• Main News
  • About Us
  • Contact
Premium Times Opinion
Sunday, June 26, 2022
  • Home
  • Democracy and Governance
    • Bámidélé Upfront
    • Jibrin Ibrahim
    • Okey Ndibe
  • Economy
    • Ifeanyi Uddin
  • Issues of the Day
    • Adeolu Ademoyo
    • Aribisala on Tuesday
    • Dele Agekameh
    • Pius Adesanmi
  • Politics
    • Ebeneezer Obadare
    • Femi Fani-Kayode
    • Garba Shehu
    • Hannatu Musawa
    • Zainab Suleiman Okino
  • Guest Columns
  • Faith
    • Article of Faith
    • Sunday Ogidigbo
    • Friday Sermon
    • Elevated Sight
  • Home
  • Democracy and Governance
    • Bámidélé Upfront
    • Jibrin Ibrahim
    • Okey Ndibe
  • Economy
    • Ifeanyi Uddin
  • Issues of the Day
    • Adeolu Ademoyo
    • Aribisala on Tuesday
    • Dele Agekameh
    • Pius Adesanmi
  • Politics
    • Ebeneezer Obadare
    • Femi Fani-Kayode
    • Garba Shehu
    • Hannatu Musawa
    • Zainab Suleiman Okino
  • Guest Columns
  • Faith
    • Article of Faith
    • Sunday Ogidigbo
    • Friday Sermon
    • Elevated Sight
No Result
View All Result
Premium Times Opinion
Home Guest Columns

Nigeria after February 2015, By Tolu Ogunlesi

by Tolu Ogunlesi
February 2, 2015
5 min read
2

This is the month we’ve waited four years for. By the time this column appears on Monday February 16, Nigeria will – barring a National State of Emergency, or a Government of National Unity, or the Apocalypse – have a new President, or an old one with a new mandate. It will no doubt be a keenly contested race. Atedo Peterside says his ANAP Foundation has carried out a presidential poll in partnership with NOI Polls, and that candidates Buhari and Jonathan are “running neck-to-neck.” (I have come to respect the ANAP-NOI Polls partnership, ever since they rightly called the outcome of the Ekiti governorship elections last year).

However things play out, life will have to go on after February. The political hashtags on social media will take a break, and we will watch the colourful posters that have defaced our streets fade most unspectacularly. Newspapers and blogs will have to adjust to a post-election advertising drought, and many of us will need to devise strategies for swallowing misguided pre-election boasting and taunting.

I’m very much interested in what happens after the elections, especially from the perspective of governance. Whoever takes over as President will be presiding over a country that will struggle to find money to share. I have used the word ‘share’ because Nigeria is first a contrived mechanism for the dispensing of crude oil revenues, before it is a nation/state/country. The most significant activity in the country today is the monthly ‘FAAC’ meeting where the thirty-six states gather in Abuja to divide oil revenues among themselves. Everything else revolves around that, because it is at those meetings that the country’s constituent parts receive the charge that keeps the batteries of their life-support machines going. (Most Nigerian states, the truth be told, are on permanent life support).

Now, with oil prices less than half of what they were this time last year, we are in deep trouble. The batteries are not being charged, and we are faced with an array of twitching, terminally-ill states, as well as a central government tottering on the edge of insolvency. I read a recent HSBC report that projects that this year Nigeria will earn $26 billion from the sale of crude oil. Last year we earned about $40 billion; in 2011 years ago our earnings were north of $50 billion. Whoever emerges as president-elect clearly deserves more commiseration than congratulations.

Now, politics in Nigeria – or anywhere else for that matter – cannot exist without the dispensing of reward and patronage, and this will be true regardless of who occupies Aso Rock after May 29, and regardless of the state of the country’s finances. The boys and girls who have thrown their support behind the winner will have to be rewarded, or ‘carried along’ (as we say in these parts). Sharing the spoils of victory will be an easier task for Jonathan than it will be for Buhari, because for Jonathan a five-year-old, or sixteen-year-old, structure already exists – comprising the PDP’s federal experience and institutional memory, and well-established reward systems and networks of alliances.

For Buhari (or Pa Buhari, as the PDP voltrons on Twitter like to call him) it will be a tougher task. For now the opposition is united by the singular task of easing Jonathan out. With Jonathan out of the way, that motley coalition will be sorely tested by success. If the manner in which the APC’s choice of Vice Presidential candidate was settled is anything to go by, the allocation of senior government positions will be the administration’s first big minefield.

There are a number of laudable programmes of the current government that should be continued, regardless of who assumes office. I’m thinking of programmes like the National Mortgage Refinancing Company, the Sovereign Wealth Fund (austerity should never be an excuse for not saving and investing for the future!), the railways rehabilitation projects, and the remarkable progress in the agricultural sector. The incoming government will also need to fast-track the power sector reforms, with special focus on completing and privatising the NIPP plants.

Two things will require complete overhauling; the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), and the approach to the insurgency in the north east. NNPC, as the primary source of government revenues, needs to be set free from debilitating state control, which promotes dysfunction and a shocking lack of transparency. It will be disappointing if the PDP government maintains the status quo with the NNPC after the elections, doubly so if an APC government does so.

Regarding Boko Haram, I believe that Buhari will be a more competent Commander-in-Chief than Jonathan, and that he will be better able to inspire the troops to much better performance. But he will need to be careful to not fall for the temptation of overconfidence, or assume that his experience as an army commander thirty years ago is enough to depend on today. A President Buhari will need to project an attitude of humility and openness to ideas.

If it does happen that President Jonathan will be with us four more years, even he will need to change his Boko Haram strategy, which is obviously not working. I think that by now the President himself knows that he has scored an ‘F’ in that regard. It has been interesting listening to him on the campaign trail. While he could get away with not mentioning Boko Haram in the south, he couldn’t escape it in the North. And so we’ve heard him insist again and again that he’s not the one sponsoring Boko Haram – in response to sentiments, prevalent in the north, that he is the chief instigator of the terrorists, with an eye on destabilizing the region to his political benefit. (In my opinion those sentiments are as absurd as the PDP’s claims that APC or Buhari are sympathetic to Boko Haram).

Whoever is elected President of Nigeria will need to be ‘A President for All’. Far too often Mr. Jonathan has seemed to be keen on appearing to be an Ijaw President, or a President of Nigerian Christians. In a second term, he will need to jettison that bad behavior. On the part of Mr. Buhari, I have heard people express fears that his will be a ‘Hausa-Fulani presidency’. Those people point to the circumstances surrounding the Yar’Adua presidency, as evidence for their misgivings. Recall that the late president was surrounded by an ethnic cabal who wasted no time assuming control of the government as Yar’Adua’s illness worsened. One of the victims of that cabal was the then Vice President Jonathan, who was effectively locked out of the government, and reduced to – as his wife reportedly put it at that time – a man whose job it was to “read newspapers”. It was so bad that a US Embassy list of the most influential persons in Nigeria in 2008 didn’t include the then Vice President. Nigeria deserves a President who will demonstrate, in speech and action, that he is a president for everybody, regardless of tribe, tongue, religious persuasion or – and this is extremely important – political affiliation.

From time to time I find myself accused of fixating on the presidency, at the expense of the state governors whose actions and inactions have perhaps even greater bearing on the lives of ordinary Nigerians. I plead guilty, in part. My defensive argument is that in a country where half of the national oil revenues go to the Federal Government, leaving the other half to be shared by 36 states and 774 local governments, that sort of Federal government deserves all the pressure and scrutiny it gets. Also, it is my belief that a high-performing Federal government will easily translate into higher standards of governance across the lower levels.

But it is true that we need to focus on the states as well. The quality of governance at state level is extremely uneven, and some governors are getting away with behavior that will make the worst Federal Government look like a candidate for beatification. Next week I will try to focus on governance at state level, and the challenges I think the next set of governors will have to confront. If you’ve got anything you’d like the world to know about the performance of your state governor, please email or text me.

Follow me on Twitter @toluogunlesi

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Print
  • More
  • Pocket
  • Share on Tumblr

Related

Previous Post

Now that we Are On Our Knees: What Next? By Jibrin Ibrahim  

Next Post

Goodluck Jonathan is a Superior Presidential Material to Muhammadu Buhari, By Femi Aribisala

Related Posts

Soyinka And Nigerian Trumpsters, By Adeolu Ademoyo
Guest Columns

The Kukah Offence and Ongoing Offensives, By Wole Soyinka

January 18, 2021
COVID-19: the Global System and the African Economy, By Toyin Falola
Guest Columns

2020: Sorrow, Tears, Blood and Death, By Toyin Falola

December 31, 2020
U.S.’s Health and Humanitarian Aid, By Mary Beth Leonard
Guest Columns

Looking Back On 2020 With A Sense of Optimism Toward 2021, By Mary Beth Leonard

December 24, 2020
Industrialising Nigeria: It is Time for Cross-pollination, Not Cross-purposes, By Abdul Samad Rabiu
Guest Columns

Industrialising Nigeria: It is Time for Cross-pollination, Not Cross-purposes, By Abdul Samad Rabiu

December 22, 2020
Soyinka And Nigerian Trumpsters, By Adeolu Ademoyo
Guest Columns

INFRADIG: A Presidential Comeuppance, By Wole Soyinka

December 14, 2020
Trust and Confidence Building As Conditions of Good Governance, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Columns

Still On the IMF and the Economy, By Uddin Ifeanyi

December 14, 2020
Next Post
Stephen Keshi: The wrong coach for the World Cup, By Femi Aribisala

Goodluck Jonathan is a Superior Presidential Material to Muhammadu Buhari, By Femi Aribisala

Emir Sanusi, This Is How You Can Help The North, By Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú

Trillion Level Looters - A Looter Continua!, By Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú

Editorial

  • EDITORIAL: The Urgency of Tackling Nigeria’s Second Wave of COVID-19

    EDITORIAL: The Urgency of Tackling Nigeria’s Second Wave of COVID-19

  • EDITORIAL: Unearthing the Cogent Lessons In the NESG-CBN Economic Policy Imbroglio

    EDITORIAL: Unearthing the Cogent Lessons In the NESG-CBN Economic Policy Imbroglio

  • EDITORIAL: COVID-19: Calling On Nigeria’s Billionaires and Religious Leaders To Step Up

    EDITORIAL: COVID-19: Calling On Nigeria’s Billionaires and Religious Leaders To Step Up

  • EDITORIAL: Bichi Must Go; Buhari Must Halt Slide Into Despotism

    EDITORIAL: Bichi Must Go; Buhari Must Halt Slide Into Despotism

  • EDITORIAL: The Flaws In Governor Emefiele’s Five-Year Plan For Central Bank of Nigeria

    EDITORIAL: The Flaws In Governor Emefiele’s Five-Year Plan For Central Bank of Nigeria

Subscribe to our Opinion articles via email

Enter your email address to get notifications of new opinion articles as they are published.

Join 526,540 other subscribers

Most Popular

  • More Fiction than Reality: Anambra’s Purported ‘Golden’ Finances and Grand Legacy of the Obi Era, By Fidelis Nwangwu
    More Fiction than Reality: Anambra’s Purported ‘Golden’ Finances and Grand Legacy of the Obi Era, By Fidelis Nwangwu
  • The Bad Consequences and Dangers of Adultery and Fornication (Zina) In Islam, By Murtadha Gusau
    The Bad Consequences and Dangers of Adultery and Fornication (Zina) In Islam, By Murtadha Gusau
  • The Qualities of a Good Leader In Islam, By Murtadha Gusau
    The Qualities of a Good Leader In Islam, By Murtadha Gusau
  • Islam and the Conditions For Marrying More Than One Wife, By Murtadha Gusau
    Islam and the Conditions For Marrying More Than One Wife, By Murtadha Gusau
  • You Will Be Held Responsible On What Happened To Your Children!, By Murtadha Gusau
    You Will Be Held Responsible On What Happened To Your Children!, By Murtadha Gusau
  • World Teachers Day and The Position of Teachers In Islam, By Murtadha Gusau
    World Teachers Day and The Position of Teachers In Islam, By Murtadha Gusau
  • Showing Gratitude To Allah For His Bounties, Blessings and Favours, By Murtadha Gusau
    Showing Gratitude To Allah For His Bounties, Blessings and Favours, By Murtadha Gusau

Like us on Facebook

Like us on Facebook

Podcasts

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

  • Main News
  • About Us
  • Contact

© 2022 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Democracy and Governance
    • Bámidélé Upfront
    • Jibrin Ibrahim
    • Okey Ndibe
  • Economy
    • Ifeanyi Uddin
  • Issues of the Day
    • Adeolu Ademoyo
    • Aribisala on Tuesday
    • Dele Agekameh
    • Pius Adesanmi
  • Politics
    • Ebeneezer Obadare
    • Femi Fani-Kayode
    • Garba Shehu
    • Hannatu Musawa
    • Zainab Suleiman Okino
  • Guest Columns
  • Faith
    • Article of Faith
    • Sunday Ogidigbo
    • Friday Sermon
    • Elevated Sight

© 2022 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.