We should all run for president (I)

I have had a number of inquiries and even outright accusations of being overambitious for running for the number one office in the land; the office of the president. I have my personal reasons and also a very logical one. I’ve not particularly been a homeboy until recently when I had the opportunity and space to fall in love again with Akure, the town in which I partly grew up. So I’m not ashamed to say my own politics does not start from the local unit. It needn’t. We are all in politics to make different impacts and my impact is calibrated to be national. My ideas are national and global in nature. I’m the guy who is intervening in global economic debates and giving a Nigerian perspective. I’m the one who is trying to apply what we have read in textbooks from an African perspective. I try to build models that incorporate Nigerian and Africa’s peculiar variables and that I believe, is very honourable. In fact, absolutely necessary at this point.

I also believe that Nigeria’s serious problems right now, are right at the very top. We have macro issues around visioning. Where should we be heading as a nation and people? Why are we where we are today? What can be done to take us forward rapidly? Where do we find the sense of urgency? Do we know how we rank in the comity of nations and how we are regarded? Those are critical questions that need to be asked.  And more.

Apart from visioning we also have issues with the ability to take serious decisions that affect the whole country.  Take for instance the serious operational issues that now masquerade as ‘restructuring’? We need to rejig and experiment with an inverted allocation formula. From 54:26:20, we need to be moving to 25:35:40 in favor of our Local Governments. We need to move forward rapidly on the matters of local government autonomy as well as state policing. These are formulas we have experimented with in the past. Going back to them should not be big issues but here we are fetishizing restructuring and tearing at each other. This is a leadership and intellectual problem. Our leadership needs speed right now, and the way to achieve speed is by deploying brains. Even the most difficult issues can be intelligently tackled. For example we need to give freedom to our LGs even though the constitution says otherwise. The way to sell this is to show the states how much more they have to benefit if the current arrangement is torpedoed. Consistent engagement always works. Persistence is key. Choice of words and body language is critical. Repetition always yields results.  These are not matters to be tackled by getting lost in some state assembly. A sense of urgency also requires that these big issues be tackled immediately. Nigeria has absolutely no time on its hands to adopt a slow coach approach. The longer we wait, the more we have problems like insurgency, insecurity, backwardness and every other distraction that sends us on errands we don’t intend to embark upon. Like they say, if you don’t know where you are heading, someone else will show up and take you to where they want you to be. With the short time on our hands, we need to determine where we want to go, and pursue our destiny with a singularity of purpose. As things stand we are executing someone else’s agenda, not ours.

I actually pity my friends who are running for positions as senators, as they have to battle with many fraudulent ex-governors who have stolen Nigerians blind and now wish to retire to the red chambers at everybody’s expense. I pity friends who are running for house of reps, governorship and houses of assembly positions because even if they win – and I pray they do – they will subject themselves to years of bitter complaints about how the ‘structure’ is not working, and at best make loads of money for themselves and oftentimes, lose the right to protest and genuinely be part of ‘the people’ forever. Let’s call that the Dino Syndrome. That was a man who ran an anti-corruption NGO but who, as a senator, now revels in showing off his expensive cars. He has lost legitimacy forever. Perhaps he never had any.

I have processed this problem and I can summarize my finding for free. Being a president is the only role for now that gives one 100% self-responsibility – subject to the machinations of godfathers home and abroad who often send presidents on wild geese chases. Governors are complaining that they are not given free hand to determine the fates of their states. They say the part of the allocation that comes to them is too small but they seem totally unable to do anything about that. Governors also complain that they inherit too much in terms of debts from their predecessors; a very potent reason for the non-performance of most if not all of them. Yet they get there and incur more debts as governance in Nigeria is now akin to a one-way-street of indebtedness.  Local Governments are totally emasculated by their governors as we can see. All the headships at that level are determined solely by the governor. The people’s opinions don’t matter anymore. The state houses of assembly are controlled with iron hand by the governors. Even the national assembly which seems to have more latitude because of the level of scrutiny by the people, is largely a useless entity which Nigerians finance with N138billion yearly (plus extra in terms of bribery and kickbacks), where elected representatives/senators go to show off their weird sense of fashion, argue inanities, break each others’ heads occasionally, collect extended recesses and achieve next to nothing. Indeed one should ask; how many laws do a people need? Have we kept 10% of the laws in our statute books? Why have two houses to discuss laws all day all year when we could deploy such funds to better use?? So we can see that all other political positions in this country are full of complaints and excuses even though they are replete with opportunities for those who get there to reposition themselves financially. I just don’t believe that that is what one should be in politics for at this moment.