The title of this week’s piece is an extract from an article written about two years ago, entitled; How clueless can Jonathan be? The piece was written before the presidential election that ushered in the incumbent President Mohammadu Buhari. Extract from that same article is being reproduced again in order to retrospect and see how we have always missed it because we have never critically interrogate some of those who have aspired to administer the country, especially with what has taken place in the nearly two years of the present administration.
It is less than two weeks to the make or mar presidential election. The build up to the election has been quite electrifying. Never in the history of Nigeria has any election been this contentious. President Goodluck Jonathan had said at a time he was the most abused president in the history of Nigeria. Well, this election has shown how hasty his summation was. The level of abuse, rather than issue-based campaign is unprecedented and the two major parties are both guilty of this but the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) seems to be having the short end of the stick.
Is there any name that President Jonathan has not been called? Clueless, promoter of corruption, indecisive and the more recent one that he never deserves to attach doctor in front of his name because he didn’t finish his PhD.
Politics apart, the questions are; does the president actually deserve all these negative description of his person? Is he really as clueless as he has been described or are all these name-calling due to the present political situation? And has the country been worse for it under his watch?
Let us look at the economy, notwithstanding the downward trend in oil prices which has made nonsense of all the projections of government and the budget. Of course, it would be ungodly to attribute this problem to him.
In spite of that, the Nigerian economy is today the largest in Africa, a position which South Africa had always held. The GDP has grown to $503billion compared with South Africa’s $350 billion. The CNN in its analysis also said Nigeria is a country to watch in 2015 as it would be one of the fastest growing economies in the world with 7 percent growth rate after China with 7.3 and Qatar with 7.1 percent growth rates respectively. Can we then say the country has done too badly under the present administration or what we are witnessing is propaganda of the opposition? Unfortunately, the administration has been tarred, that the economy has not fared well under it.
What about agriculture? It is not in dispute that the present Minister of Agriculture, Dr Akinwumi Adesina has done very well. In one of the meetings I had with the minister, apart from the passion he brought into the job, a lot had been done especially in area of rice production. This has created a 60 percent self-sufficiency capacity in rice production. This is not hearsay, I saw the sample of the rice produced in Nigeria and it was quite difficult to differentiate between it and the imported.
Today, agriculture accounts for 22 percent of the country’s GDP while the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has equally described Nigeria as the largest producer of cassava in the world. All these happened under the Goodluck Jonathan watch. Indeed,he must have been clueless to have achieved this. And we need more of such cluelessness for the country.
In the area of electricity, it is quite obvious that a lot still has to be done. But the right foot seems to have been put forward with the unbundling of PHCN. The Minister of Power, Professor Chinedu Nebo during a recent visit acknowledged that though Nigeria has not got there yet, it is on the right track especially with the privatization.
What most Nigerians are unaware of is the fact that when the power plants were being built, the supply of gas was not factored into the process, this is what the Jonathan administration is now correcting. But Nigerians are looking for a quick solution to a 52-year old problem.
A lot has equally been said about the unemployment situation in the country, but in 2013 alone, a total of 1.163 million jobs were created, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Though this may sound unimpressive considering that the country churns about about 1.8million into the employment market annually, it is not as if the administration has not done anything. Dr Yemi Kale, the Chief Executive Officer of NBS puts it thus: “Job creation is, no doubt, a pressing topic in Nigeria as stakeholders struggle with the fact that despite several years of impressive annual growth rates, unemployment and under employment remains relatively high. “This doesn’t mean that jobs are not being created. The question is whether the jobs being created are enough to meet the demand for jobs which amount to an average of 1.8 million every year.
“Even if jobs being created matched jobs being demanded, there is still the problem of existing pool of millions unemployed. “Thus, for any meaningful impact on jobs created, the number of jobs created had to surpass significantly the jobs demanded otherwise the impact of jobs being created will not be visibly felt and this will lead to the understandable suggestion that no jobs are really being created.”
Now going with the above scenario, can we say the Jonathan administration is clueless and does not know what it is doing or has not made any impact? I am one of the first to agree with anybody that Nigeria is not yet where it should be, but it would be ungodly to put all the blames of this nation’s woes on this administration.
In view of the above, and considering what is happening in the country today, can we then say Jonathan was cluelss?
We still won’t get it right, unless… (2)
Things must be done differently. There must be creativity in our thinking, creativity in the way we go about what we are doing to bring the country out of the morass it has fallen. We should ensure that any corporation that is bringing in goods into our market, should have a presence here. They should not bring exotic cars into our country without plans to put an assembling plant in place. They should not bring expensive phones into our country without a major manufacturing presence.
We may not have all the facilities they require, but we have something they desire, our market, it is our strength. They should be willing to give something to develop those facilities that are inadequate, also our economy. If they are unwilling to do, then we make do with what we can assemble in the country. And that should apply to every sector of the Nigerian economy. Innoson (Vehicle Manufacturing Company) is assembling vehicles in the country today. The vehicles are good. Nobody has any major complaint. It can only get better. Should that not be the official vehicle for all our government officials?
Give the South East of this country the needed incentive, you can be sure that good phones and the likes would be manufactured from the scratch.They did it during the civil war. They can still do it today. Let’s exploit our strengths, let’s be creative. Let’s do things differently. That is the only way out of where we are. Any other thing is begging the issue.