Memo to Muhammadu Buhari
May God guide all your actions and put you on the right path. Going by the present events, I feel motivated to stay and uphold your slogan of salvaging Nigeria from the comatose situation it’s been deliberately thrown in. As you rightly pointed out since 1985, “we have no other country than Nigeria,” hence we […]
May God guide all your actions and put you on the right path. Going by the present events, I feel motivated to stay and uphold your slogan of salvaging Nigeria from the comatose situation it’s been deliberately thrown in. As you rightly pointed out since 1985, “we have no other country than Nigeria,” hence we must remain and “salvage it together.”
The nation’s problem is so much that former presidents were not able to effectively tackle it. They had much business to do with converting state-owned industries and firms into private ones. They embraced this ideology from the IMF and the World Bank. Unfortunately, these two multinational institutions have misconstrued and misunderstood the issues from a narrow ideological perspective. This was exactly what a renowned economist and 2001 Nobel Prize laureate, Joseph Stiglitz has been struggling to make them understand, that privatization of public properties should not be pursued rapidly, because scorecards are always kept for the countries transiting from social to capitalist market. Those who privatized faster, according to Stiglitz, are given “high” marks. Hence, privatization of Nigeria’s public properties such as NEPA and NITEL did not bring the benefits that we were promised.
Interestingly, most of those people that sold Nigeria’s properties and assets have now gathered around you. But, you shouldn’t be deceived by their supportive gesture. Some of them are with you to seek cover from the atrocities they committed. It is only the sensible ones amongst them that have realized and acknowledged their mistakes. And I am sure they regretted doing what they did overtly or covertly.
Privatization, removal of government subsidies and social welfare benefits on basic needs such as food, shelter, water, fuel and electricity, cannot work for developing nations such as Nigeria. Stiglitz along with many other observers point out that “a decade after the Uruguay Round, more than two-thirds of farm income in Norway and Switzerland came from subsidies, more than half in Japan, and one-third in the EU. For some crops, like sugar and rice, the subsidies amounted to as much as 80 percent of farm income. The aggregate agricultural subsidies of the United States, EU and Japan, for example, including hidden subsidies on water, if they do not actually exceed the total income of sub-Saharan Africa, amount to at least 75 percent of the region’s income, making it almost impossible for African farmers to compete in world markets.
The Nigerian Farmer lives with an average annual income of N50, 000. He ekes a living on small plots of semi-arid or marshy land. There is no money for irrigation and he is too poor to afford fertilizer, a tractor, or high-quality seeds, unlike his colleagues in California that can farm a huge tract of hundreds of acres, using all the technology of modern farming. Nonetheless, the California farmer simply couldn’t compete in a fair global marketplace was it not for further direct government subsidies that provide half or more of his income. I have seen real life in villages, the type ravaged by Boko Haram in the North-East. During your time in 1985, you defeated the Maitatsine sect. It will be good to send a team to the Department of Political Science, ABU, Zaria to study late Prof. Sabo Bako’s PhD thesis on Maitatsine and other religious insurgencies such as Boko Haram.
Mr. President, there is the urgent need to form a national think-tank on “Nigerian Renaissance”. It should constitute a syndicate of highly honest, dedicated, ambitious and excellent professionals who made a mark in their various fields of endeavour. The syndicate will be responsible for restoring Nigeria’s good image at home and abroad. There is also the need to urgently reach out to serious-minded people living within and in Diaspora. This renaissance project of fixing Nigeria will be perfect if you can get a helping hand from solid people.
There are people like Prof. Abba Gumel of Arizona State University, United States. Abba, I understand, is one of the best brains in the world. He is an international professor of Mathematics. Another person worth bringing on board by your government is Jelani Aliyu. He is today one of Nigeria’s brilliant minds working for General Motors. The fact I know about Jelani is that he’s one of the world’s best ten car designers that takes inspiration from nature and apply it to car design. GM got its bailout finance from President Obama, because of Jelani’s Chevy Volt.
Again, there is Modupe Ozolua, social entrepreneur and philanthropist, who pioneered cosmetic surgery in West Africa at the age of 27, giving hope to the less-privileged. The idea and wisdom behind the Nigeria renaissance project is to redeem its past glory in education, science, technology and leadership by removing corruption and dealing with corrupt people in totality from the Nigerian polity. The renaissance team’s composition must have zero tolerance for corruption. One cannot be part of the team if he/she has an iota of corruption in their history. Every serious nation has a national think-tank which plans and executes nation-building.
Jibo wrote in from Dutse, Jigawa State. ([email protected])