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The most important stuffs that will dominate the 2007 presidential campaign are: Democracy, social welfare of citizens, corruption, sustenance of the gains made by the present Nigerian government, re-designing the grays areas and one attention-grabbing aspect is, looking back at the ‘books’ of the government, this issues would certainly be central in the Nigerian political space as campaign to succeed president Obasanjo is gaining momentum. In Nigeria, current comings and goings normally dominates our politics and in today’s Nigeria, there is growing strong political consciousness among the masses.
In his treatise on an Atiku’s presidency , Dr. Phil Tam-Al Alalibo had asked several questions, made many vital comments and looked at some aspects of the vice president’s agenda for Nigeria with an eagle eye though pessimistically. Dr. Adeolu Akande of Atiku policy group, in his rejoinder tackled all the issues raised by Dr. Phil, with astuteness and affability, though with 100% sanguinity; this is democracy in action, where issues oriented politics surpass sentiments, where healthy debate replaces unnecessary ‘teeth gnashing’. In a democratic cultured society, the instrument of bargaining politicians used in winning the support of the people is, presenting an agenda, and subjecting themselves to public debate, and hence, the public scrutinizes the agenda and the politicians.
Interestingly, both Dr. Adeolu Akande and Dr. Phil Tam-Al Alalibo had looked at Atiku’s agenda for Nigeria from complex context point of view with a well-informed and less-stressful mind; Dr Alalibo asked question in multifaceted way, while Dr. Akande gave answers ‘concealed in cartoons’, so to speak –thus, confusing the common man, who normally is the one that queue on the sun to vote politicians into power. Dr. Alalibo said Atiku’s agenda for Nigeria “they invariably resemble the unattainable Christmas wishes of a restive and an over-anticipatory child” but Dr. Akande said: “Alalibo’s queries of Atiku’s policy statements appear mostly borne out of frustration with Nigerian politicians who see electoral promises as gimmicks to record electoral victories”. Dr. Akande went on and said: “Atiku did not walked out of his bed to give promises; Atiku took the pains to design his policy direction”. In Dr. Alalibo scrutiny of Atiku’s agenda one can figure-out a complete pessimism, while in Dr. Akande’s riposte one can see strong optimism; well, if one is an optimist, one has to know not all Atiku’s agenda can go on to solve Nigeria’s troubles, while all pessimists should know, Atiku deserve an applause for presenting an agenda, which has provoked a discourse on how the next Nigeria should be.
The next Nigeria has to be a country of ‘silicon valley dream’, though, for us to turn the dream into reality, our systems has to be considerably overhaul into knowledge based structures, hence the first port of call has to be our education institutions, a system that is evidently inefficient, when one make a simple comparison between the privately owned schools and public one, the latter is simply in a disorder, despite the fact of the huge investments in it; without mincing word, one can say government owned schools are more expensive than privately owned school, when one is to take into account the huge amount of fund government is spending in our education sector and splits it per student head –it will run into millions per student. Atiku said he would create a system in which no one is left behind, but Dr. Phil Tam-Al Alalibo said: “But how do we achieve this as a nation?” Dr. Akande said: an Atiku government would open more spaces. Well, we need more spaces but the system need to be transformed from top to bottom, the situation where government is the provider, administer, monitor and assessor of fund is the major cause of the lapses in the education sector; there should be a measured public private partnership, where government should built new schools, equipped old ones, then take a benchmark from a well-run private school on what it cost per student head in running a school; then a gradual entrusting of public schools to private sector, where government provides the fund while the private sector managed it- thus, our educational system will be run efficiently, new sustainable jobs will be created and government get relief from the burden of ‘ carrying the camel and its loads’.
Another issue of great interest to Nigerians is jobs creation, Atiku said he would tackled unemployment as a national emergency; but Dr. Alalibo queries is, factories will take a stretch of time to come-up, the Atiku policy group responded that the emphasis is on small and medium scale industries and agriculture, a layman may be curious to know how this is to be accomplished. When jobs are to be created as a national emergency, a clear and systemic definition and identification of which areas of agriculture and small and medium scale industries has to be done, then a systematic process of looking into some vital unsolved issues has to start up in both micro and macro levels of these areas- almost all regimes and politicians in Nigeria had one time or the other talked about agriculture, yet we have not got beyond the distributing fertilizers, most able bodies in all our communities have ‘jobs’ in agriculture yet the jobs are abysmally not life supporting .
For Nigeria reached the stage of hope and leapfrog the ladder development, the essential need of Nigeria of our dream is a President whose sense of judgment is centered on the challenges of un-locking the future for ordinary Nigeria, his decisions are knowledge motivated; and poses a strong political will to take crucial decision without relying on ‘open market’ suggestions; a President that believes his actions are bound to be punctuated by laws; and believes on healthy arguments rather than unnecessary confrontations; and put up a team that would swing away government from the traditional methodology of concentrating on only conventional ways of improving our society, and focus our attention on human development, a system that would fight crimes with employments and opportunities rather than guns, axes, bows and arrows, fight official corruption with meaningful wages, and eradicate poverty by uplifting individuals. The need to move away from over concentration on holistic approach to every issue, and shift to reductionism, though not neglecting total quality management, which entails constructing a blissful Nigeria that put more emphasis on simple issues like IT, sports, films, Music and entrepreneurship, as vehicle of development, it may sound strange, but countries like India, China and some Asian Tigers did so, they developed their countries by empowering individuals on areas that these people can do well, we need a president that can jump-start these big-thinking, but an ethnic or regional president cannot.
Zayyad I. Muhammad writes from Jimeta. zaymohd@yahoo.com
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