Oil Block Allocations dashed to Nigerian “sacred cows” by past governments and renegotiate terms with multinational companies in the oil industry.
Irrespective of political and other divisions, a program of National rebirth such as the above, is one around which all forces can be readily mobilized no matter the political party that holds sway in particular states. Cooperation and collaboration will define the working relationship between the Federal, State and Local Governments. Active participation of Trade Unions, Professional Groups and Civil Society in formulation, implementation and review would be vigorously mobilized. Mr. President has already hinted that his government is inclined to this.
While we can accept solidarity assistance in areas we deem most important, it should be realized that Nigeria is at a stage different from that of the Europeans and Americans and that our priorities are peculiar and are to be defined by us as Nigerian people.
The above articulated main thrust initiative is without prejudice to the supplementary role the private sector may play.
It remains to be said that judging by his contributions at the APC organized conference on manifesto as reported in the media, it seems that the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam El-Rufai needs to be reminded that the civil servants are not the problem. One could smell the ‘right-sizing’ mentality from his presentation, as if, for him to deliver on infrastructure, workers must be laid off. He should be prepared to retrain those in the employ of the Kaduna State Government and redeploy them to areas where he believes their work will be more productive. That is the way to go.
For the change in Nigeria to be qualitative this time around, let the President Buhari government show its audacious preparedness to break new grounds and adopt a fresh approach to public administration in our country that leaves no one in doubt as to the goal; that of uplifting our people from poverty in record time.
Dr. Osagie Obayuwana is in private legal practice in Benin City; the immediate past Attorney General of Edo State, one time National Chairman and Presidential Candidate of the National Conscience Party.
[email protected]
