What Nigeria’s Next President Must Do
Val Oji sets the agenda for Nigeria’s next president
The enigmatic Afrocentric scholar, who wrote two award-winning, ground-breaking books, The West and the Rest of Us and Decolonizing the African Mind, Professor Chinweizu, in a paper presented at the First Pan-African Conference on Reparations on April 27, 1993, wrote that for many centuries, the black skin had been a badge of contempt. It used to be said in Brazil, according to him, that if you were white and running down the street, you were an athlete; but if you were black and running down the street, you were a thief.
“In most parts of the world today, if you are white and rich, you are honored and celebrated, and all doors fly open as you approach; but if you are black, you are under suspicion, and handcuffs and guard dogs stand ready to take you away.”
The real tragedy, however, is that more than 20 years after Professor Chinweizu wrote these terrifying words, the black race is yet to wake up to the reality of taking its destiny in its own hands. The calamity and conscionable embarrassment of inept, incompetent and corrupt leadership continues to bedevil the black race. Look at the story of Nigeria: fifty five years after independence, Nigeria is anything but a mere “geographic location”.
Whether you support the ruling party, PDP, the major opposition party APC, or you are apolitical, most discerning Nigerians attest to the fact that Nigeria is far from where it should be. Successive governments had in the words of my eccentric friend Ahmed, been “dancing naked in the market square”.
Now that these politicians have come again with their outlandish promises; now is the time to use your vote wisely. This is the time to set the agenda. What must the next Nigerian President do urgently, to bring Nigeria out of the brink and reposition it for greatness? Let’s consider the following six-point strategy.
A Cabinet of Good Men and Women
Professor Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate, addressing a powerful group of Nigerian Governors in Delta State recently recalled that,
“When the United States of America invaded Iraq under the pretext of looking for weapons of mass destruction, the Arab League happened to be holding its session at the time. The Secretary General was reported to have exclaimed: “The inhabitants of hell have been let loose”.
Several members of that League thought he was being alarmist. The rest is history. We know several cabinet members of the PDP led federal government, who behave with impunity, including refusing to appear before the legislature - to answer questions bothering on alleged missing billions of Dollars.
When public servants comport themselves like emperors, refusing to be accountable to the people – people from whose taxes their salaries are drawn; aren’t they behaving like inhabitants of hell? The next president needs to comb the nooks and crannies of this great country, and fish for a few incorruptible, competent men and women with evangelical zeal to serve this country.
Reducing the Cost of Governance
Reducing the cost of governance is not just a patriotic duty now, but a lifesaving one. A situation where we have more ministers than portfolios, and hordes of government appointees, with the attendant obscene paraphernalia, cannot continue.
It is a crime against humanity that 469 men and women in the legislature should earn about N2.3 billion a year, the equivalent of the budget of Enugu State for one year, with over two million people. It is also a matter of urgent national importance, to cut these bloated emoluments.
The next president must cut the bloated salaries of legislators, and other government officials. We know they will fight with their last blood. They will threaten the president with impeachment, as usual. But when did governance become the business of the faint-hearted? Ask General Collin Powell. “Leadership can’t be a popularity contest. Trying not to offend anyone, or trying to get everyone to like you, will set you on the road to mediocrity,” he advises.
End Insurgency through Total War
We must recognise the urgency of now. In the words of the former Vice President, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, we must regain the “years the locust had eaten”. To achieve this, we must end insurgency now with all that Nigeria has. If it means deploying the entire Nigerian army, let’s do so; and clean up with a post-war attitude. To further illustrate the urgency of now, let us consider the words of Mahatma Gandhi. While speaking to ordinary Indians on the urgency of developing India, he said, “We are the makers of our own state…individuals who realise the fact need not, ought not, to wait for collective action – even as a hungry man does not wait for others to commence a meal before he falls for it. The only necessary condition for action is that, like the hungry man, we must hunger for our deliverance”.
The next Nigerian President must hunger for Nigeria’s deliverance. He must remember that the inside of a hungry child, is neither patient nor understanding. Neither are the needs of the unemployed.
Need for Strategic Communication
Leading global brands understand the language of communication. This explains why communication is often practiced as a strategic process, within these companies, and it’s woven into their business planning, decision making and organization-wide priorities. The late chairman of Coca Cola, Robert Goizueta, for example, went to great lengths to make people care about Coca Cola, using strategic communication.
The brand transcended the consumers’ thirst and became part of their everyday lives. President Barak Obama broke all records “when he attained celebrity status, which is rare for politicians, due to his ability to resonate with a diversified body of voters by shedding his elitism and presenting himself as a ‘common man’ ”. He couldn’t have achieved this without strategic communication. At the risk of appearing partisan, communicating the public persona and programmes during the administration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, had been mostly shoddy, reactionary and confusing. Just to illustrate the tragedy of failed communication – let’s consider the way the President’s men managed the communication of Boko Haram. One crucial element that was missed, which caused irreparable damage to the credibility of the administration, is not highlighting and capitalizing on the criminality of Boko Haram elements.
Projecting them to the world as a criminal organization, would have done two things. First, it would have demystified Boko Haram, and portrayed them as dangerous criminals camouflaged as Islamic jihadists. Second, it would have assisted hugely in alienating the group from millions of well-meaning, law abiding Moslems in Nigeria and beyond. This remains a missed opportunity – in winning hearts and minds, and galvanizing massive support against insurgency. It could easily have been the defining moment in the fight against terror.
Diversifying the Nigerian Economy
The time for burying our heads in the sand, and jumping from one podium to another, making fanciful speeches aimed at achieving photo ops, is over. Successive governments from Generals Yakubu Gowon to Ibrahim Babangida, and lately Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, have wasted the various oil windfalls running into billions of US Dollars. We do not have to reinvent the wheel – the records are there. The next President should study what the Premiere of the Eastern Region, Dr. Michael Okpara did to achieve 9% growth rate for several years depending majorly on Palm produce. The Eastern Regional economy was reported to have been the fastest growing in the world, at the time. If Dr. Okpara could do it, why not our next President and the governors?
Strengthening the Institutions
It took the American President’s visit to Africa in July, 2009, to awaken the consciousness of Africans, on the need to build and protect key government institutions. Addressing a privileged audience of senior government officials, politicians, businesspersons, captains of industry and the media, in Accra, Ghana, President Obama boldly challenged Africans with the following punch lines.
“Repression takes many forms, and too many nations are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty. No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or police can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where government skims 20 per cent off the top, or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt.
“No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy; that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end. Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions”. The next Nigerian President must rise above these denigrating practices incapacitating Africa.
Concluding, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said a few days ago while addressing the pro Jewish lobby, during his controversial visit to the United States of America, that “the days when the Jews were passive to their adversaries are gone”.
Let all Nigerians rise in unison and proclaim that the days when we were passive to our problems are gone. Nigeria has remained a “beggar sitting on a basket of gold” because of the failure of leadership. The tragedy of depraved leadership has been the bane of Nigeria.