President Umaru Yar’Adua’s interview with The Guardian is painful to read. It takes a Nigerian to start reading it, but a masochist to finish.
But I learned a key difference between Mr. Yar’Adua and his predecessor: Obasanjo was a ruler who knew he was a hypocrite; Yar’Adua is a hypocrite who does not know he is a ruler. Obasanjo could get things done if he really wanted; Yar’Adua cannot accomplish anything because he thinks he has forever. I know now that, having lost the first eight years of the new millennium to Obasanjo, we are about to lose another eight to Yar’Adua.
What did our leader tell the country in the interview?
Before I answer that, let me go back to Yar’Adua’s inauguration, two years ago.
The man sounded committed. Inspired. Prepared. Motivated. “We are Nigerians!” he said—and were he an orator I imagine he might have pounded the pulpit with a great fist as he uttered those words. “We are a resourceful and enterprising people, and we have it within us to make our country a better place.”
And he challenged: “Let us recapture the mood of optimism that defined us as the dawn of independence, that legendary can-do spirit that marked our Nigerianness…We have the talent. We have the intelligence. We have the ability.”
I thought that following those words, Yar’Adua would be sprinting out of Eagle Square on his way to work. He had a promised emergency pending, for instance, that I expected—on the basis of those words— to be in effect within 48 hours.
That was our power emergency, one of the issues he spoke about. It is two years later, but the only state of emergency the nation has seen is in how terrible things can get. “…We have so far managed to sustain our production of electricity to between 2,700 megawatts and 3,000 megawatts…,” he explained, patting himself on the back. “This is not an easy achievement.”
Contrary to his rhetoric, he has neither an emergency nor an interest in recovering any of the $16 billion alleged to have been “invested” in it by his predecessor.
But he says the emergency is on the way. “We have a plan to generate 6,000 megawatts by December, [and] 10,000 megawatts by the end of 2011… I have no doubt in my mind that once we achieve the 10,000 megawatts by 2011, by 2015 we will have another generation of about the same amount…”
If Yar’Adua is not interested in accountability in the power sector, he is not interested in it as an issue. Take transportation, for another example. In the same week in which his administration announced new road contracts totalling N373 billion, he reminded Nigerians that in 2007, he inherited contracts for 631 highways costing nearly one trillion Naira. But although advance payments had been made to the contractors, many of the constructions were abandoned.
What he did not say was that there were really no roads, just dubious contracts nationwide generating money for well-connected party officials and their friends. He said that even if all the available funds in the sector were put into those roads, it would still have taken about 13 years to complete. Yet, again, we continue to spend on the same projects, with no interest in getting our money back. This is management?
But what stunned me the most was his admission that Nigeria will not meet the target date of 2015 to fulfill the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in maternal health, child health, poverty, and education.
The first reason that Yar’Adua’s statement is so sad is that the MDGs are not terribly ambitious objectives; in fact, some serious nations refer to them not as Millennium goals, but as “minimum.” Not only did Nigeria get the same 15 years as others, we have enjoyed great depth of resources. Yet, some of those nations, through commitment and diligence, are meeting and outstripping the MDGs.
The second reason for despair is that in 2007, Yar’Adua told the United Nations in 2007, “…Unless concrete and more determined actions were taken, the overarching aim of meeting the 2015 of poverty eradication would remain a mirage.” Then, last year, he told the same Assembly of Nigeria’s determination to honour her MDGs obligations. Since he had done nothing about the MDGs since he took office, his capitulation seems pre-meditated.
And now, he chooses the easy way out. The truth is that ours is a country where our elite enjoy the sights and smells of poverty. They buy their generators, jets and yatchts, often from looted funds, but pretend they are naturally better than others. They deny opportunities to the poor, even those that are more intelligent than they are, but persist in celebrating their ascendancy. If Nigeria is not meeting the MDG target on poverty, it is because our elite resent the thought of changing this social order. Everything else is an excuse.
The third reason Yar’Adua’s surrender is so embarrassing is that by saying Nigeria will not meet these four targets, he implies she will be meeting the others goals: Combating HIV & AIDS; Gender equality; Environmental Sustainability; and Global Partnership for Development. The scandalous reality is that Nigeria is not prepared to meet any of the MDGs.
But it need not be so. If we have the resolve, Nigeria can meet the MDGs, all of them. We have the resources, what we lack is the will and the leadership. By saying we cannot meet the MDGs, it is important for Yar’Adua to understand that apart from embarrassing Nigeria, he is confirming his irrelevance the collapse of his own credibility.
How can we meet the MDGs? We should develop a Marshall Plan approach, with eight components for each of the MDGs. Have the MDG Movement, or whatever you choose to call it, to structure an implementation mechanism that incorporates evaluation, reporting and correction processes, and with a six-year completion date.
Each component of the MDG machinery should be structured into smaller—and timed—tasks. Reporting requirements, involving selected academic and research institutions, the private sector, the press and civil society could be held every six months at the national level, and three months at the component level. Place the implementation plan in the public domain so that it is monitored closely by the public. We can certainly achieve far more than the MDGs by 2015, but it would take a different, single-minded assault, the “can-do” spirit Mr. Yar’Adua identified in 2007 but has not provided.
And such a historic undertaken would admit of no hidden agenda or corruption.
At his inauguration, Yar’Adua said, “We are determined to intensify the war against corruption, more so because corruption is itself central to the spread of poverty…By fighting poverty, we fight disease. We will make advances in public health, to control the scourge of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases that hold back our population and limit our progress.”
Yet, now, with two years gone of his tenure, he says we must be prepared to keep our poverty and maintain the corruption that holds us hostage to it, and to disease. He diminishes us and our people, and we must reject it.
He was also asked about his corrupt friends that are uncomfortably close to the government, but he sees no ethical conflict. “These former governors are my colleagues,” he said. “We had worked together for eight years. Because I am the President, I cannot just jettison people I know.”
Fascinating: privileged interests before country. What this reminds us is that Yar’Adua was “put in office,” not elected. His heart belongs to his private interests. He is like a married woman who, when her husband’s family complains they see her with strange men all over the place, explains condescendingly that they are no strangers, but men she loved for a long time.
Hopefully, Yar’Adua can understand the emptiness of the “time-honoured” principles of which he spoke of at his inauguration. If he still wants to re-ignite the optimism of 1960; if he wants Nigerians ever to write his name and the word, hope, in the same sentence, he must remember this: Power is for improving the lot of the many as quickly as possible, without games and without manipulation.
On this, by his own account, he is failing. Profoundly.
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