If you were to ask President Umaru Yar'Adua's image-makers how and why their principal came to be tarred with such monikers as Baba Go-slow, Baba Stand-still and Area Planner, they will possibly wring their hands in consternation and undignified resignation as they reply: "My brother, we can't fathom the basis for such falsehood. It must be the handwork of political detractors and a section of the Nigerian press pandering to the interests of their treasonous paymasters. Yar'Adua is the hardest-working president in the globe - doing his damn best to launch Nigeria into the league of the Top-20 economies in the world with his carefully crafted seven-point agenda."
And you know what? I believe them 100 percent! Why? Psychologists tell us that if you repeat a lie a minimum number of times, very soon it morphs into a 'truth' etched in your subconscious (ask INEC chairman Professor Maurice Iwu). I believe there's a layman's medical term for a mindset where 'reality' is simply an intricately-woven cocoon of self-deluding soliloquies.
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The subject-matter of my essay is drawn from a made-in-the-US television ad for a sausage roll firm in the 80s. A feisty, old lady surveys (with a baleful look) a pea-sized meat sandwiched between twin-mountains of baked dough and sarcastically asks: "Where's the beef"? After reviewing the president's recent cabinet reshuffle and the 2009 federal budget I found myself asking: President Umaru Yar'Adua, just where did you dump the beef? Apart from the disgracefully slow pace of sacking and appointing ministers and assigning portfolios to them, the quality of the cabinet leaves much to be desired - more of a case of fitting square pegs to round holes and sacrificing proficiency on the puny altar of appeasing hegemonic bloc interests.
Late last week, I was at a gathering where the new cabinet was being discussed. The consensus of opinion was that the posting of Prof. Dora Akunyili to run the Ministry of Information and Communications was a no-brainer. Not so, countered a political VIP that rightly qualifies to be an insider's-insider in the Yar'Adua administration. "Akunyili, Oby Ezekwesili and Chukwuma Soludo are creations of the media. They are propagandists who have discovered how to use the media to feather their nests and careers," our VIP concluded.
Since then I've been wondering why any government would promote a 'propagandist non-performer' to head a federal ministry, unless such a government was unserious and visionless. Abubakar Rimi's press interview last Sunday cleared the cobwebs in my head. Hear him: "Akunyili is competent to do the job (because) by her nature (she) loves to talk and Ministry of Information is where the minister has to talk to the nation, talk to the people and talk to defend Nigeria and to defend government programs and policies."
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Haven't you identified the nexus of insinuations? Obviously, this administration wants to make a Josef Goebbels out of Akunyili. Her Job No. 1 is to replicate the 'propagandist' strategies that worked very well for her at NAFDAC at the Federal Executive Council; which is another way of saying that the powers-that-be think very little of her substantive performance as the anti-fake drugs czar but hold her in very high esteem for her ability to 'manipulate' the media! Truth be told, Akunyili would've done far better as a fastidious reformer of the nation's education sector. As for the insider's-insider's take on Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, I'll save my comments for another day.
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In the case of the 2009 federal budget, I had initially insisted that the major assumption of a $45 benchmark price for a barrel of crude oil was overly optimistic given that oil prices even fell below that price. In economics and finance, it is appropriate to extrapolate a downward forecast when the trend indicates falling prices and vice versa. Due credit must go to Prof. Ayo Teriba for brilliantly reminding everyone that the budget isn't just being made for the months of December 2008 and January 2009 alone but for the entire 12 months of 2009. It is therefore important that projections of likely events in the ENTIRE year should be taken into account in packaging the budget. The way it is, the 2009 budget is a budget of pessimism and resignation. It is forged on the basic principle that things are likely to get worse. This sends a wrong signal to both investors and consumers alike with the unintended consequence of inducing a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yes, oil prices will tank in the first quarter of 2009 because of the global recession but as the industrialized economies experience an economic recovery - and energy demand in summer picks up - prices will rise. An average benchmark price of $55-60 would've been more appropriate: it is not only logical and consistent with historical trends, but it would also have sent the right kind of upbeat message about Nigeria's economy to the outside world. A note of warning to President Yar'Adua: If he pays only lip service to budget implementation and monitoring and/or institutes a reward system that doesn't take long term budgetary yardsticks into account, he can bet that the civil servants will out-talk him on his grandiose seven-point agenda while ensuring that it never sees the light of day!
We should all be scandalized that in a nation where nothing seems to be working, 'development' is now being measured by the voluminous amounts of money being returned as unspent funds every year-end by ministries, departments and agencies! Since public discussion of the servant-leader's rumored health challenge is now a treasonable offence I won't even go there. Call me a bloody coward and I'll readily plead guilty as charged. It was the eclectic late Senate President Dr. Chuba Okadigbo who once famously quipped: "My people didn't elect me to represent them in a prison." Writing a regular column from the confines of a jailhouse isn't exactly my idea of work.
Yet, I still can't help observing that a highly emaciated, sexagenarian OBJ grew rotund and transformed into a late 40s-looking man just within six months of transiting from a federal prison to Aso Villa but more than 18months after leaving the comfortable ambience of the Katsina Governor's Lodge for the more luxuriant Aso Villa, Yar'Adua has emaciated to an alarming degree and now looks far older than his do-or-die mentor, not to mention the widespread facial blotches. Still, those who should know better swear all is well. I can recall that whenever my father suffered a minor ailment such as a 'splitting headache,' the family's affairs usually assumed a lethargic pace that not even his spare-tyre 'vice-president' (my mother) could do little to change, talk less a nation of 140million people in a hurry to join the league of developed nations!
Dumb Ass Award
This week's award goes to the Nigerian Senate, for the dumb ass alacrity with which they rubber-stamped the 2009 federal budget. The manner in which the 'distinguished' (as in 'expired') senators 'passed' the budget is in perfect sync with the worst of their bow-and-go 'tradition.' The most important question is: Who will save the Senate from the Senate?
* Merry Christmas to all our readers!
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