2022: It is time to take stock

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER

info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com

This week, as I look forward to another calendar year rounding up, the need to take personal stock becomes more and more sacrosanct as I journey through life; just as much as we need to take stock as a people and a nation with a perpetual aspiration, the stock of what the year 2022 has served us. 2023 is a year of critical decision for us and an unbiased personal and collective auditing of events as they presented themselves in 2022 would be a very tactical decision-making tool for all rational Nigerians. So, I pondered randomly.   

As a nation, it is now time to take stock of what we are and where we have been for both today and the future. We have made too many mistakes as a people. Can we recognise the damage we have done to ourselves and our systems? Can we unanimously make the decision to begin making things right? Can we let go of greed and personal interests for unbridled wealth for the sake of this country? 

Nigeria is a nation broken – and being further broken – by men and women who grazed its nationality. We are a nation destroyed from within by its own elements; a nation begging for restitution from its own people. It would have been much better if those who impoverished us, those who take away the right and chances of better security, prosperity and greatness from us are people from other lands and nations; we would be talking of rising up in unity against foreign enemies, but who are we rising against to gain our freedom now but our own people.

This is the stock we have to take to know what and where we truly are; where we have come from and what harms we have done to ourselves up till now. 2023 would and should be an opportunity at redefining our existential structure as a nation and people, but would we take the chance and do the needful and right thing for Nigeria? Wouldn’t sentiments and emotional biases still take preeminence in our decisions and dispositions? 

Economically, we went down almost irreparably; a nation so blessed with economic resources has to grasp the straw to survive economically. Our national oil resource has become more of a curse than a blessing to us in reality. A nation blessed with huge crude oil and gas resources, but couldn’t develop even at the pace of nations who are totally unblessed with the resources. Nations that hold equal blessings as us have now become the new heavens we want to repatriate to for greener pastures, to enjoy the benefit of effective and efficient management of oil money. What becomes of Nigeria’s oil wealth? How did the blessings of the dark oil become a curse dangling on our souls and tearing us apart both financially and socially? It is the jostling for the oil money at the center that broke the final link of unity among the sub-nationalities of the nation Nigeria; at the center of all regional enmity and tribal separation is the fight for the control of the black oil. Who controls the oil money? Who takes the larger share, and how do we share the proceeds; have become the cause of the major challenges of the country. 

When would we develop the guts to take the needed decision about what to do with petroleum subsidy in the country? At what time precisely are we going to realise that as great as the concept of subsidy is, it has become an albatross to our journey to real development in Nigeria. The subsidy regime has for decades been hijacked by politicians who have successfully built a chain of corruption around it; a chain that is impossible to totally locate and talk less of breaking. Again and again, we have hit the streets rejecting subsidy removal, not knowing we are fighting for the continuous enrichment of those few elements who are the real beneficiaries of subsidy payment. It is because of the subsidy regime that we cannot know what quantity of the product we consume daily; because it has to be permanently inflated to remain the perpetual conduit pipe for stealing the country dry. Nigeria pays subsidies for tens of millions of liters of imported products that are either not consumed by Nigerians or are not even imported at all; we wasted billions of dollars annually feeding the pockets of the few highly privileged among us under the guise of cushioning the effect of the price on Nigerians. Beyond the fact that the continuous romance of the regime has been principally responsible for the refusal of private investors to stake their investment in the sector, we need to take stock. 

The import of the just completed Second Niger Bridge must be effectively registered in the minds of all Nigerians. Beyond sentimental biases and hatred for whatever comes out of Muhammadu Buhari, this is a year of unprecedented and unique national developmental feats from the present Administration to Nigeria and Nigerians. For once and again, we see as Nigerians what it means to promise and deliver. It was in this country that our hopes were raised with the great promise of cassava bread, expended and wasted N500 billion and yet till date see no cassava bread; at a time our hopes were raised to the high heavens that we are now getting the energy production and distribution right in Nigeria, the Obasanjo administration commissioned $16 billion to revamp the sector and all that happened to us was that we waited long in vain and disappointment. Over the decade, Nigerians were served so many messages of hope that were dashed. SURE-P, as good as it was, only became unavailable to the Nigerians who truly needed the intervention. The Second Niger Bridge was in the list of unfulfilled promises in the entire 16 years of the PDP government, with every administration using it as a bait to get the support of the Southeast region of the country, feeding us with paper works that ended at paper works; but today, in six years the Bridge is standing and open up for users. That is a monumental achievement for all Nigerians and an evidence of seriousness on the part of the APC-led Buhari government. When we find ourselves at critical times like these, when we are bewildered by confusing rhetoric with regard to what party to hand our support to in the next general elections, these are the most important things that should constitute our thinking points.

This is also the time for us to take stock of our many stands and decisions as regards other critical issues in the country. What are our reactions over the years and 2022 inclusive to politicians’ abuses of our common identities and wealth? Didn’t we stand solidly by Dasuki and his team who shared the money meant for the prosecution of the war against Boko Haram when we had the opportunity to decimate the terror group? We all stood by Saraki when EFCC made an attempt to effectively recoup national assets he had illegally cornered; when Dariye was imprisoned, rather than being happy that corruption was dealt a blow, we said it was because he is a Christian. When Orji Uzor Kalu was convicted, it was because he belongs to a particular region. And recently, we are more happy that Doyin Okupe was able to pay off N13 million and escape direct jail time regardless of the harm his action did to us all.  Where do we go from here and how do we make reasonable progress taking these forms of stands? We need to take stock.

We stood by PDP from 1999 till 2015; 16 years of unprecedented backwardness for the country. It was obvious, but we chose to ignore them. All the national refineries went down, local refining totally jettisoned and 100 percent importation of finished petroleum products became the order of the system for us. The nation’s entire transport sector became moribund; the railway system closed down permanently, our airports rejected internationally, our roads became more of death traps and the only thing done was paper works that never became a reality. As a nation, we became totally dependent on imported products after a total loss of local production capacity. A population of over 200 million has to depend absolutely on others for everything, including, even ordinary toothpicks. We were sleeping in perpetual darkness, and companies in droves were either closing shops or relocating away from the country for non-availability of power despite regular annual budgeting for the same and a huge sum of $16 billion appropriation for the sector. The same PDP is here again, and we are turning up and ramping up support for the same party and a man who decimated our systems. We need to take a deep breath and take stock.

So much was said about Peter Obi’s handling of Anambra state as a governor; much about his investing public money in his private businesses and we seem to be okay with it and even help him to explain it out; much about his religious sentimentality to the point of victimising anything and anyone that did not belong to his Catholic leaning, yet, we clap for him now as he romances all churches; much about his hatred for other tribes when he literally asked the northerners to go back to their region and offer them no help when they were been attacked in his state, yet, we are busy creating a unifier status for him now. The Anambra he governed is still the same Anambra we see today, but instead of being rational in assembling his antecedents, we are busy creating fantasies on non-existing performances for him. We need to pause and take stock.

The APC candidate has been out on the field campaigning without rest in the past weeks since the commencement of campaign but all we want to see is a weak old man who is not fit to rule the country. The man is busy selling his program for the country, delivering powerful speeches and attending to questions from Nigerians in many forums, yet, all we care about are the slips  he makes. We are busy creating non-existing performance antecedents for Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, and making efforts to distant all the great works in Lagos state from Bola Ahmed Tinubu. 

What do we really want in 2023? What do we want for Nigeria? It is high time we took proper audit of what is available to us in the best interest of our country and our future.

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA !