Help wake this snoring mallam!

‘Time waits for no one’ is an age long saying that has always proven to be a truism. The importance of timeliness in executing any task or aspiration is equally as important as the competence to perform such. It is for this reason that a competent mechanic for instance, with all the requisite skills and knowledge, may lose all his customers if he does not know the importance of doing the right thing at the right time. It is hardly ever enough to know what to do and how to do it; the need to know when to do it is also of critical importance. After all, it is always said that time waits for no one, and one of the first poems we all learnt in kindergarten schools in those good old days was ‘tick, tick says the clock, what you have to do, do quick’.

Nigeria as a country has lost no less than two centuries due to the misrule of the past. While our contemporaries have taken off on the flight to the path of greatness and development, we are still stuck in the labyrinth of pervasive infrastructural decay, unemployment, power crisis and dependence on other countries for the most mundane of our needs to mention just a few. The pathetic reality of the times is a case of lack in the midst of plenty. The pleasant promises of the nation at independence some forty eight years ago has turned steadily into a case of gloom.

Considering what has been lost in terms of development while the military adventurers took turn in plunging our resources, and driving us round on a visionless, roller coaster trip to no destination, the least we can afford now is to move at a consistent forward gear. That way, at least, we can aspire to narrow the wide development gap between us and our contemporaries. The enormity of challenges confronting us as a nation fully qualifies the situation to an emergency. Every facet of our national life deserves emergency attention, not just the semi -civil war happenings in the Niger Delta or the issue of Power supply which has taken a more pathetic turn. Or how do one qualify the education sector, where our institutions continually churn out half baked graduates year in, year out, swelling the army of unemployed roaming the streets; or the agricultural sector, where we can no longer feed ourselves in spite of the goodness of the almighty in bequeathing to us arable lands that can be put to food cultivation. The health sector is another pathetic case. A couple of months ago, the number one citizen had to fly to Germany for the treatment of an allergic reaction. Recall that sometime last year; he also had to fly to the same location for the treatment of catarrh. Ordinary catarrh that the average Nigerian won’t even dignify with any elaborate treatment. A misdiagnosis of lung cancer as pneumonia on Chief Gani Fawehinmi by one of the best hospitals on the Nigerian soil nearly cost the Human right activist his life, thank God he had the means and wherewithal to seek help in the UK. Only God knows how many less fortunate souls have died due to such misdiagnosis. Shame of a nation!

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We can ill afford a situation where a President will spend the first 30% of his tenure duration sleeping and snoring in the midst of ominously pervasive challenges confronting the nation and its people. Infrastructures are virtually completely decayed; every sector of the Nigerian economy is in dire need of direction and attention. The only thing that seems to be happening in the country over the last 15 months is the monthly revenue allocation, which is observed with a ritual like consistency. I have been to Nigeria twice in the last 5 months, spending at least 6 weeks cumulatively, but I make bold to say the cumulative hour of electricity supply cant be more than 72 hours!, thank God for’ I pass my neighbour generators’. And I stayed in Lagos all through, the supposed commercial capital of the nation. It stands to reason to conclude that elsewhere in the country, the situation will be much worse. I don’t think we have ever had it any worse than this all through our chequered history. You can imagine the pity I felt for the idle artisans I saw all around, the hairdressers, electronic technicians, welders etc, who just sat dejectedly in their shops, unable to do anything meaningful due to the tragedy of PHCN. Little wonder an upsurge in crime rate across the nation is being experienced. An idle hand they say…..

It is unfortunate that the President of such a country can comfortably say his main achievement after one year in office is adherence to the tenets of rule of law, and that he has been busy studying the level of decay and planning strategies to address them. Much as this is desirable, I think the President should be reminded that spending 10800 hours exclusively for such planning is a luxury we can not afford. In this fast paced world, planning is no excuse for stagnancy. The Yorubas have a saying which can be paraphrased thus: if you spend ten years preparing for madness, when on earth are you now going to hit the market square as a mad man? Things are getting so intolerably tight, to the extent that revolution is now a common mantra on the lips of the poor and rich alike.

I think somebody needs to remind this former ivory tower lecturer that he was not (s)elected to write a dissertation on the problems confronting Nigeria, or why we are where we are. Much as these are important, the aspiration of Nigerians is to have a president who will work towards solving these challenges. We don’t have the luxury of time for the slow approach which we were told was employed in Katsina. This is Nigeria for God’s sake, complex Nigeria, with a population of 150 million sophisticated people, not Katsina. Whatever happened to the seven point agenda so eloquently adumbrated by the amiable mallam at the outset of the administration? How much progress has been made with about 30% of the tenure already gone? That to me is the self evaluation question that should be answered by all the principal actors in this regime.

Contrary to what many people may say, I believe that the nation made some tremendous progress during the sanest years of the Obasanjo presidency, 2004- 2006. The crop of technocrats who took charge of the economy during this period sure knew what they were doing, and were obviously aware of the route that leads there; hence, they achieved what could probably qualify as the defining moment of our economic history. Though, a couple of things could have been done differently for even more beneficial effects, but in the context of the dismal performance of the past, they did modestly well. My fear is that all these modest achievements stand the risk of being reversed by the inactivity of this administration, which seems so benumbed by the complexity of governance at the Federal level that it has turned a passenger on a ride it should ordinarily be commanding. That indeed is my well founded fear.

By Walemi Ogunleye