Nigeria needs a leadership capable of great dreams and the heart to set its best free to pursue them, recognizing that you cannot win the Olympics with non-athletes

demonstrates this. It is a long list of promises to keep. Buhari’s speeches are always a long to-do list. But none is ever completed, and none ever enjoys a direct follow-up.

He recalled that last year, he “promised to frontally address the nation’s daunting challenges, especially insecurity, economy and corruption,” and would now give account.

But that that promise was made five years ago, at his inauguration. While it has been repeated ad nauseam at home and abroad ever since, it has not been honoured in action. And that has earned Buhari’s government the image of Nigeria’s most corrupt and ineffectual in her 60 years.

Think about it: last year, Buhari also made new promises, as is his character. The most prominent was to fight extreme poverty, a category in which Nigeria leads the world.

Affirming that his government had been “mapping out policies, measures and laws to…lift the bulk of our people out of poverty and onto the road to prosperity,” he declared he would liberate 100 million Nigerians in 10 years.

As ambitious as that declaration was, Buhari in the past year failed to announce an implementation plan. Last week, his silence on the subject is evidence that he is content with Nigeria being permanently the world’s poverty capital.

The truth is that you must be ambitious to be successful. But in his Newsweek article, Buhari described Africa only as “an opportunity for all and a threat to no one…[content]…merely to play our part as partners in development.”

But that is not a dream; it is a nightmare. Why should we be content merely to be a partner in our own development when we should be champion, leader and cheerleader?

And how can you be a champion if you are merely an “opportunity,” with no ambition to be as good as they are?

Nigeria has the tools to be far more than the poorest of the poor. Nigeria should dream big dreams the same way the United States dreams. The way Singapore dreamt. The way China dreamt.

Those massive dreams are at the heart of their economic and technological ascendancy. No nation has ever advanced based on an apologetic and self-deprecating philosophy while it squirrels around in debt. None.

Nigeria needs a leadership capable of great dreams and the heart to set its best free to pursue them, recognizing that you cannot win the Olympics with non-athletes.

“Nigeria could become the next China,” wrote Sam Hill also in Newsweek last January. “It may not…Maybe Nigeria will always be the country of tomorrow.”

[This column welcomes rebuttals from interested government officials].