23 May 2008
analysis
Lagos — President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua earlier in the week spoke with The Financial Times of London in what appears to be his first anniversary interview. It was really a defining interview.
This is because it was perhaps the first he would give as the President of Nigeria. The interview confirmed what not many Nigerians knew about their president. It portrayed him as a man who is on top of the issues. It showed him as a man who is ready to talk on all issues and who has brilliant answers for the issues raised by the interviewers. This is however in spite of the fact that one may sharply disagree with some of the positions of the President on the issues. Yet, he came out strongly in his answers as the man who is really in charge of the nation's affairs.
The interview actually is a good window through which one can look critically at the Yar'Adua administration.
In analysing the administration through the interview, I have identified a number of issues. They include its achievements in the last one year, the president's submission that there is a huge gap in infrastructural provision in the country, the handling of the Niger Delta problem, the state of power supply and issue of security and the need for proper planning.
When asked in the FT interview what his greatest achievement is in the first year of his administration, the President said: "I think my greatest achievement is the effort to institute a strict culture of respect for the rule of law in Nigeria."
I agree with President Yar'Adua that his administration has emphasised on the need for rule of law to be followed. This is demonstrated mainly in the political arena where in well-publicised cases, the government quickly complies with court orders. But this same rule of law has been abused by the highly connected individuals who rush to court and abuse court process to get declarations which protect them from answering for their economic crimes against the state. Many corrupt ex-governors today hide under the rule of law to ensure that they will never be tried. Some after being taken to court by anti-graft agencies simply get bail and start behaving as if the cases are over.
Again, the rule of law mantra has become a cover for some top government officials to settle personal scores and to sack competent officials of key agencies and replace them with their loyalists. I am also sure that the achievement recorded by the present administration in the rule of law area is limited to top political cases. The President may want to know that the events in our police stations, prisons and even on the streets cannot justify the fact that a regime of rule law now reigns in Nigeria. Police brutality against innocent citizens is still common. Many people are still being detained in police stations for months without trial. Many awaiting trial detainees are also languishing in jail.
The problem with the implementation of the rule of law policy of this government is that while the issue is important to Yar'Adua, some of his key lieutenants just see it as a game. With this dishonest and selfish implementation of the policy, the senior officials do not think it is important to properly articulate the policy and develop a comprehensive programme around it which will cover all areas. The rule of law policy needs to be expanded to fully spell out what the administration expect from all institutions connected with the issue. Institutions like the courts, the police and other law enforcement agencies, the prisons, the National Assembly, the schools, the civil service and the individual citizen.
I am sure Yar'Adua's envisaged goal about rule of law is not limited to a few politicians getting court judgement which the government then obeys. From his answer in that interview under reference, the president desires a regime of rule of law which governs all classes and in which laws are obeyed by all and sundry and in all situations.
It is also worth noting that those who believe President Yar'Adua has been slow in setting his seven-point agenda in motion may have justification, going by his own words. Out of seven, the president scored his government high on one issue. And one can say, the score on that one point is debatable as pointed out above. The president has identified serious infrastructural decay as one of the problems of today's Nigeria. And this is obvious. The roads are still in bad shape. Power supply in Nigeria is at its worst. With the worsening situation of power supply is the accompanying poverty. This is so because artisans petty traders and others in the informal sector who constitute the largest percentage of the nation's work force no longer have electricity to function. They are therefore jobless when they do not get up to two hours of power supply in two months. Prices of goods and services are high because people readily blame the need to rely on power generating sets which is additional expenses incurred in the cost of production.
The president has explained that the delay is due to the need for proper planning because "the quality of your planning determines the nature of your achievements You cannot achieve anything without planning and planning is a long term process." The President's argument is very logical. But the fear of the people is that when planning takes too long a time, a political leader can lose the momentum. And when that happens, it is easy for a leader to lose public confidence. Again, since the President has a four-year term, if he does not start on time, he may end up not having enough time to implement the good plans which he has taken so long a time to make. For example, one year is gone. The last one year of the remaining three years is expected to be spent on the politics of second term. So, the president has technically two years to fix some of the problems he himself has identified.
Sometime, constructing a good road like the Benin-Ore road may take more than two years. Today, that road linking the South-western part of the road to the South-south and South-eastern parts has finally collapsed. My argument therefore is that even with proper planning, time is of essence and this administration is losing time. We have seen the situation in the past where in the first four years of the Obasanjo administration, nothing tangible was achieved. And those four years were the period when there was no disagreement between the then president and his deputy, Atiku Abubakar.
Those who talk about the need to move faster are probably warning against the repeat of past errors.
Several times, we have had some experts and government officials saying a petroleum refinery or power station is not readily available in any showroom in the world. They take time to be designed, manufactured and installed. If this is so and we have not finished formulating the plans for these projects, then when will the people get a relief from the debilitating problems created by the lack of these projects? There is also the fear that when you do not take decisive measures to cure a problem on time, there is a possibility that you create opportunity or the centrifugal forces in politics to fill in the gap. And when those forces take over, their influence assumes a life of its own. It takes more time and resources to dislodge them than to take care of the real problem.
Already, there are talks that three different groups are emerging in the presidency over decisions on the best approach to tackle the power situation. The feeling is that each group is moving to sell their suggestions not because they genuinely want to help Yar'Adua solve the problem but because they believe whichever group successfully pushes its position through would benefit in several ways in the power equation. These are developments the President must be wary of in his long-term planning approach.
The need to prevent the situation being seized by some destructive forces due to the delay in finding a quick solution is evident in the Niger-Delta crisis. While no reasonable person would expect President Yar'Adua to simply resolve the crisis with a magic wand, it is also noticeable that the fact that the summit with stakeholders which was promised to take place in the first few weeks of the administration's tenure has not taken place 52 weeks after has emboldened the militants and opened new vistas to the criminality in the area. The situation definitely is more difficult to contain than it is one year ago. The crisis has almost ensured that Nigeria cannot meet its production quota due to inability of oil companies to function.
In all, the Yar'Adua government needs to move fast and collate all the reports of its various planning committees. It should translate the reports into action plans and start full implementation immediately. Nigerians cannot wait to see the interesting time the president talked about in the interview with FT. We need actions that will really interest the nation and make Yar'Adua our most interesting man of the moment.
Right of Reply
Shi Ke Nan Not Chikena
By Matthew Hassan Kukah
The TOS Benson correction is great. There is similarly another expression which, with time, has entered the vocabulary of journalists who do not know or speak Hausa. With repetition, this aberration has become very popular as in your piece today. I am not a Hausa man myself, but I speak the language a little bit. I therefore wish to correct what has become a common colloquial expression in the southern media. The word in question is CHIKENA. This word does not exist in the Hausa language. It is a bastardisation of an expression meant to end an argument or a statement. The correct expression is: SHI KE NAN. Three distinct words which mean: THAT IS IT or THERE IT IS! It is synonymous with the Latin expression, Quod Erat Demonstrandum, QED, that is, a conclusive reality that is self evident by virtue of the facts presented. I hope this helps.
- Father Kukah writes from Abuja
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