The first 30 days of President Bola Tinubu in office, no doubt, has signaled the beginning of positive changes in Nigeria. And there are several indices to arrive at this verdict.
With the end of subsidy scam the NNPCL, a public corporation needs the attention of the President urgently. He needs to bim his searchlight on public office holders who have established themselves as cabal or mafia. They are everywhere in our public institutions, using their positions to terrorize and torment the citizens. They have forgotten that the rule of law, respect for human dignity, end to social stratification will actually transformed any country that yearns for development.
Take a look at the NNPCL, a body that is run with impunity and flagrant disobedience of extant laws of the land. This is further exemplified by the recent revelations of how NNPC management collected huge sums of funds from the marketers and failed to supply petrol after several months. This is nothing but a show of arrant impunity and oppression of Nigerians in their country.
Today, NNPC is factoring the marketers into the new regime that started few days ago, irrespective of the fact that some of them obtained loans from the banks, with huge interests.
This is the height of impunity and inhumanity to Nigerians by some people who are not supposed to be in any public office but found their ways there by defaults..
The complete deregulation of the exchange rates, marks the end of the rent seekers who have emerged as briefcase billionaires at the expense of the economy and the monetary reforms by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has rekindled the hope of Nigerians that if the reforms can be total, then there will be light at the end of the tunnel.
Since Independence, we have designed different kinds of public policies to improve our education, roads, health centers, rail system, dams, airports, energy and social infrastructure but over time, it has been failure upon failure and continuous public policies somersault.
In my view, it’s not that public policy makers are in short supply but the process and deliberate saboteurs using government machinery to truncate policies have been our bane.. Even, the best of public policy designed and formulated by Harvard graduates or Brentwood institution without being organically generated have proved to be counter-productive. We had adopted and variously copied and pasted some policies from Europe, USA and Asians but they had all somersaulted because we failed to domesticate them to suit our environment.
Apart from the wrong ways the public officials formulate public policy, they also failed to involve the stakeholders and the public for inputs. How do you sit in the comfort of your offices and make public policy without the input of the intended beneficiaries?
On this note, I will like to emphasize the disconnection between the policy makers and the target stakeholders who are supposed to collaborate or partner with the appropriate authority to galvanize robust policies that will achieve its desired objectives. But this is not the case here.
What do you expect afterwards? Policy somersault, of course! And failure as process of policy making in Nigeria is out of fashion because of its inherent bureaucratic nature and non-inclusive tendencies.
It’s also a well known fact that machinery of government has been infiltrated by the cabal who are always ready to truncate and sabotage the best public policy designed by the policy makers. They are in all our institutions – NNPC, NPA, Shippers council, NIS, DSS, Police, NAVY, NLNG, FIRS, Military, CBN, NIMASA. They are in the Judiciary, Executive and Legislative organs of government.
They are the one behind oil theft. They are the masterminds of impunity at NNPC. They even sell expired commodities, fake drugs, and public utilities to themselves and their cronies. They promote ethnic militias, banditry and insurgency to sabotage the best of public policy of any government in power. They are the cabal. They are the mafia.
They profit from public policy somersault because they are the enemies of this country. This means over the years, apart from the inadequacies in generating our public policies, there are saboteurs who have continued to infiltrate the machinery of government to sabotage public policies.
It’s on this note that, we are calling the attention of Mr President. Nigerians are tired of these enemies of the country who found themselves in public offices. Nigerians are tired of policy somersaults in education, health, roads, railways, power, energy and social infrastructure.. The new era should mark the end of this cancerous syndrome to guarantee the delivery of dividends of democracy to the citizens.
It’s also my candid opinion that Mr President should purge some of these criminals in public institutions who are perennial saboteurs and always ready to truncate the best public policy with impunity. They use public machinery of government to terrorize and oppress the citizens and without consequences. Nigerians are full of hope under your administration and any public policy failures with your well thought out renewed hope ideology will spell catastrophe for the nation.
We must find a way to put an end to this dangerous trend in our society so that we don’t experience the unexpected in future.
The #sars protests in 2021, staged across the country against the excesses of the police was an example of a revolution and in truth, it achieved far reaching objectives especially the abrogation of the anti-riots police unit that was set up in 1983 by President Shehu Shagari.
Many factors must have been responsible for our wobbling and fumbling style of growth over the years. If you ask people on the streets, they will be quick to lay the blame at the doorstep of the military that ventured into politics for several years but I’m quick to add that Japan was developed by the military. But General Ibrahim Babangida and his co-juntas destroyed what could have been great legacies in Nigeria.
By the way, the physical look and texture of Nigeria currency define who we are as a people. Apart from our Airports that serve as our gateway to local and international travelers, the next thing that projects us to outsider or first time visitors to our country is the look of our currency.
Despite the huge amount expended in printing new naira note by the former CBN governor, new naira note are nowhere to be found. Our cabal infiltrated the machinery of government, making new naira not unavailable across the counter but available at social functions.
This is a clear sabotage against the collective intelligence of Nigerians and clear case of policy somersault. This dastardly crime against Nigerians must be probed and the culprits brought to books. Let there be new naira note across the counter henceforth to restore sanity and earn respect of our neighbours. The is the only way to arrive at an excellent society we desire and where there is equity, justice and fair play.
Henceforth, any public policy designed through government machinery must consider stakeholders’ inputs in its formulation otherwise, it will end up as efforts in futility.
Therefore, the president should look into these organic problems across our institutions so as to give Nigerians the real renewed hope.
.Otunba Sola Olatunji, Chairman, Ikale Heritage Development Association, IHDA, writes from Lagos
