President Umaru Yar'adua's administration deviated from an initial dynamism that it displayed and moved over to a lacklustre performance, the Nigeria Labour Congress [NLC] declared yesterday.

In a statement in Abuja to mark this country's 48th independence anniversary, signed by it's president Comrade Abdulwaheed Ibrahim Omar, the NLC said unlike in countries that are its contemporaries, there is a patent lack of progress in virtually all aspects of Nigerian life.

NLC said other countries that started the journey towards nationhood alongside Nigeria have "accomplished remarkable feats in governance based on sound ethics, first class technological and industrial development, excellent infrastructure and high standards of living."

According to the central labour union, the present administration must assure Nigerians that the country is not on autopilot, and added that "to aspire to be among the 20 largest economies by the year 2020 requires a leadership that is expeditious, dynamic and competent.

Even with the best of executive intentions and output, a leadership whose highest virtue is its decidedly leisurely pace cannot take the nation far enough in the development race."

It added, "Given its deep crisis, Nigeria needs positive and result-oriented action and policies, particularly on infrastructure, industry and employment creation. The excuse of fine-tuning the Seven Point Agenda two years into the tenure of this government is no longer tenable.

We believe that notwithstanding the circumstances of emergence of this government, the reality of de facto existence requires that it must sit up in relation to thefundamental challenges of national development."

The NLC statement also said "The signal that must come from the President is that there is an emergency and that governance cannot be business-as-usual nor be perpetually on the slow lane. The President needs to be less of a politician and more of a purposeful chief executive."

The congress stressed the need for President Yar'adua to set up a competent economic team "with sufficient resourcefulness and policy-making depth to translate the seven-point agenda into concrete deliverables. In this respect, we demand of the president to select a quality team made up of Nigerians with purpose, knowledge, integrity and capacity for policy initiative. It bears repeating that our country will not make it with the current cabinet, many of whom have little to offer beyond representing their patrons."

Similarly, the congress called on Yar'adua to bring bank interest rates to single digit, curb inflation and creatively expand investments in infrastructure and protect local production, among others. On return to the path of sustainable development planning and an activist state, the NLC urged President Yar'adua to revisit positive aspects of state-led development, saying that IMF and World Bank policies "cannot deliver on people's welfare, infrastructural development, value-addition and employment."

"We urge that the president should revisit positive aspects of the State-led development, which was decisive to the transformation of many economies, including those of South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

The Nigerian experience also demonstrates that the country's infrastructure stock, real economy and welfare indexes grew more under the regime of State-led development than in the period of IMF/World Bank-led market-driven reforms," the statement said.