The entire world is in shambles and Nigeria is certainly no exception. In fact, we believe that the situations in Nigeria may have put her at the bottom of the scale of development ladder in many areas. The disparity between what Nigeria should be and what she actually is remains so vast that we cannot see Muhammad Buhari, the Nigeria President-Elect changing anything. Our other fear is the differences we suspect existing within the different factions of his party APC and their aspirations or priorities. What Buhari wants may be at variance with what Tinubu, Oyegun, Atiku, the decamped PDP governors’ faction or others want. We appeal to them to give Buhari free hands.
Change is his slogan, so also the slogan of the party that got him elected, and therefore that has become his job to do as a promise. On the hand we think that his job should be to think good thoughts, create enabling policies that can lead to the change. GMB’s job is to lead by good deeds and being an example for others in hard work, transparency and building on our fledging democracy. Nature has a way of making a bridge from our thoughts to our deeds and using such a scenario to becoming the most powerful instrument of the desired change in the world. Buhari may be only a change agent but cannot achieve any significant change from the position of hard law or hard rule.
Intellectual information in the form of both numerical data and experienced expert suggestions will be so vital to this administration if indeed it is sincere to make a real change. Any decision outside informed basis would have been pure gamble. I will give a very simple example using the recently concluded elections. In that, exercise our unpublished micro-level survey showed that less than 30 percent of eligible voters actually participated in any of the elections. The focus of politicians and pundits was unduly on preventing opponents out rigging each other rather than making the elections friendly and minimising voters’ absence from the entire electoral process. The over 70 percent eligible voters that stayed away from the polling booths did so because they (i) failed to be registered including those who reached 18 years after the last mass registration 40 percent, (ii) could not get the PVC 10 percent, (iii) due to transfer, death, loss of cards after registration 10 percent, (iv) fear of violence especially by those living outside their states 10 percent, (v) had the cards and in the same area but considered the arrangement for the exercise less dignifying 5 percent, (vi) political parties lacked credible candidates to bring voters out 10 percents, (vii) lack of voters education and proper counseling on the entire exercise and others 15 percent. The newspaper headlines were only on sensational items like rigging, killings and arrest rather than the fact that government and INEC facilities on ground were grossly inadequate to handle the exercise at 30percent voters’ turnout. A change here is not to proffer more laws to forestall frauds and increase voters’ hardships only but actually creating more voting centres and developing a scheme that requires less than five minutes of a voter at a polling booth in any part of the country. You have to make the exercise really entertaining and friendly yet rig-free as much as possible.
Another example is on employment and the general economy. I am happy that to some extent the orientation is that each family wants food on their table and to be able to send their kids to school without fear of insecurity. We also generally agree that Nigeria is not a seminary-school society either for the Muslims or the Christians; Boko Haram has been able to establish that the security of our citizens is universal and paramount. Hence, if thereafter individuals choose to sleep in the church, mosque or anywhere, it would have been up to them. Hence, the economy has enough idle hands to jumpstart itself with a proviso to avoiding frivolous and artificial “dig-holes and fill-back” that would result only in a motion without movement. We need real jobs and we need to project the economy in the productive sector. Government should rather encourage job creation by encouraging private participation in a productive economy and government providing enabling environments only. For example, we need the correct figures for population growth in order to grow food production higher, or know how many new accommodations are needed periodically. Nigerian workers need improved pay package. These are not items politicians are willing to invest on and our reason that GMB may not make any significant impact at the end of the day.
Prof. R.A. Ipinyomi, Daily Times of Nigeria.