A wild goose chase

It also betrays a certain willingness towards escapism. The gambit has been variously described as self serving, diversionary and totally out of sync with the expectation of a people out to see the new government busy itself through policies and programmes on how to tackle the myriad of socio- economic challenges facing the nation. One […]

It also betrays a certain willingness towards escapism. The gambit has been variously described as self serving, diversionary and totally out of sync with the expectation of a people out to see the new government busy itself through policies and programmes on how to tackle the myriad of socio- economic challenges facing the nation.

One spurious explanation for the necessity of this bill given by a government spoke man was that the ‘obsession’ for re-election by incumbents has caused governance to be too unproductive and expensive because as soon as a person is elected, rather than addressing his mind to the present matter at hand which is governance, he starts planning how to win a second term even when the first has hardly gone half way. It may well be that in the over a decade of democracy, governors have been too preoccupied with their re-election than working to justify their mandate, one still does not see why this should preoccupy a government that is expected to grapple with immediate development issues needing solutions.

Term elongation or reduction is a constitutional issue and it should have been seen by anyone contemplating its amendment that it is bound to attract public outrage, which in turn would lead to a lot of dissipation of energy and diversion of attention which should be usefully channelled to addressing immediate challenges. On this score the charge that the whole affair is a diversionary ploy by government to just confuse and send the public on wild goose chase that would be of benefit to no one in particular becomes credible.  In any case, it boggles the mind that the tendency of incumbents seeking to win a second term while on their first term should cause the government to seek to make so drastic an alteration to the constitution in its first decade of operation, a time simply too short for anyone to come to any conclusion that the two terms as provided is detrimental to good governance.

The import of this is that the attempt at amending the two terms as provided by the constitution is too hasty. The concern that incumbents become too preoccupied with securing a second term could be sorted out through political means and the political parties can do a lot in this connection. They should fashion out an avenue through which governors deemed not to be measuring up are duly removed through the primary process. It is expected that as competition between parties for political power continues to be keen, parties should be able to impress it on their governors that any attempt at frittering away the first term through lacklustre performance would amount to losing ground to the opposing party whose candidate would take over as governor. This should stem the tide of hankering after a second term, soon as the first is embarked upon.

President Goodluck Jonathan should realise that for allowing himself to be dribbled into raising the spectre of constitutional amendment on, what for practical purposes is a non-issue, he has exposed himself as being too pliable, willing to be led by all manner of political jobbers, and sundry all knowing mendicants ready to take advantage of a government battling to settle down to the nitty-gritty of governance. The president should not bother too much about doing everything in the little time he has got. He should concentrate on two or three critical areas of dire need for the improvement of the economic situation in Nigeria which for many people would be:- fixing the power generation issue and modernising the nation’s infrastructure. If he brings these about by 2015 when his time would be up he would have done more than enough.

 

Hysteria on wings

The opposition the idea of the introduction of Islamic Banking has generated mainly among the Christian clergy is not doing the otherwise venerable and respectable religious men any good at all. My understanding so far is that the opposition is so vociferous solely because of the prefix Islam in the name Islamic Banking, which has excited very strong views about it being a grand design to turn Nigeria into an Islamic country. Considering the perennial conflicts between adherents of our two religions one would have expected that these Christian leaders in line with the notion of temperance that undergird the whole Christian belief would deploy a more restrained outburst.

Right now, what we are getting is sheer hysteria and threat of brimstone and fire and it does not speak well of people who speak for some 50% of Nigerians who look up to them for leadership and guidance in a matter such as this. So much has been explained about the bank whose essential difference from the conventional ones is that it is interest free and when it is established no one will be compelled to do business with it if he does not want to.

Much of the antagonism, with due respect emanates, not out of ignorance but unwillingness to accept that something good can come from the other side of the great religious divide. But if indeed we are religious men seeking after piety and the good of the society we should not be seen to be taking positions that entrench bigotry, hatred and conflict. Let’s grant the fact that not much sensitisation was done before the whole notion of the Islamic Bank was thrust onto the public domain, but being leaders what should have been done is to call for the public to be educated on it. Or better still to commission a research group to do a thorough work on what the whole concept is all about. Had that been done we would have all realised that the Islamic Bank is just a bank, like any other.