Yesterday, I participated in the Annual Trust Dialogue on the theme of interrogating the 2023 Presidential Agenda. In his opening remarks, the chair of the occasion, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, expressed the strong view that we must be optimistic that positive change was possible and that indeed the time has come to do things differently with millions of young Nigerians ready to perform their civic duty. INEC and the state must ensure they do the needful to ensure that riggers are kept out of the ring and the choices of citizens are respected.
One issue of concern that was debated was the introduction of the new Naira at a critical time of election related tension. The worst part of the policy move is that the Central Bank simply does not have enough of the new currency to swap so markets and indeed the economy is likely to collapse at a time when the elections are to be organised. Many wondered what the intention of government is in trying to instigate a national crisis at election time. Are there other plans we are not aware of?
I made the point that the presidential election agenda for Nigeria has been set since the Jonathan Administration. That Nigeria was facing an existential crisis because the three core maladies of insecurity, corruption and economic crisis have been allowed to deepen and fester to the level where the corporate existence of the country was at risk.
Jonathan promised a breath of fresh air for the country and he was elected but failed to deliver. The disappointment with the performance of the Jonathan regime created an opening for serial contender for the presidency, Muhammadu Buhari, to promise he could deliver. He got the mandate but woefully failed to deliver after eight years on the job. His failure was a massive disappointment for the country because there was very high expectation that he had the character, integrity and grit to deliver. It turned out that Nigerians knew him less than they thought.
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This is what sets the stage for the 2023 presidential agenda. The candidates are telling us they know the problems and promise to deliver solutions. This is simply not good enough. The real issue is that Nigeria desperately needs a president with sound vision on the way forward and the capacity and integrity to perform to our expectations. Going through the manifestoes of the presidential candidates, what we see is a long list of the problems and an affirmation that they will all be solved. There is very little on the modalities that would be used to solve them, the resources required, milestones and processes.
All the candidates for example promise to successfully combat corruption, good. The question is how. Let’s first note that corruption is illicit activity not just in statute but expressly addressed even in the constitution. We know two things about corruption that have provided structural constraints for those who have tried to fight it. First, that the entire public service is configured to engage in massive corruption and hide their tracks. I have not heard the candidates explain how they will reconfigure the public service to serve the public rather than themselves. The second thing we know is the majority of party barons are in politics to create openings for themselves to access public resources for their personal aggrandisement. I have not heard most of the candidates express their vision of how they can combat corruption while surrounded by an entourage that is in politics precisely for the purpose of engaging in corruption.
I have looked at how some of the presidential candidates have explained they will combat insecurity in their manifestoes. The APC, PDP, LP, NNPP, PRP and YPP have all promised to:
Better equip the armed forces and police
Massively increase the number of service personnel
Improve professionalism of security forces
Implement community and state policing
Build capacity of Nigerian police
Provide improved training and training facilities
Construct adequate housing for security staff etc.
These are obvious wish list for addressing the problems. For these promises to make sense, there is need to address how all these would be financed in a context in which the Nigerian State is almost bankrupt. As these are only a small part of a very long list of “to do” promises, what are the priorities in terms of things that could be addressed immediately and which other ones would need to be set aside for future programming. How would the National Assembly be persuaded to pass the necessary legislation? These are the issues that the people need to know to make an assessment about which candidate is the most convincing in translating their wish list into concrete action?
Some participants at the event raised serious concerns about the establishment of state police. They argued that state governors have virtually all become dictators in their states with no respect for separation of powers between executive, legislature and judiciary. Given them state police could therefore be a license for them to detain and jail all their political opponents thereby increasing insecurity and ultimately destroying the democratic system itself.
The other issue that virtually all candidates have made promises on is diversifying the economy, industrialising the economy, embarking on the pathway of the digital economy and transforming agriculture to feed the nation and export processed agricultural products. I love all these ideas but I know that in previous electoral cycles, the same promises have been made with nothing to show at the end of the day.
The chair of Media Trust, in his opening remarks wondered whether all the words we are hearing from the candidates were not words of desperados for power rather than democrats seeking to deepen our democracy. There are certainly many desperados but our task as citizens is to sift through the candidates and identify those with the democratic ethos who also have the competence, strength and integrity to take the country forward.
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