Retracing the lost road to change – II

The lingering morass of years has paved the way for any government with a sense of purpose to turn yesterday’s brain drain into today’s brain gain. There are Naija experts in every field of human endeavor. They may live like Lords in exile; they are consummate patriots ever eager to come to the rescue of their country. The home turf is replete with them too. What these patriots need to see is consummate patriotism fuelled by altruistic sense of purpose.
Ours is a blessed country. Everywhere you go there are intelligent and hardworking Naija citizens uplifting the standard of other nations. Although most of them have dual citizenship they are proud of their roots. They would proudly help this government formulate the policies needed to make change even at their own expense – as contribution to motherland. Dialogue with them would culminate in a governance blueprint that is better than IMF expertise because they know the terrain. This government must find them now and tap their brains before the dreg of hope loses its potency. The nation’s diplomats know them and have their addresses and areas of expertise.
Sai Baba got it right by cutting down the number of ministers to a constitutionally tolerable level. Two things are needed to take it further. One is an executive bill to amend and expunge the so-called federal character principle for ministerial appointments. We do not need ministers from every village if we can function effectively with few and save money. If the nation runs, only idiots would complain that they are not ‘represented.’
This government is almost one year in office, but it has no policy direction by which it could be evaluated. There is no short or long-term plan even after electing a candidate who has vied three times before yet some clowns are already asking for a carte blanche 2019 return? We could spend four years perambulating on fighting corruption on the pages of newspapers or we could focus on governance based on a blueprint with timelines while empowering the agencies statutorily responsible for fighting corruption do their job.
A presidential policy-formulation and implementation committee or by whatever name it is called could still be set up, with input from eggheads. What more, in the age of technology, there would be no need to buy tickets, not with Skype or teleconferencing. This way, ideas would be harmonized into workable governance blueprint to save this country from total socio-economic collapse. Mr. President could choose to do this and get a great chapter in history or end up as a shameful anecdote of record.
Communication that is the central nervous system of governance is lacking here. There is no concerted effort to garner the rays of change into a convergent beam of quality action. The cabinet is filled with yes-men who are too conscious protecting their plum positions to run on a plan leading to goofs and gaffs and policy somersaults. The other day, the FEC endorsed the president’s needless junkets – a dangerous sycophancy. Implausible anti-corruption stories are left to go viral before being denied. There is no coordinated information-clearing house or any visible strategic crisis communication. Fiction writers daily quote non-reliable sources.
For instance, how much of the Abacha loot has returned and from where? What would it be used for? How do we track its use? How much has economic agencies generated? Thus far, nobody knows what is true and what is a lie, because stories with impact are non-strategically ‘leaked’ in a manner sometimes that evidently jeopardizes national pride and security. This impromptu handling of information might have been best 30 years ago; it is faulty in the age of the Internet showing a gaping hole for strategic information management. Who briefs on security, on Boko Haram, on Biafraud, on kidnapping and other vices? Who briefs on who goes in or out of EFCC, ICPC, DSS or police interrogation rooms and for what? This is necessary knowing that integrity takes years to build but one slip to destroy. There is need to prevent unwitting trial by media?
The discombobulated way of doing things gives the impression that everybody is waiting to read the body language or body odour of the commander in chief. Well, he can’t have a say on everything. There should be a plan, purpose or direction to governance. A nation of 170 million should not run on autopilot as it did under President Jones. It should be a reference point to smaller nations not the butt of their jokes. The 2015 presidential election was the best opportunity to change the parlous state of affairs, not an occasion for crying over spilt milk items or blaming everyone else for self-inflicted sloppiness.
Blames are cheap, and they don’t solve a thing. Governments are elected to make differences not to wallow in self-pity or engage in blame games. Mr. President may not know this but the worst enemies of good governance are the unquestioning loyalists around him. He should ditch them.