Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, was not saying anything new when he suggested last week that President Umar Musa Yar’Adua should consider abridging his so-called Seven Point Agenda to about two or three for effective and beneficial implementation.
It was an honest, sharp, well-timed articulation of the widespread view of Nigerians on the subject. It is, therefore, saddening that overzealous characters at the Presidency are trying to make big news out of a very simple, straightforward advice from a genuinely concerned Nigerian.
“The seven point-agenda, if we could just focus on two or three things and finish them up in the next four years, we will be far more effective in contributing to this country than focusing on seven. This is a country where we do not have linkages. And because of the absence of linkages, we don't have economic growth. We produce gas and export it, we do not have power plants. We produce crude oil, we import refined petroleum products. If we can set up power plants, set up our refineries, their multiplier effects on the economy and on growth is amazing; and if we don't do that we cannot grow," Sanusi said last week while being screened for the CBN top job by the Senate.
It is, however, reassuring that presidential spokesman, Olusegun Adeniyi, has rightly interpreted Sanusi’s remarks as a suggestion and not an attack. It is, therefore, hoped that Mr. Sanusi has not been somewhere behind the curtains, since he volunteered those statements, answering queries for choosing to “embarrass” the president before Nigerians – as if this regime has not over-embarrassed itself enough by merely encumbering the ground these past two years, and having nothing to show Nigerians in the form of solid achievements.
Do Nigerians really need a Sanusi or anyone’s intervention to realize that the Yar’Adua regime is clearly overwhelmed? Nigerians only hear about and feel the so-called Seven Point Agenda on television screens, where millions of naira is squandered daily on uninspiring, meaningless adverts to promote the vacuous concoction. By the way, is two years not enough for a people to feel the impact of a focused, purpose-driven regime, if there is any in Abuja? That’s the problem. Nigeria is presently weighed down by so many big, crushing problems, but here we are, stuck with a president who can neither be hurried nor bothered that the nation he is supposed to be ruling is dying every day.
Yes, we have a ruler who cannot be made to allow even the slightest hint of urgency in his moves and seems not to have the barest idea of what it means to be perturbed that he had flopped on virtually every promise he had made to the nation since he assumed office some two years ago. In fact, it does not even appear he can be brought to lose any sleep that he woefully failed even before he started, and that most Nigerians have since lost every confidence in him. How many Nigerians are still able to feel there is a government in Abuja? What is plastered everywhere are utter hopelessness and despair, and no one seems to care?
How long shall a sick and dying nation continue to wait for a perennially planning president? We are obviously saddled with a president who clearly came into office without any ideas, focus, any coherent action plans or even an average understanding of what he was coming to office to accomplish. And so, each time his attention is called to the mounting problems begging for his urgent intervention, he appears startled and looks as if he feels he is being unduly bothered. It looks very much like what he would prefer is to merely sleep through the problems with the blissful hope that he would wake one day see all of them solved.
The Seven Point Agenda may just be something hurriedly knocked together at the Villa. And it is quite possible that at the time it was concocted together and thrown at Nigerians, little or no time was devoted to really determine what is involved and what is required to ensure its successful realization; in fact, there may have been no policy framework or clearly thought out plans to ensure its successful implementation. And now, instead of accepting a wise counsel and reducing the something to a size that would no longer overwhelm available capacity in Aso Rock, as many genuinely concerned Nigerians are suggesting, the Presidency is allowing itself to be unduly ruffled.
Indeed, ego is a very difficult thing to deal with. Else, why should Yar’Adua and his unproductive crowd in Abuja have problems with a mere suggestion everyone can see the president seriously and urgently needs? Is this really about delivering quality governance and bettering the lives of the citizenry or just a stubborn insistence on gratuitously demonstrating that one is all-knowing – the I-am-the-one-in-charge-here air, you know? – and therefore, needs, no input from any other person? A regime as absent-minded, half-hearted and frail as the present one needs not over-burden itself with a Seven Point Agenda, because it might eventually end up achieving none. That’s the problem.
Now, if Mr. Yar’Adua would swallow his unhelpful pride and agree to reduce the whole unwieldy stuff to just two, say, power and infrastructure, and then dutifully plunge his clearly modest energy and ideas into realizing them, Nigeria may experience a refreshing difference, and would ever remain grateful to him. Imagine for a second the limitless possibilities of having an uninterrupted power supply in a highly innovative environment like Nigeria’s? Industries which have fled Nigeria would consider returning; jobs would be created and the prices of goods and services would automatically go down, making life less-hellish for the masses.
It is now convenient to cite the Niger Delta crises as the reason why Nigeria is still trapped in prehistoric darkness, as if the dog’s nose was not already cold long before the harmattan arrived. Somebody should, please, advise them to dream up another excuse, as this one does not and cannot fly. Okay, is it the Niger Delta crises that have also hindered our refineries from working? What an irony: we have crude oil in excess, but instead of refining it in Nigeria and selling petroleum products to our people at affordable prices, we export the crude to other lands where it is refined and sold to us in Nigeria as “foreign commodity.” What an irony. I suppose our bad roads, too, lack of potable water and infrastructural decay at our health and educational institutions were all caused by the Niger Delta crises.
Yeah, this is Government; we’ve got it!
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