What Nigerians expect from the next President

By Bayo Ogunmupe Since the advent of Presidential system of government, power, action and initiative have revolved around the President in Nigeria. No one, not even the Senate President, the state governor nor the speakers of legislative houses has been able to initiate or advocate a development agenda in the country. This has made the Nigerian President a most powerful person. Although the legislature is more powerful than the President and his executive members, it has not been able to achieve or initiate any tangible policy in recent history. Which is why the President is all the more powerful. Here the President lords it over both his political party, refusing to implement the party manifesto. What’s more, the National Assembly is unable to override the presidential veto. This is why we must painstakingly examine and verify the character of our next commander in chief. From his character we must know what change he can effect. We are in January 2022 a year to the next general election. At such a time, false and misleading information about aspiring politicians glut the media. Information warfare has been known to be widely used in times of war and politics, for politics is war without bloodshed. In the Nigerian landscape, bloodshed is sometime employed in politics. Those were the cases in the death of both Moshood Abiola and Ajibola Ige. Both were killed in order to prevent them from becoming President of Nigeria. Which is why aspirants to the position should tread with utmost circumspection. Since the New Year, the country has been awash with declarations of intent to rule the country. As at the time of writing only three politicians have declared their interest to contest for President namely, former governor of Lagos State, Chief Bola Tinubu, the former governor of Abia and the current APC senate chief whip Dr Orji Uzor Kalu and the present governor of Ebonyi State, Chief David Umahi. They are sitting or former governors. The first question each must answer satisfactorily is what are his plans to save the nation from disintegration. The indigenous People of Biafra covering the South East geopolitical zone want to exit Nigeria. They want Biafra as an independent nation state in West Africa. Its leader, Nnamdi Kanu is now on trial charged with treasonable felony and conspiracy. Along with secession in the South East is Yoruba nation agitators covering the South West, variously led by Sunday Igboho, now in detention in Benin Republic while fleeing from arrest for treason by the Nigerian authorities. Another leader less militant than Igboho emerges namely, Professor Banji Akintoye, emeritus Professor of History and senator in the Second Republic. They like Kanu, want an independent nation state for the Yoruba which they claim is the single largest ethnic group in Nigeria; united by language not religion. Each politician needs to convince us how to pacify these secessionists. And by their antecedents and gumption, can they muster the solution; for many have promised and failed. For me, to stop the balkanization of Nigeria, we only need to return to regionalism, true federalism where the regions control their territorial resources, just as we inherited in the Nigerian Constitution 1963. We may not be as clever as Israel or Germany but we’re clever enough to adapt the !963 Constitution to the Presidential system. And certainly the new Constitution will solve the issue of insecurity. Granted that the current states are too poor to run state police, a regional police and a regional National Guard will snuff life out of insurgency. For me, the region that refuses to guard its population and borders is seeking depopulation and that will be good for the country for overpopulation hinders prosperity. In this third decade of the 21st century, that Nigeria isn’t an industrial nation leaves much to be desired. It isn’t that Nigeria has not been fortunate to since independence in 1960. It is only that we have not been blessed with visionary leaders. The core of the matter is that we lack quality and committed leaders; we have been having power seekers bereft commitment and ideology. We have been having leaders that are only interested more in promoting their religions or tribes. Then, the solution to mass unemployment is industrialization. An aspirant must have an industrialization agenda. And we must fish out and elect the one that has such passion, integrity and worthy of our trust through his antecedents. Not one who was a minister in an administration without an economic adviser for six years, and who lacked the courage to tell his principal the error. The new leader must craft a new national development plan whose items include small and medium scale enterprises; import substitution industries and heavy industries as well. The new president must be able to follow economic plans as perhaps he had done before in his previous engagement. He must staff the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEACO) with professional economists who can research and refurbish the 2022/25 National Development Plan. The new president if he wants to succeed, and we must know he wants to succeed before electing him. He must enthrone meritocracy.. Indeed, Nigeria is a blessed country as regards intellect, but because of the absence of an enabling environment, the Nigerian factor which enthrones mediocrity. Our human resources have continued to suffer excessive brain drain making illiteracy and poverty to eat deep into our society. In Nigeria, politicians are not leaders. The trend in the outside world is to elect a technocrat outside politics, who isn’t a politician. But we should make do with what we have. Let us vote a visionary leader not the one who gives us a bag of rice. So, as we march towards the 2023 general election, our permutations should be mindful of malicious activities of politicians or zones who are sponsoring incompetent politicians in order to hijack power from them after election. Beware of people using brands for evil purposes or establishing fake news in order to install an alcoholic in power. A definition of deception is the control of the sources of information in order to discredit a strong leader. Lack of vision, lack of ideology, lack of courage to take decisions are the pitfalls of leadership. Age isn’t a factor in politics; anyone can die at any time. Research shows men are most ingenious and productive between age 60 and 70. Those between 70 and 80 are second best in both creativity and productivity.