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Whoever will succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023, among the 18 presidential candidates, will be facing enormous tasks despite the recent claims by the current administration that it has done very well in the past seven years. In spite of that unsolicited claim, which ordinarily would have come from Nigerians, the incoming administration must do so much to put the country on the right path to growth and development.
Apart from inheriting a sharply divided nation, he will be saddled with a battered economy and a country besieged with general insecurity, comatose health and education sectors, rising unemployment, hunger and poverty and a troubled oil sector. He will encounter erosion and flooding problems as well as how to reposition the agricultural sector and stopping the activities of illegal miners and regulation of the solid minerals sector worth billions of dollars. He must be ready to reform Nigerian ports and encourage the development of river ports as well as the road and rail sector. There are many others which I will touch later in the article. Besides the prestige of the office, many Nigerians will not envy the next president of the most populous Black nation because of the nation’s herculean problems which will be begging for his urgent attention.
In Wole Soyinka’s Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth, a novel he wrote in 2021 and almost 40 years after his last work of prose fiction, the acclaimed dramatist, has again dabbled into storytelling, a form many critics have argued is not particularly his best despite past efforts in experimenting with the genre in The Interpreters and Season of Anomie. Only time will prove if this literary offering is better than the previous ones. And I think it is likely to because of its assessibility in terms of reading and understanding.
However, the fat novel of 514 pages, contains some interesting themes, among which one merits my attention in this article. In chapter two of the novel, ‘The Gospel according to happiness,’ Soyinka serenades his readers with his critique of Nigeria being ‘credited with habouring the happiest people in the world.’ Neither the author nor many Nigerians agree with that global index meant to humour suffering Nigerians. It is akin to Fela’s categorization of Nigerians as a people who are suffering and smiling at the same time. It is also the country said to be the most fantastically corrupt in the world by a British politician. In the face of these contradictions, we are still regarded as the Giant of Africa. This may be due to our size and oil wealth or both.
With our oil wealth and beautiful weather and climate, land and water resources, we supposed to be the happiest people in the world. Ironically, we are not. We are even the poverty capital of the world and one of the most terrorized nations on earth. Our hunger level is among the worst in the world. In this novel, Soyinka wrote, ‘Not many nations, for instance, could boast of a Ministry of Happiness. Yet this was an innovation that came from one of the most impoverished states within the federated nation. Its pioneer minister-known as Commissioner-was the spouse of the imaginative governor, while other members of the family and relations filled the various positions generated by the unique cabinet installation.’ The issue of bad governance portrayed by Soyinka is never lost on the readers of this work. The state may be one of the States in the Igbo heartland, it may well be any other state in Nigeria. The irony of Nigeria is that a government that proposed the ministry of happiness ended up inflicting unhappiness on his people. Besides building roads that will wash away the next season, their so-called best projects or what some of them call signature projects were built with inferior building materials and third rate engineers from China.
Some of their bridges collapsed even before they left office. In the past seven years, we have even seen poor imitation of these patterns of governance among the political actors. We have seen a ministry of information that dishes out lies upon lies and even propaganda. We have seen injustice emanating from the temples of justices across the country and the dishing of questionable judgements by the courts, the low, the high and the highest of high of all of them. From one ministry to the other the decay is manifest and the unconscionable sleaze in the ministries, departments and agencies is legendary that the anti-graft agencies are daily probing them.
We may not need the establishment of a ministry of happiness manned by the spouse of the governor to ensure that the citizens of a state enjoy happiness, good governance, the real function of any government, but we need a government that will be there for the people at all times. We need a responsive government that will attend to the needs of the people, in terms of provision of water, food, housing, electricity, security, employment, transportation, health, education, justice, freedom and protection of human rights.Most states in Nigeria now are ravaged by flood. We need a government that will respond to the needs of flood-ravaged people of Bayelsa, Rivers, Imo, Anambra, Delta, Kogi, Edo, Benue and other states affected by the recent flood disaster. We need a government that will curb the perennial flood disasters in the country by building more dams to check the annual opening of Cameroon dam, which exacerbates flooding in the country. The annual ritual of flooding and its dire consequences must not be allowed to continue. The 18 presidential candidates now campaigning to be the next chief executive officer of Nigeria enterprise must be ready to tackle these challenges and others that may come his way when he assumes office next year. The next president is aware of these challenges and they have been moving around telling Nigerians how best they can fix the country for all of us. While there is nothing wrong to campaign in poetry, which is more romantic and also pleasant to the ears, they must remember to govern us in poetry and not in prose. Because prose allows them to give excuses and even blame others for their ineptitude, they should never try to govern in prose.
In other words, the presidential candidates must tell Nigerians, the voters, what and what they will do if voted into office. They can keep their list short so that it would be attainable within a 4-year tenure allowed by the 1999 Nigerian Constitution. They should not erroneously assume that their tenure is 8 years. They can only get additional 4-year term if they do well in the first term, a second term is not automatic. We need ministries that will tell Nigerians the truth always. We don’t need propagandists in government. I don’t know who among the 18 presidential candidates will succeed Buhari come next year, what is definitely clear is that at least one of them will occupy Aso Rock Villa after Buhari.
Whoever that lucky person may be, he should be getting ready for the daunting tasks ahead. It is not going to be a tea party. Neither is it going to be business as usual. It is going to be tough and rough at the same time. The person should have the list of his cabinet members ready. We can’t wait for 6 months or one year before the next cabinet is formed. From the first day in office, he will hit the ground running and running very fast to meet the unmet needs of all Nigerians. The next president of Nigeria must be ready to unify the country, fix the economy, create massive jobs, revamp the dying education and health sectors and ensure the happiness of all Nigerians.
