Whatever happened to the visionaries?

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has released figures showing that the nation experienced negative growth rate during the first year of this administration. According to NBS this is the worst performance of our economy since 1991, and the nation is sliding into recession. President Muhammad Buhari (PMB) has always been consistent in his vision […]

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has released figures showing that the nation experienced negative growth rate during the first year of this administration. According to NBS this is the worst performance of our economy since 1991, and the nation is sliding into recession. President Muhammad Buhari (PMB) has always been consistent in his vision for a corruption free nation which operates like a well-oiled military machine, however even if the anti-corruption war is won, this in itself will not translate into a better life for all Nigerians. What is required is visionary economic and social policies. PMB has said “we abandoned agriculture and solid minerals for petroleum, now we have to go back”. While we definitely need to organize agriculture beyond peasant farming, if we truly want to be globally competitive we must look forward to communication and information technologies which interest our youth and are the industries of the future. Nigerian youths are being let down by an educational system which fails to prepare them for the modern world.
The 2016 Budget shows there is no serious political will to fix our broken educational system and make our youth more productive, innovative and useful to the economy. There is no positive way of looking at our negative GDP results. Businesses are already in panic mode shutting down or laying off workers and we are now suffering the highest unemployment rate since independence. Unfortunately PMB assembled an economic team of so called “realists”..  The Cambridge English dictionary defines realists as people who hope for only what seems possible to them. They don’t hope for, or expect more. Realists are people who use facts and past events rather than aspirations and wishes, to predict and plan for the future. However history proves that great deeds aren’t accomplished by realists, but by visionaries. Visionaries are inspired, imaginative, creative, inventive, insightful, ingenious, enterprising, innovative, perceptive, and far-sighted people who create new realities by thinking about, or planning the future with imagination. In our current economic mess PMB’s team are disguising their lack of vision and innovative ideas by asking us to be “realistic”. A cursory look at the details of the 2016 Budget indicates their visionless acceptance of perverse “realities”. To them being realistic means accepting that although the nation is broke, government officials should continue spending millions in foreign exchange for unnecessary international travels, and that even though Nigeria supposedly “too broke” to afford efficient modern healthcare, we can afford the unjustifiable security votes of State Governors. Their visionless reality means Government can’t afford to subsidize fertilizer, but can afford to continue maintaining 11 Presidential Jets, and provide funds for pilgrim support services.
PMB’s economic team are in denial, convincing themselves that they are doing the best that can be done, but no matter how many multi-national companies they may have worked for, ivy-league universities they may have attended, or foreign countries they may have been recruited from, they can only think for themselves, not for the rest of us. Leaving things to “market forces” is a sign of failure. Great nations were not built by leaving things to chance. To paraphrase the legendary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, progress is not an apple that falls when it is ripe, you have to make it fall. Unfortunately PMB has bowed to the “reality” of those who are incapable of visionary solutions. Today’s reality means trust and obey there is no other way! The presence of challenges is not the issue, what matters is how they are handled. The global economy is shrinking and oil markets are struggling. The issue is not unique to Nigeria, what is unique is the manner in which we have reacted. Nigeria is one of the few nations that actively pursued policies which everyone knew would end up in recession and look where we are now.
There are so many unanswered questions in our “realistic” approach to governance. For example Oil marketers who constitute the largest demand for foreign exchange cannot get it at the official rate of N195. Who exactly is getting this money? Nigeria will add 11.4 million young people to the workforce between 2015 and 2020, are there any concrete plans to absorb them? If as a result of spiralling inflation we all cut out non-essential spending, will it not cripple the retail sector of our economy leading to more problems? It is extremely important for PMB to realize that he can’t solve all Nigeria’s problems within the time he will be in office. He must re-shuffle the Federal Executive council (FEC) and bring forward new generation of imaginative Ministers who are less interested in present day so called realities, and who have the vision to think outside the box and who will provide a better life for all Nigerians. Otherwise whether he spends four or eight years in office nothing will really change for the better.