After each election in Nigeria, the country has always had major shifts. One of the shifts being the shift of focus from what would be mainline national objectives to a rallying stop in the persons and mindsets of Nigeria’s political actors. In effect, Nigeria’s policy tempo, especially its collective destiny, rises or falls with the whims and emotions of its leaders.
And for many years going, Nigeria has been wound up in the cyclic trap of electing leaders who couldn’t build a muster point for true national visions higher and nobler than their immediate range of personal ambitions.
This is due mainly to the fact that Nigeria has yet to define stone-cut policy objectives to be the overriding elements of its politics.
Commentators have always argued that the reason for this is our failures down the years to build institutions, whose role would be to focus and guide the trajectory of our national developments.
Who then should build the institutions? And why has it yet to happen after 50 years of experimentation?
The present structure of Nigeria, which makes the case of restructuring inevitable, deplores the logic for true national developments. Policies are often devised and implemented to sustain narrow political or regional advantages. A look at a few of things would buttress this argument.
For what economic expediency was the Kaduna refinery built? How was this objective articulated?
Kaduna State is hundreds of kilometres away from Nigeria’s main oil fields, far from being a technically and economic wise decision, judging from the fact that there were already replications of such infrastructure in the southern region of the country, which if optimally managed would meet its energy requirements.
After years of operation, the Kaduna refinery could now be seen at best as a poor and dwindling asset to the Nigerian state.
The construction of the Kaduna refinery kicked off in 1977 and became operational in the early 80s. Since then, the politics that informed its construction has always formed the kernel of our national policymaking. What other logistical and product-delivery schemes would have made constructing another refinery in Kaduna a dim option?
Would it be surprising that 30 or more years down the line, the then petroleum minister, now President Buhari, recently penned a strategically-flawed agreement to build a new refinery in Katsina State with his Niger counterpart?
Nigeria’s ironic poverty has nothing to do with any other reason than the self-determined course often taken by its constituting members, leaders, who are always pulling from different angles, with a force far greater than the forward-going momentum of Nigeria’s collective national development aspirations. Buhari’s three years leadership has brought Nigeria into frontal collisions with forces of self-regression, a snow-balling of raw and frightening ethnic and regional sentiments, with a direr outcome, threatening the country’s very foundations.
Again, Buhari’s war of proxies fought on his behalf, by his cronies and kinsmen to install the cattle business as a national enterprise aligns with the forgoing thoughts of misdirected and misconceived policies in Nigeria, and this may continue unabated, even as the legislature battles almost ineffectually to tame the excesses of the centre.
The character of Nigeria’s policy framing is not limited to the civic space. The Chief of Army Staff, Gen Tukur Burutai, rolled out a proposal for the Nigerian Army to embark on the project of building cattle ranches round Nigeria. It goes to show how partisanship has slipped into the core of what should naturally be the unassailable guard of our national integrity.
In Nigeria, an influential leader can so easily by his person-power, and position, instruct his army of fanatic followers not only to thwart the rules under his watch, but can traduce the quality and direction of a key component of a national enterprise. This is the touchstone of Nigeria’s policy and governance crises. And Buhari has reined in on this, to his own narrow fortunes, and to Nigeria’s long-term undoing.
It wasn’t long ago that the Minister of State of Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, had lingering boardroom feud with his supposed subordinate, the NNPC Group Managing Director, Maikanti Baru.
The matter as much as we could observe was settled behind closed doors, both men ever since, have maintained both good offices and “table manners”, but did that solve the knot in our policymaking and bureaucracy?
The army and other key national institutions are mired in policy and administrative inconsistencies, not for mere capacity gaps, more of intrusive, external forces, which have prejudiced its service-delivery objectives.
Beyond the fractious profile of the current leadership lies a deeper danger ahead. It’s the possibility of Nigeria sinking into retrogression after the Buhari’s term of office. Even more so now!
The present institutions in Nigeria seem unable to rise above the tide of partisanship. The ruling APC does not also enjoy the insulation of having a mind of its own yet to unload its boat-load of progressive ideologies and reforms, much like other Nigerian political parties, that are mere fealties of their governors and President.
Steve Orji, London, UK
Copyright PUNCH.
All rights reserved. This material, and other digital content on this website, may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or in part without prior express written permission from PUNCH.
Contact: theeditor@punchng.com
source http://punchng.com/nigeria-in-the-throes-of-self-regression/
No comments:
Post a Comment