Our expectations from President-elect

Let me begin by imploring Allah, the Almighty to guide Your Excellency in discharging all your pledges and duties in consummate genres. I also register my earnest felicitations to Your Excellency for the triumph in the Presidential Election by emerging as the President-elect.  Even though leadership over affairs of more than 200 million people of […]

Let me begin by imploring Allah, the Almighty to guide Your Excellency in discharging all your pledges and duties in consummate genres. I also register my earnest felicitations to Your Excellency for the triumph in the Presidential Election by emerging as the President-elect. 

Even though leadership over affairs of more than 200 million people of diverse affiliations who are perturbed with brimful insecurity and crises is a majestic burdensome stuff, Your Excellency’s prior adeptness and experience have proven beyond any qualm and reservation that you are an apt gentleman for this stately mission. What’s more, Allah’s selection for Your Excellency to be Nigeria’s President is based on His infinite knowledge and wisdom. Thus, this appointment is not in vain. May Allah, the Almighty aid you and may He bestow upon you sincerity and potency to outperform in every bit of your obligations, Ameen!

Your Excellency, as lucidly captured in your victory speech, leadership entails rendering services in respect of all and sundry without prejudice or differentiation. Please bear in mind that leaders will be questioned on the Day of Judgment about their governance and the affairs of the people they governed. It was for this reason when all companions of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him agreed to the leadership of Abubakar Al-Sadiq as the first Caliph, he wept and tears gushed from his eyes down to his cheeks and moistened his beard. He then, out of modesty, said, `O people, for I have been appointed over you and I am not the best of you. Hence, if I do good, support me; and if I do wrong, correct me. Truthfulness is trust, and lying is treachery. The weak among you is strong with me until I grant him his right, God willing; and the strong among you is weak until I take the right (of the weak) from him, God willing.’’

Similarly, Umar Ibn Al-Khattab, the second Caliph was also reported to have said: “If a mule bogs down in Iraq, Allah would ask me about it, O Omar, Why did you not build the road for it?’’

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Your Excellency, just like in these historical accounts of our predecessors, we, Nigerians, request you to be just, fair and balanced in your  leadership and dealing with each and every one. There should not be differentiations on the basis of any grounds. Your Excellency, please be reminded that one of the beauties of politics is the ability of converting one’s foes into friends, an aptitude you are well known for.  Please persist to sustain your supporters and win the love of the supporters of your political rivals.

Some of us might have offended you before and after the election. Please, let off their repugnance and sacrilege. For on the day of Conquest of Mecca, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, heard a companion saying: Today is a day of carnage, the Prophet swiftly said, No, today is a day of amnesty. Correspondingly, on the same day while his foes were assembled, he asked them ‘what do you think I shall do to you’? They replied: Goodness, o you generous brother and a generous nephew. He said to them, Go! For you are free of any charge.

Your Excellency, on the issue of the Muslim-Muslim ticket, which was politically contrived to create stern fracases and staid strains amongst Nigerians, I think it is imperative to calm down the situation in the name of unity of the nation to solidify peace, peaceful co-existence and brotherhood in humanity. It was Allah, the Almighty Who willed for us to be one nation. So, there is no cause for alarm but to understand one another and live in peace without encroachments into the rights of one another.

Your Excellency, please always remember that security and safety of lives and properties are the inmost proviso for peace and amity in a nation. Thus, work hard toward attaining it and may Allah, the Almighty assist you win through all the insecurity circumstances fretting the nation, Ameen!

The provision of enhanced livelihood for the masses is central to peace and peaceful co-existence in the nation. There is, therefore, a dire need for food and healthcare, security, effective agricultural and entrepreneurial strengthening and enhanced salary and wages schemes that will cater for the basic needs of all categories of workers. These will avert any irrational pretext for prowling and embezzlement of public funds as well as other criminal acts.

Your Excellency, education is the spine and lifeline for advancement of any country. Hence, I hereby draw your attention to swiftly set up a can-do committee to scan through all the quandaries impairing education and the system of education in Nigeria and proffer solutions to these sticky situations before the end of your first term. In your second term, we hope that students from other nations will compete to study in Nigerian universities.

Every Nigerian deserves to have easy access to education, hence special educational interventions are necessary to salvage our education. It requires novel approaches, homogeneous assessment yardsticks, scheduled system of account and invariable motivational special packages and aids for outstanding performances through a State/National Teachers’ Merit Awards

On the other hand, all supervisory activities and plans as well as penalty measures and statutes should be renewed and implemented without fear, favour or diffidence. It is also necessary to focus and emphasise on spiritual precepts to inculcate in our teachers the fear of Allah in solitude and rehabilitate them to eschew absconding, late-coming, lack of commitment and other immoral demeanours. It may not be out of place to create an Education Crime Commission to deal with all forms of indiscretions and irregularities in the educational sector.

I thank Your Excellency for accepting my humble advice, once again my felicitations over your victory at the polls.

 

Dr El-bulaturee is the Commissioner, Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, Yobe State.