Bunching up compromised Nigerian journalists with Abuja-land grab mindset and government people to do a cakewalk in Lagos and sundry places on Vision Twenty20 will not do, if this government is dead serious. This regime has to without delay put all its energy and gut power into killing and capturing political and institutional corruption in the manner approaching George Bush going after Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden. This would be the surest way to successfully walk into 2020 with our eyes wide open to economic plentitude. I wish you all an easy ride, 2020ward. Safe journey brothers and sisters, all things being equal! ‘I’ll see you when you get there’ like rap-star Coolio sang in gangsters’ paradise album.
One can’t help but wonder if president Yar’Adua and his groupies promoting the Vision 2020 are for real or doing it for political showmanship because it pat upon their egos for the moment. I want to believe that this is yet another soulless project that’s full of style and short on substance. We had a long line of policies since the past two years that didn’t add up than the paper and ink they were written on. A short list suffice to say it well: (1) the committee set up to checkmate global economic meltdown, (2) the committee drawn up to investigate the Halliburton corruption and the likes, (3) the justice Uwaia´s committee drafted to clean up our electoral space &co.&co. All these have stifled and died in the vine before its lift up. 2020 Vision, I’m afraid would die an ‘Abiku’ death quickly like its relatives policies, programs, agendas and projects formulated before it by this regime’s actors in the past two-years.
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More trifling in my estimation is this regime’s fixation to legalise 2020 Roadmap in anticipation to make future presidents swallow it subserviently Signed, Sealed and Delivered like Stevie Wonder’s famous song. Hawkers of 2020 are selling this project with cold aggressiveness, as if they’re ex-president Obasanjo on steroid. I pray to Conventional Wisdom that the senate didn’t allow president Yar´Adua ‘Allah Akbar’ his way through legalising his primitive blueprint.
'Indeed, a bill, would soon be presented to the National Assembly to legalise the economic blueprint, so that it becomes binding on the present administration and succeeding ones.’ Minister of National Planning, Shamsudeen Usman thundered that quote while mis-educating Media linchpins in Lagos. I’m still in awe how anyone can contemplate legalising suchlike. Had ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo legalised his policies and stonewalled future leaders from their personal creativities, how’d Yar'Adua have had the hand and legroom to come about his by-now Vision 2020 that he intends legislating oncoming presidents to swallow hook, line and sinker? EFCC´s ace woman Farida Waziri had suggested that incoming politicians should do psychiatric test before clearance to hold offices. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if we start with those moving for the legislation of 2020 Vision.
As a rule of thump worldwide, no sitting government has succeeded in tying the hands of future presidents and dulling their creative enthusiasm via bushman legislation a´ la Yar´Adua. They’re conventionally left to their devices in the positive and given the leeway to do as they please without retro legislation shackling them hands and legs. The first thing Ronald Regan did after taking over from Jimmy Carter was to remove the solar panels installed on White House rooftop by Carter. Carter is a believer of green energy, he worked hard for world peace and to reduce America’s dependence of oil: while Regan was a man who believed that the United States´s rightful place was at the top of a world pyramid held up by military muscle, and that controlling oil fields where ever they existed was part of America’s Manifest Destiny.
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To legalise Vision 2020 in Nigeria is perfect example on how to kill future initiative - a proper signature of banana republics and dictatorships. Obasanjo could as well have trademarked, branded and monopolised every future government policies before legalising them into law to mesmerise Yar´Adua and keep him in perpetual official red tape of complacent do-nothing. A recipe for government madness anywhere doesn’t get worst than what president Yar´Adua and his minions are advocating legalising via senate.
The well-studied mindlessness and coldness with which their vision is being marketed by 2020 merchants, to Nigerians, is already frightening the daylights out of ordinary folks that a nervous meltdown is not too far off. I hereby introduce one of the militant merchant of 2020 Vision: Dr. Reuben Abati, The Chairman, Editorial Board of The Guardian to the microphone: "It's people-driven. It's about national progress. It's about patriotism. I, in fact, served as a member of one of its technical committees." Laud-speaker Abati slavishly made that comment when Minister of National Planning, Shamsudeen Usman presented Vision 2020 to media executives in Lagos on the 27th of October 2009 according to the Guardian Newspaper. If Reuben Abati were to be a devout Christian or Muslim, would he swear in all truthfulness with Bible or Koran that the evidence he gave in that quote is the whole truth any nothing but the truth? If Abati were some one who works hard for his money, would he bet his hard-earned money on it that Vision 2020 is people-driven, about national progress and about patriotism? When would Abati learn to put his money where his mouth is? This kind of consciously calculated pinching and masturbation the truth by Media people to get patronage from government is helping make Nigeria a banana country every day. Abati doesn’t know how much he sounds like Professor Dora Akuyili the re-brander and deceiver General in Abuja.
Wholesalers of president Yar’Adua´s Vision 2020 seem to be doing booming trade at the moment. It looks as if there’re some land in Abuja and monies to be made from the dealership of yet another lame duck government economic roadmap. Yar´Adua himself who’s the father of this blueprint is a lame duck president. His minions are all contaminated and bewitched apart by the lame duck epidemic oozing out of Aso Rock. In reality, unlike other economic roadmaps of erstwhile governments, Yar´Adua´s Vision 2020 has a double jeopardy against it such that will make it not walk on sunshine any day. That’s how worse it gets! Since the political class of 1999-2009, churns of economic developmental blueprints of bygone administrations have come and gone without scoring any developmental or economic goal. The merchants trading this regime’s delusional article of 2020 forward march know too well that it’s a hoax but can’t back out because of the ailing money to be made therefrom.
Another lose/lose situation for country and citizens together! Such an empty barrel Vision that makes the loudest noise with nothing to show for it lastly!
It’s becoming too unclear whether the 7-Point Agenda is a bigger draw than Vision 2020 or the reverse. More flashlights are being shined on Vision 2020 than 7-Point Agenda these days that you wonder which one surpasses the other. What you can’t argue is that the continuing to and fro, mish-mashing and swapping of one policy to the other is a signature sign of the shakiness and indecisions bedevilling this regime. As long as we remain complacent, this regime will continue hovering all kinds of shams as future policies over our heads.
Sunday Njokede writes from The European Union
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