WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
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Today, my message as I commence my first piece for 2024 is a heartwarming greeting. My fellow Nigerians and esteemed readers all over the world, you are all welcome to the morning of a new year, and a new beginning in high hope for our dear nation. This period, as we all gather, across the country and abroad, with family and friends to celebrate the beginning of the new year, I want to wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
This is always a hopeful time, as we celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of another. And while 2023 was difficult for many Nigerians, we must also look back on this year, and beyond the negatives, with the knowledge that brighter days are ahead of us – that although our challenges are great, each of us has the courage and determination to rise up and meet them headlong.
It is that spirit, salutary as it may be, that has kept us as a people and a nation, alive and above our numerous challenges; it is those dreams that have proven the naysayers, who prophesied our breakup wrong again and again, and has kept the great dream of a prosperous Nigeria alive for decades and generations, and it is that same spirit and dream that will keep it alive for generations to come. I, looking far beyond our challenges and strongly wish all compatriots a Happy New Year. God bless our dear nation.
As a nation and a people, we are living through a tumultuous, extraordinary moment in our national history. Hard and necessary government policies, non-relenting insecurity, economic hardship and gross disunity are reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our environment, our peace within our nation and our place in the global community. But we must however stand strong, recognising that we have been through even more pressing and difficult challenges as a nation in the past and we overcame; so, working together, we can still grow above all our current predicaments, and make Nigeria work for all Nigerians.
This is a new beginning. Though hope of many have waned and expectations have been largely dashed, yet, this is a country that has refused again and again to bulge under the weight of calamities and challenges, and one more time, I see a new nation emerging from the ruins of insecurity, of economic woes and social fractures; and presenting a new land of prosperity in the midst of harmony and peace. A new nation of happy people governed by better, workable systems and a land flowing with milk and honey.
As we step into the new year, we would have to ask ourselves a few cogent questions and be ready to provide truthful and reasonable answers and commitments to live by the answers. Definitely, the story of our country and commonwealth in the next 360 days thereabout would largely depend on the answers we give and the actions that would follow.
The first question would be how do we keep Nigeria and Nigerians safe? Like several years in the immediate past, the year 2023 represents a dark moment with regard to the safety of lives and properties of Nigerians. The timeline of gruesome attacks and murders of innocent citizens across the country was ominous and alarming. The continuous operation of bandits, Boko Haram and kidnappers across the country are a dark event in the anal of our history and one that must end as we begin a new dispensation. We have consciously invested in military power as a response to the cross country insecurity, but it appears that the gains are minimal and not at par with expectations and the investment. There is a need for the country to return back to the drawing board to decide what measures would best address our nation’s insecurity challenges. The killings in Plateau State must stop, otherwise the presence of government, both in the state and at the central, would be unnecessary. We must answer the questions, what is the basic cause of the killings in Plateau State and its environs? Beyond the nation’s security institutions that have failed to address the problem, what must be done and done immediately to finally put an end to the killings? If it is a farmer-herders interface problem, for instance, what would it cause us to resolve the problem via the most obvious solution: creating sustainable grazing reserve and ranch facilities to solve the herders demand for grasses for their herds and settlement to live while the farmers are free from roaming cow that naturally create the problem leading to confrontation and conflict. We cannot allow the senseless and unnecessary mass killing along that corridor to persist in this new year.
How do we make the 2024 budget work for Nigeria and Nigerians and not against us as usual? I have been privileged to access copies of the Appropriation Bill as submitted by the President to the National Assembly; the proposed projects and programmes represent hope for the country, only if we could experience effective and efficient Implementation of the content of the document. The document recognises and addresses penitent issues that would create a pathway for a fast national rediscovery and growth in critical sectors such as education, health, energy and infrastructure. We cannot allow handlers and implementers of this budget to tow the ways of the past. We can no longer allow those who are supposed to provide proper oversight function that will ensure Nigerians get their deserving projects and services from the budget to yet again compromise the statutory function; we cannot allow politicians take over and share these appropriated capitals as usual. The president owes it to Nigeria and Nigerians this year as a mark of the renewed hope to establish a strong monitoring system for the 2024 budget implementation, as much as private concerns, NGOs, the media and all concerned citizens must set up systems to keep all the implementers across LGAs, states, agencies, parastatals and ministries on their toes all through the budget year. We must have zero tolerance for corruption in the 2024 budget implementation.
The next question is how do we mitigate the spiraling inflation across products and services in the country, especially on basic food items? What do we have to do to raise the standard of living of Nigerians? With the current inflation figures in the country and the very minimal and meagre income system, Nigerians have been at the lowest ebb of survival in the last few months of 2023; the removal of fuel subsidy and the apparent non-effective palliative has made living difficult for a larger population of Nigerians and was partly responsible for the increased momentum of insecurity in the last half of 2023. Something must be done to crash prices of staples and other basic items in Nigeria as quickly as possible in this new year. The government must do all it takes to ensure food sufficiency across the country, increase investment in farming, provision of effective security for farmers, their farms and harvests, and direct price control policies that protect all interests are expected on board in 2024.
Again, is it possible to have a united Nigeria? Is it possible that we live together without the constant recognition of our religious differences, of our tribal and regional differences? Is it possible that we elevate our national identity above all other considerations as a people and a nation? 2024 is the year and time, we have to ask these pertinent questions, and to provide workable solution pathways that would firmly unite Nigerians as one united people. We have gained nothing from projecting religion and tribal sentiments other than a broken center they have created. Now, let us all work together to mend the brokenness and evolve a stronger Nigeria for all Nigerians.
And lastly, how do we make democracy and politics work for us and not against us? What we have now is a system hijacked by politicians and managed for the interests of politicians and their cronies; because the larger citizens have come to have lesser say and almost no benefit. 2024 must see us organise a democratic system where the people are central.
Let’s work together to answer these questions and work to solve our collective problems. God Bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
