By Godwin
Onyeacholem
With many years of uncertainties as the
hallmark of her wobbly existence, Nigeria has once again arrived at a critical
juncture – that inevitable episode in the life of a nation when it is summoned
to deploy the courage to take crucial decisions for good or for bad, depending
on the resolve of the people.
And as history has shown, the tougher the decision
taken the higher the chances of avoiding a lurking calamity.
That unique circumstance has presented
itself in the 2015 election, where Nigerians will do well to seize the moment
and take the decision that will hopefully alter the nation’s trajectory towards
a more meaningful purpose. It cannot be overemphasised that never in the
history of the country has an election generated so much interest, anxiety and
fear of violence.
This is due to its zero-sum character as a result of the high
stakes embedded in it. One thing is clear in this poll: between the ruling
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC),
whoever is victorious wins everything, and whoever suffers defeat loses
everything.
And what are the issues in this
much-talked-about election? Certainly human right is not one of them. Therefore,
the human rights record of the APC standard bearer Muhammadu Buhari under a
military dictatorship is irrelevant here.
Though the past of any individual or
nation cannot be completely ignored, such pasts must be anchored on facts, not
shameless distortion of facts for political expediency as in the case of the
noxious documentary on Buhari being aired by a TV station.
In any case, Nigerians seem to have
overwhelmingly resolved that this election is not about human rights, but about
Nigeria of the present and what the future holds for her. Therefore, the focus
of the campaign has naturally been on three key issues of the day, namely,
corruption, unemployment and insecurity.
To say that corruption has been
identified at various times by both local and foreign experts as the bane of
Nigeria’s development is to overstate the obvious. At independence in 1960,
Nigeria was put on the same path of advancement with countries like South Korea
and Brazil for instance, but today these countries, through focused leadership,
have left Nigeria far behind and gone far off in terms of development that is
almost equal, if not at par, with that of USA and western European countries.
Instead of showing statesmanship by
preparing the grounds for a solid developmental take-off, the conservative
ruling class which inherited power from the colonial masters chose to evince an
inept leadership whose chief tool of governance was corruption.
Sadly enough,
successive governments (civilian or military) have not deviated from that
ignoble path. So much so that the ruling PDP in the last six years has taken
corruption a notch higher by imbuing it with crass impunity.
Under the PDP-led Goodluck Jonathan
administration, which no doubt has its root in the discredited colonial
inheritors, government accountability has taken flight. Money gets missing at
will. Subsidy on petrol suddenly rose from N300m to N2.6trn. Jonathan promised
the nation in 2012 after the House of Reps probe on fuel subsidy that all those
involved in the massive swindle would be made to account for it.
But nothing
has happened to them up till now. They still walk free, and some of them are
still seen hobnobbing with top government functionaries, including Jonathan
himself.
Many more scandals were to follow. For
blowing the whistle on a missing $20bn that the NNPC – which routinely funnels
money into PDP projects – was supposed to have deposited into a federal
government account, former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria and now Emir of
Kano, Sanusi Lamido, was fired. Only recently, a report of the PricewaterhouseCoopers
forensic audit of the NNPC elicited by Sanusi’s allegation was submitted to
Jonathan. It recommended that NNPC should refund $1.48bn to the federal
government purse.
On Jonathan’s watch, the former
Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, forced some agencies under her Ministry to
buy for her two BMW bulletproof cars at the cost of about N250m. Instead of
handing her over to EFCC for prompt prosecution, Jonathan beat around the bush
for a long time before reluctantly sacking her in a cabinet reshuffle. Today,
the woman is contesting a senate seat under a PDP ticket.
On her part, Minister of Petroleum
Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, spent a whopping N10bn of taxpayers’ money
to hire private jet to satisfy her extravagant ego, yet nothing has happened to
her. When a committee in the House of Reps attempted to question her, she
quickly rushed to the court to block the probe.
Yet government agencies under
her Ministry are known to be veritable conduit pipes for siphoning state funds.
The size of corruption in the petroleum sector alone is so enormous as to cause
some concerned citizens, including former top staff, to call for the scrapping
of NNPC.
Today Nigeria loses about 400,000
barrels daily to oil thieves who operate in the Niger Delta area. Rather than
empower the Nigerian Navy to secure the oil pipelines crisscrossing the delta,
government handed the job over to ex-militants who alongside their sponsors are
benefitting from the theft.
That massive stealing of public funds
is going on under this PDP government is stale news. Clearly, Jonathan’s
government has no appetite to fight corruption. He has demonstrated it by not
only telling the world that stealing is not corruption, but also by going ahead
to embrace a man who is still being tried for money laundering and make him the
head of media and publicity of his presidential campaign organisation. As one
former President put it in a local dialect, there is no better way to literally
describe the way Jonathan is handling governance than this: ‘I can do whatever
pleases me.....nobody can arrest me.’
Still, the incapacity of this
government to deal decisively with corruption invariably negatively rubs off on
the economy. Government officials keep churning out all sorts of statistics to
buttress their view of a growing economy, but the reality on ground points to
the contrary. Now with the crash in oil price in the international market,
government is telling the people to brace up for some austerity measures. An
already flattened people will now have to pay for government’s profligacy, poor
policy planning and acute incompetence.
In 2011 Jonathan made specific
promises, but none has so far been fulfilled. Surely, there are more people out
of jobs today than four years ago when Jonathan was first elected. The poverty
level is higher today than it was four years ago. More people now go to bed
with just one meal per day and Nigerians are definitely poorer today than they
were four years ago. Four years ago $1 was sold for between N155 to N158. Today
it is not less than N210 and more likely to keep going up.
In January 2013 at the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jonathan told CNN’s Christine Amanpour that by the
end of 2013, steady electricity would be available to Nigerians. Today,
Amanpour would be shocked to learn that Nigerians still enjoy no more than six
hours of electricity, if it comes at all. This is even after selling off the
assets of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria to PDP sympathisers in the name
of privatisation.
It remains an eternal embarrassment
that Nigeria remains the only oil producing country that imports refined
petroleum products. Successive PDP governments, propelled by corrupt inclinations,
refused to build additional refineries to boost the nation’s refining capacity.
Nor would they focus on diversifying the economy towards agriculture and
mineral resources especially as oil is a wasting asset. Instead, they chose to revel
on the gravy train supplied by the petroleum sector, appropriating the numerous
oil wealth for themselves and their friends alone.
However, most distressing is the inability
to rein in growing insecurity in the land. Nigerians never heard of insurgency
perpetrated by a perverse group called Boko Haram, or kidnapping of any sort by
some misguided youth angling for quick money until the PDP years.
And under
this government, these problems have become worse with bands of kidnappers
operating mostly in the southern part of the country, and Boko Haram posing a
clear threat to the existence of Nigeria as a nation. As of today, on
Jonathan’s watch, the group controls no less than 25 local governments in the
north-eastern part of the country, a territory about the size of Belgium.
Without doubt, this government has run
out of ideas on how to tackle these insurgents. Instead of leading from the
front and taking on the country’s enemies head-on, Jonathan and his party spent
much of the time labelling the APC, accusing the party of being the sponsor of
Boko Haram.
By the time they stopped making excuses, Boko Haram had kidnapped
hundreds, maimed many, killed more than 13,000 Nigerians and carved out swathes
upon swathes from the Nigerian territory which they have declared an Islamic
caliphate.
Section 14 of the 1999 constitution as
amended says the primary objective of government is the security and welfare of
its citizens. But from the way the current PDP government is carrying on, it
has failed woefully in this regard. Therefore, Nigerians will be better served
if they reject a government that cannot protect them and provide for their
welfare.
That is the reason the 2015 election is
crucial. Having seen that the PDP cannot take this nation out of the woods into
which its governments keep pushing it, Nigerians through this election must
take a bold decision to substitute this government for the one with far greater
potential to improve their lot.
With its seemingly left-leaning
orientation, the APC government will certainly do more for the people within a
short time than the PDP claimed to have done in 16 years. Coming with a package
of social security benefits that will greatly encourage primary school
enrolment as well as significantly address the plight of the unemployed in the
society, there is no doubt that the APC deserves to be given a chance to prove
its mettle.
As for corruption and insecurity,
Nigerians can be rest assured that they will be well secured under a Buhari
government. His government will make concrete efforts at plugging the sources
of leakage; it will not be caught shielding a confirmed rogue; it will not be
found pussyfooting on insecurity. Instead, it will take the battle to the
enemies of Nigeria, wherever they are.
Godwin
Onyeacholem is an Abuja-based journalist. He can be reached through gonyeacholem@gmail.com
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