The Search for Sustainable Visions and a Compassionate Spirit in the Nigerian Leadership

The starting point calls for genuine empathy for the people and the audacity of dreams inhering in the leadership. That is what separates the leadership of the First and Second Republics from those of the Third Republic - the present. Your feelings for the people define the dream and the vision for the mandate you seek. Supposedly, of course.

The resources available to a specific nation-state or component state within a federation do not define the extent or quality of the existing infrastructural facilities in the nation-state or within the component states. The dreams and visions of the leadership do inform the emerging or existing infrastructural facilities.

When political leaders dream their dreams, they will subsequently define and succinctly articulate them in terms of visions or manifestos. The articulated manifestos become the cornerstone of the mandate they seek - why I want to be President or Governor.

The next step is to search for and assemble the crème de la crème within the technocrats or intellectual class to give life and meaning to the visions or manifestos. They do that by developing appropriate mechanisms for creating the needed resources to make the dreams or visions come to pass. It's as simple as that. It is not about how much we are expecting from the Federation Account, but the volume of proceeds from our very own investments and R&D.

That was the approach in the old Western Region of Nigeria under the leadership of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. That's what they are doing in Egypt right now. And the same aggressive approach gave life to the building of Abuja and Third Mainland Bridge in Nigeria.

The Competitive Spirit of Pre-Civil War.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Mike Opara, and Sir Ahmadu Bello and their crews didn't indulge in the expectancy culture of the moment. They were proactive and inward-looking. The overriding goal was how much wealth they could generate, not from fines, levies, and school fees, but from bold investments. And that was how they fulfilled their manifestos and campaign promises.

Today, at the Nigerian seat of power, the powerbrokers are irredeemably engrossed in the ritual of power distribution, spoils of office, and allocation of political offices. How to galvanize the workforce to create new wealth is on hold.

Sadly, their definition of internally generated revenues does not go beyond imposing innumerable levies, fees, fines, and taxes on poor Nigerians. They would rather resort to imposing levies and hiking school fees than develop aggressive mechanisms for protecting our crude oil wealth and maximizing the proceeds from other untapped natural resources.

Indolent became the trend and dominant culture post the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War in 1967. The competitive spirit between the three regions before the war was the best we have ever had. And thanks to crude oil, the creative acumen that facilitated the developmental vigor is gone. Now, it's all about sharing from the Federation Account and whatever the Almighty NNPC decides to make available to us.

Uncomfortable Truth

First, we must be bold enough to accept the disturbing reality that we are not one country like Egypt, Turkey, China, Malaysia, or Singapore. And secondly, we must learn from President Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore how he developed his country despite the enormity of its ethnic diversity.

He told them, and they accepted the paradigm that they were indeed Singaporean first before they were Chinese, Indian, or Malaysian by ancestry. In Nigeria, no matter how much we try to conceal our ethnic chauvinistic appetite, it's still very much about tribe and ancestral brethren.

How do we define or strengthen our national credo of Unity & Faith, Peace & Progress, when the members of the national assembly from a particular section of the country openly and unrepentantly sat on the passage of the PIB - Petroleum Industry Bill - into law for more than ten years, until a whopping 30% of the annual profits of the NNPC was incorporated into the Bill for the search of crude oil in specified Basins in the Northern and Middle-Belt regions? We concurred so that the Bill can secure their approval. And even in the ages when the world is shifting resources from fossil fuel to developing alternative and renewable energy resources, they did not waver.

With all due apologies to Chief Asiwaju, we must accept that the Emi lo kan doctrine is real in Nigeria. President Buhari gallantly and unapologetically exemplified the political divide that made Emi lo kan a necessary evil in Nigeria during the eight years of his presidency.

Even if we have a detribalized President in Nigeria, there are still forces within the polity that openly embrace the ills of ethnic chauvinism in wealth distributions and allocations of political offices in Nigeria.

Therefore, our best bet is a revert to the 1963 Federal Constitution and removes ownership of our natural resources from the Exclusive Legislative List. Abuja is a clog in the wheel of our economic progress as well as purposeful justice.

Moving Forward.

If you are a compassionate leader who loves the people, you definitely should be appalled by the picture attached below and address the nation immediately. Is there anyone talking to us and empathizing with us? No one. And that's the height of callousness, dereliction of duty, and leadership deficit disorder in Nigeria.

This is the same country where the Action Group political party and the Unity Party of Nigeria implemented Free Education at All Levels and, at the same time, provided Bursary Awards to every student.

Finally, let's start by Cleaning up the NNPC and arresting the people stealing our crude oil wealth. If we do that, we will have enough resources to meet our financial obligations to Nigerians.

However, when you continuously recruit Ministers and MDs of MDAs from the same pools in every successive administration, you are directly and indirectly tying the hands of the DSS, EFCC, and the Ministry of Justice in fighting white-collar crimes. That's why Abuja is not sustainable and why Decentralization of Power or True Federalism remains our last hope.

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3Victor Aidaghese and 2 others

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