2019: Agenda for Nigerian Presidential Candidates

Fri, Nov 9, 2018 | By publisher


Cover, Featured

As the presidential candidates for the 2019 election start their campaign on Sunday, November 18, there are fundamental issues which if they pursue and deliver on Nigeria would be made better

By Olu Ojewale

It is time for politicking. Hence, it is not out place to hear various candidates from different parties, doing informal campaigns now on their achievements or accomplishments and also boasting about what they stand for on any given national issues. So, ahead of the November 18, when presidential candidates are expected to formally start their campaigns for the office, it is not out of place to hear the likes of Lai Mohammed, the minister of Information and Culture, beating his chest to declare that President Mohammadu Buhari had fulfilled his electoral promises leading to his election in 2015.

On Tuesday, November 6, Mohammed, who appeared on the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, flagship programme, NAN Forum, said that Buhari had delivered on his campaign promises, and deserves to be voted for the second term.

He said the president had since the inception of his administration in May 29, 2015, promised to tackle insecurity, fight corruption and revamp the economy. “Many people did not believe that we could hold inauguration ceremony at the Eagle Square because, until we came, the Eagle Square had not been used for several years.

“As Buhari was being sworn-in, 20 out of the 27 Local Government in Borno State and another four Local Governments in Adamawa State were under the effective control and occupation of Boko Haram. Three and half years later, I can say without any fear of contradiction that not even an inch of our territory today is under the control of Boko Haram,” he said.

Buhari
Buhari

He said that the score card of the federal government on corruption should not be viewed from the angle of the number of people arrested, prosecuted or jailed, but it should be seen from the measures put in place to ensure transparency in governance with the implementation of the Treasury Single Account, TSA. He said although the Buhari met the TSA programme on ground, it was haphazardly implemented with the federal government having more than 22000 accounts in various banks, thereby causing the government to pay heavy charges and losing tracks of money being paid into its accounts. “Between 2015 and today, N8.9 trillion has gone through the TSA and that has made possible for government to know the money it has at any given time and where to allocate it,” he said. Mohammed said that remittance from various revenue generating agencies of government had improved tremendously since the inception of the administration.

In the same vein, he said the introduction of the whistle blowing policy had led to the recovery of N13.8 billion in tax evasion and additional recovery of N7.8 billion, 378 million dollars, and 27,200 pounds.

According to the minister, the Buhari administration has revamped the economy with its social investment programme such as the N-power, conditional cash transfer and school feeding programme.

Mohammed claimed that under the N-power, the government had employed more than half a million unemployed graduates. “Under the conditional cash transfer, we pay a stipend of N5,000 to 297,000 most vulnerable households monthly,” he said further.

Understandably, Mohammed may use those achievements as a yardstick to justifify the president’s bid for a second term in office. But those who want the president’s plum job may also rubbish the achievements based on their perception of the situations on ground.

Indeed, Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and the presidential candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, while canvassing for the party tickets made promises on how he will turn the country around if he should win the 2019 presidential election. First, he said he will run an all-inclusive government devoid of tribal and religious sentiments if voted into office. That sounds promising, considering various allegations being levelled against the Buhari administration to the fact that some key positions are given to his kinsmen.

Just as the Boko Haram insurgence enters its 10th year anniversary this year, Abubakar, on a campaign trip to Maiduguri, Borno State, on July 17, 2018, promised to end the war once and for all should he be given the mandate to lead the country as the president. Indeed, the  Boko Haram battle has been the albatross of Nigerian leaders, including the current president, who had promised to defeat the Islamic sect ahead of the 2015 election. After more than three, the sect is still a major headache for the Buhari administration despite the claim that it has been technically defeated.

Boko Haram remains active, killing and kidnapping innocent Nigerians at will. No doubt, Nigerians will prefer a situation whereby the Boko Haram is wiped out from the surface of the earth at best or totally rendered incapacitated so as not to do any harm against anyone in the country.

Atiku
Atiku

Similarly, Abubakar has promised to end religious violence in Nigeria. That looks like a tall order, but not unachievable. The PDP flag bearer made the promise when he visited Jos, capital Plateau State, on September 19, after saying “I know I have come home. Plateau State is my own home. We all know that Nigeria at the moment is being dominated by religious and ethnic differences.”

But it was an editor, based in Jos, who wishes anonymity, who gave a bit of graphic situation on how religious intolerance has divided the state. He told Realnews recently: “Jos is calm for now. But the city is more divided than ever. The place is divided with Muslims staying on one side and Christians staying in another. If you are a Christian and you want to do something near the Muslim’s side you just have to be careful and do whatever you want to do quickly and leave because trouble can start any time. Up to the time I am talking with you, people are still being stabbed and nothing happens to the culprits. They boast that as long as Buhari is there giving them cover nothing will happen to them. The Muslims are getting away with a lot of atrocities here in Jos. It is terrible that even when you go in the streets you have to be careful and be at alert every time. It is terrible the way we now live like cat and mouse.”

On his part, Sabo Anku, a public commentator, who lives in Kaduna said no matter where anyone comes or the religion one may profess, Nigerians should be able to live in comfort among each other. He said: “It is so sad that things have become so unbearable and people are suffering from hunger, poverty and insecurity and our country is going backward to the extent that our economy is crippled down that take us back to recession and headquarters of extreme poverty. People are dying every day like animals especially in Kaduna either by hoodlums, kidnappers, armed robbers and killer herdsmen. The situation is bad and unacceptable. Government must live up to its responsibility.”

Indeed, given the recent religious intolerance going on in the states like Kaduna, Plateau, Kano, Taraba and Nasarawa states, a united Nigeria not minding religious differences will be a welcome departure from the current intolerance. And as it has been universally acclaimed, it is only in the atmosphere of peace that development thrives.

Another major thing being promised by candidate Abubakar is the restructuring of Nigeria. He has not given the modality to use in restructuring the country. But the promise has enliven the atmosphere that proponents of restructuring have been saying it loud and clear that they will only vote for any presidential candidate who is going to restructure the country and make federating states more independent than they are at the moment. Indeed, Nigerians seem ready to support the kind of restructuring that will make states keep their own resources and grow at their own pace.

Ezekwesili
Ezekwesili

On her own part, Oby Ezekwesili, a former minister of Education, and the presidential candidate of the Action Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN, said that if elected into office, she will bring 80 million Nigerians out of poverty line. This, she promised to do through human capital development and technological innovation is unprecedented. Ezekwesili said: “Beyond the rhetoric that is currently being engaged in during this election season, it is clear to us that getting people out of debilitating poverty is the single most crucial assignment that we have. That is why we adopt this as the cornerstone of the #Oby4President campaign.”

Ezekwesili made promise in a statement issued by the Obiageli ‘Oby’ Ezekwesili 2019 Presidential Campaign Council, recently. She contended that since research had indicated that over 40 percent of cases of extreme poverty could be found in sub-Saharan Africa by year 2050, “to turn around these tragic projections, we need to drastically change how we do things as a country. We cannot continue to vote in the incompetent leaders who put us into this poverty while expecting change to happen.”

Indeed, Nigeria will need a very competent and compassionate leader to bring out the country from the economic woes that have besieged the country. From the standpoint of some observers, Nigeria has never had it this bad. A lot of Nigerians have been out of job since the Buhari administration assumed office. According to latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, an estimated eight million Nigerians became unemployed between January 2016 and September 30, 2017.

Besides, the number of Nigerians who became unemployed during the Buhari administration rose from 8,036 million in Q4 2015 to 15.998 million in Q3 of 2017. More than 100 million Nigerians remain poor in Nigeria with more than 80 percent of the population surviving on less than a dollar a day.

In fact, in an informal discussion with Ray Ekpu, a former chief executive of Newswatch Communication Limited and president of the Guild of Editors, he lamented that Nigeria with all its potentials could be in such an economic doldrums. He pointed out that the value of the Naira in the market had debased the Nigerian economy so much that basic needs are difficult for people to get. “It is sad; things are so difficult in the country these days that parents sell their children openly and they own up to the act. It was not like this before. That’s the level poverty has brought down the country. In the past, India used be number one in the poverty index, but Nigeria has overtaken it. Nigeria is now the headquarters of poverty,” Ekpu said with a visible tone of sadness and concern.

According to experts, one of the best measures to bring out the country from poverty is to fix the electricity. Indeed, the Buhari administration before assuming office, had promised to ensure uninterrupted power supply, but more than three years in office there is hardly any improvement to point at.

This, perhaps, prompted Akinwunmi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank, AfDB, to declare as unacceptable for Nigeria to be delivering 4,500 megawatts of electricity. On the sidelines of the Africa Investment Forum in Sandton, South Africa, the Nigerian former minister of Agriculture said the situation is bad and shameful. “I don’t think it’s acceptable that Nigeria is hovering in 4,500 megawatts space. No. Nigeria ought to be in 40,000 megawatts space. That is what we should be talking about.” He said the AfDB had invested more than $200 million in driving power generation and transmission in Nigeria.

“I think that we as a bank are strongly supportive, we’ve been investing in Nigeria for quite some time; we have been working with the minister of power right now. We are working with them on the Transmission Company of Nigeria, in which we have invested over $200 million to help to improve the transmission line.

“We’ve supported Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Company because they had issues in terms of liquidity and we provided $200 million to help them unblock some of those things. We are also going to be investing in solar. With the minister of Power, we are looking at something in the Jigawa area, which would be about 1,000 megawatts. We are also investing in other types of renewable energy on the small scale,” Adesina said.

The federal government of Nigeria has said it would be generating 9,000 megawatts of electricity by December 2018. Nigerian economic experts have reasoned that if the electricity is fixed many manufacturing companies that had left the country will return and new ones will spring up, thereby providing jobs for the teeming population. “I can see many Nigerians resigning from their current jobs if there is an uninterrupted power supply. Constant and uninterrupted power gives room for creativity, especially among youths,” Gbola Oba, a businessman and public commentator, said.

Kingsley Moghalu, a presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party, YPP, made a range of mouth watering promises in his campaign, including restructuring of the country. One area that looks enticing in his programme is that of Education. According to the former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, 20 percent of the federal budget allocation will go to education and increase to 30 percent in eight years. With this, he said the education system will be fundamentally reformed to create skills and human capital that will drive Nigeria’s industrialisation and job creation.

The plan sounds nice, but the Nigerian education system looks prostrate today that declaring an emergency on it looks like a viable way out. The United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF, recently raised an alarm saying that the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria had risen from 10.5 million in 2010 to 13.2 in 2015. It put the blame on the increase on the rise in the number of internally displaced children and a corresponding increase in birth rates.

Hammid Bobboyi, executive secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC, who disclosed this in Abuja on October 2, traced the increase to the Boko Haram insurgence in the North East.

Also at the briefing, Terry Durnnia, education chief at the UNICEF, said 45 percent of out-of-school children in West Africa are Nigerians. “The number of out of school children calls for serious concern. Nigeria should take on the challenge of reducing out of school children,” he said. Indeed, apart from the North, several children of school age are forced into street trading even in the cities, exposing them to dangers of child abuse, drug abuse, sexual harassment and early death by road accidents.

One major problem also facing the education planners is the lack of credible data to plan with. For instance, Adamu Adamu, the minister of Education, during the annual gathering of state commissioners for Education, permanent secretaries, directors and other relevant education stakeholders, lamented that absence of reliable and realistic data had continued to affect the implementation of education policies in Nigeria.

Nevertheless, he expressed hope that the National Enrolment Drive Campaign that was launched in January would address the huge number of out-of-school children in Nigeria especially in the North. Its objective is to encourage states and all stakeholders to appreciate the magnitude of the challenge and possibly develop effective strategies for significant reduction.

“UNICEF will only lead and support the process of reducing out of school children. Low budgetary allocation to education is a bane to the sector at all levels,” Durnnia charged. Indeed, to redress the damage, Nigeria obviously needs to meet up with the 26 percent of the budgetary allocation as recommended by the UN. Sadly, the current federal government budgetary allocation for education is paltry seven percent.

Hence, for the Nigerian education system to rise again, it would need a radical departure from the current approach and a substantial increase in budgetary allocation. According to an observer, “concerned Nigerians from both the public and private sectors, as well as NGOs should be ready to bring in their wealth of experience and expertise, funds, time and energy to reverse the drift to ignorance. The first step is to accept the fact that the debacle of ignorance is unacceptable anywhere in Nigeria, a country richly blessed with abundant natural and human resources.”

That aside; Nigerians would want any incoming administration to continue to fight corruption. All the presidential candidates are not shying away from the subject, but Nigerians would want the fight to be devoid of party-politics and witch-hunting as the current fight by the Buhari administration seems to suggest.

Perhaps, as Moghalu said while speaking during a lecture organised by Centre for Financial Journalism, CFJ, recently, “Nigeria needs a generational shift, a generational shift that is not based on age but based on the idea.”

– Nov. 9, 2018 @ 17:39 GMT |

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