Yar’Adua's Agenda

Maik Nwosu

After the regime of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, President Umaru Yar’Adua’s style comes as a refreshing change. With Obasanjo, we had a punch-drunk shadow-boxer at the Presidential Villa, a man willing to do mighty battles with shadows of his own creation rather than systematically address the major issues bedevilling the nation. Obasanjo’s motor-park swagger, his “I dey kampe” cult of the self, was his chest-thumping chant to almost everything. With Yar’Adua, we apparently have a mannered President who speaks of his wish to be a “servant leader.”
After two months in office, however, the Yar’Adua administration also provokes the question: how much of the new President’s much-talked-about “style” is style alone, and how much of it is a pointer to the crisis occasioned by the April 2007 elections? Yar’Adua appears to be scrambling only now to clearly articulate the direction of his Presidency, having made a blurry transition from aspirant to candidate to President. Usually, long before an aspirant becomes a candidate, he develops a passion for the office and begins to communicate and defend a vision on the very basis of which he will be elected. This process allows the candidate to hone his vision and the electorate to meaningfully decide on a particular candidate.
In the Yar’Adua instance, instead of a passion for the Presidency inspiriting his campaign, the Presidency found him instead before he had fully conditioned himself. So, in these first few months, the Yar’Adua Presidency is really under construction. While this process is going on, this is the time for the new President to deeply reflect on why the Obasanjo regime finally failed to register as a great one. I still remember the surge of the spirit that I felt listening to Obasanjo’s inaugural speech on May 29, 1999, when he assured Nigerians that he would make very positive changes in their lives within one year. Eight years later, the Obasanjo Presidency left Nigeria largely in a state of disrepair. It had its bright moments, no doubt, such as the GSM revolution that opened up the communications sector, the banking reforms, the liquidation of the national debt. But the dysfunctional state of our infrastructures – refineries that do not work, highways that are ghost roads, an epileptic electricity supply system, police stations that could pass as horror museums – point up the failings of that administration. It hardly dreamt in a coherent and sustainable manner. Instead, it often dared for the sake of the dare.
Yar’Adua has started well by publicly declaring his assets, even though his declaration is certainly not beyond question. The true value of that declaration is its indication of a new regime of openness, which is why it is important that the Vice President, Goodluck Jonathans, should reflect this spirit by making public his own asset declaration. But the overall success of the Yar’Adua administration will depend on the way it tackles weightier challenges. Having signaled his intention to declare an “Energy Emergency” geared towards addressing our electricity supply problems and other energy-related issues, I think the new President should go the whole way and declare a multi-faceted Nigeria Emergency.
We need to urgently and truly begin to rebuild our infrastructures, secure our environment and lives and properties, revive our educational system, ensure an acceptable minimum living standard for all Nigerians. That is the root challenge that the Yar’Adua administration needs to contend with – to create a country of opportunities in which potentials are not mindlessly squandered, a country in which poverty and disease do not loom like reflationary monsters, a country in which we can all believe and trust in again. And the time is now.
We have perfected the ritual of forever deferring a state of wellbeing for the ordinary Nigerian to a never land beyond the present, hence the existence of Vision 2010 or Vision 2020. In the interim, each government assails us with all sorts of dubious statistics and dramatics, and some of us even cheer for crumbs – such as a billboard springing up to thank Obasanjo for giving “a new face” to a hospital. It is time to seriously expect more from our leaders, to hold them to stricter standards of reckoning. The time is now for a vision of the here and now that will ensure acceptable basic living standards for all Nigerians.
A well-actualised Nigeria Emergency should mean a massive reconstruction project that will deliver that dream. And it is important to institutionalise the process. To build long highways and bridges without ensuring their proper maintenance, for instance, is to think without a brain. Visions come to life in the imagination, but we need functional institutions – not I dey kampe personality cults – to root them. And it is by rooting that Yar'Adua can indeed rise up to the Presidency.