Jesus Christ is the Lord and Saviour in the christian theology. Christians believe that he gave his life in order to save the world from consequences of sin. This is the reason they celebrate Easter in honour of his sacrifice and resurrection. I say happy Easter in advance to everyone. Coincidentally, the muslim holy week of ramadan falls within this period and I wish our muslim brothers happy ramadan and may God answer their prayers for themselves and for the country. When Jesus was about to be translated into eternal glory, he revealed to his followers how to overcome evil and temptation and consequently emerge triumphant in all earthly travails. He admonished them to watch and pray. Specifically, in Matthew 26:40-41, the Amplified Bible states, “And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “So, you men could not stay awake and keep watch with Me for one hour? Keep actively watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” The catch clause in this admonishment is “keep actively watching”. As a student of Management, certified by the University of Nigeria as academically excellent, Jesus was simply educating his adherents that prayer, honesty and all spiritual ablutions are not enough for good governance of the people, they must, in addition to prayers, keep actively watching. Keeping an “active watch” in Management means effective supervision of the subordinates to ensure that they achieve the objectives set at the planning stage. Indeed, it was when Jesus came to supervise his disciples to know whether they were carrying out his instructions that he discovered that they were sleeping. Supervision falls within the directing function of Management. The directing function commences with the communication of orders to the subordinates, motivating them to accomplish the orders, leading and supervising them to ensure that the results correspond with the objectives set at the planning stage.
No doubt, President Muhammadu Buhari is an honest man with a lot of spiritual belief in God and enjoys living his personal life in accordance with the tenets of his religion. This is commendable. But the President should realise that honesty and spirituality are not enough in governance because some people and leaders are not as honest and as spiritual as others. In a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society, there are numerous tendencies that require active supervision to bring out desirable outputs. I have been an advocate of the President for a while, but there’s one question I have not been able to answer in my defence of the President. When I discuss the current affairs in Nigeria with some intellectuals and I try to insinuate that the President is honest, means well for Nigeria and is not personally corrupt; that it is those around him that are responsible for all our problems, they always defeat me hands-down by asking me, “if you say that it is those people around him that cause our problems, why has he not sacked them?” As a student of Management, I knew that I have no honest answer to that poser, because in Management, the ultimate responsibility for any decision or result in any administration lies with the head of that administration. They will often remind me that they did not vote for those other people but voted for President Buhari. They are right.
President Buhari contested election for the President three times before winning the fourth time. He had adequate knowledge of the problems of Nigeria, which he brilliantly articulated in three agenda: Security, economy and anti-corruption. In security, he promised to wipe out terrorism and insecurity in three months. Nigerians believed him because as a retired military General, he chased away terrorists from Nigeria in days. He promised to stop paying oil subsidies immediately on assumption of office. As a matter of fact, he called the payment of subsidies a fraud. He assured that he will fix our moribund refineries and ensure we become a net exporter of oil. Nigerians believed him because as a Minister of Petroleum, he built 3 of our 4 refineries and as a Head of State, he was a net exporter of refined petroleum product. He boasted that he will make one dollar to become one naira. Nigerians believed him because as Head of State, naira was almost the same price, if not superior to the dollar. He declared that he will lift more than 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, provide employment and electric power to the people, among very other lofty economic objectives. On the issue of electric power, he even asserted that previous administrations spent billions of dollars on electricity without results and he will ask questions if voted into power. This led him to the 3rd agenda, which is anti-corruption, where he vowed to punish everybody found to be corruptly enriching himself. Of course Nigerians believed him because as military Head of State he sentenced some corrupt politicians to more than 200 years in jail for corruption.
After about 7 years in office, the results seem strangely at variance with the objectives set at the time of inception. Inecurity has become intractable. To be fair, the President excelled in the provision of infrastructure of railways, airports, roads, bridges and so on to the people, within the limits of the resoures he met, but his efforts are thwarted by the activities of territories, bandits and kidnappers who have succeeded in carrying out attacks on our airports, roads and railways, making people scared of enjoying those infrastructures, because one has to be alive in order to enjoy these resources. Even our hitherto reverred military and para-military institutions everywhere are not spared attacks from these terrorists with heavy casualties. The economy has further weakened with our currency depressingly going for more than N550.00 to a dollar and about N770.00 to a pound. All our refined petroleum products are imported and fuel subsidy payment is at its highest today. Diesel costs about N740.00 per litre and fuel price sells at about N250.00 per litre, even as all our refineries are comatose. Employment is anything but reduced and the cost of living is nothing to celebrate. Anti-corruption war is still on. But it’s unfortunate that none of the people who brought about these great variance between what President Buhari wants to achieve and the results he is getting has been brought to book.
Mistake, by the dictionary, is an act or judgement that is misguided or wrong. The difference between a mistake and a mischief is that if you make a mistake, you do something which you did not intend to do, or which produces a result that you do not want. A President always surround himself with advisers who will guide him towards achieving his set objectives. If he chooses wrong advisers, they will misguide him away from his objectives and compel him produce results he did not intend. President Buhari is surrounded by awful advisers. The advisers convinced him to borrow money beyond the capacity of Nigeria to pay and further misguided him to believe that the best way to drag people out of poverty is by sharing five five thousand naira of borrowed money to Nigerians. Trillions of Naira have been wasted on so called social investment scheme without results. Debts are piling and none of the recipients has been dragged out of poverty. They gave Buhari this advise because that will be the surest way for them to embezzle the money. Nobody convinced the President that you don’t borrow for consumption, you borrow for investment. Can you imagine what would have happened to our economy if all the money used for the so called social investment scheme was used to fix all our refineries and stopped the importation of refined petroleum products, which is the largest destroyer of our foreign exchange? Our currency would have automatically bounced back because strong currency is predicated on strong economy and strong economy presupposes an industrial productive base and a steady export market. The refineries would have employed more Nigerians and we would have been exporting more refined and crude oil to the entire Africa and the world. We would have stopped paying oil subsidy and more private refineries would have come on board. Our infrastructures will be built and our security apparatus will be rebuilt and re-equipped with modern military hardware. More youths will be employed in these forces to help curb insecurity.
Just look at Buhari’s score card by an independent observer. Kaduna State, home of the largest military installations in Nigeria, is overwhelmed by insecurity, which State is next. 90 percent of our revenue is used to service debts, while more than 80 percent of all the oil we are producing is lost to oil thieves, so says Adeboye, the General Overseer of Redeemed Christian Church of God, whose pastor is the Vice-President of Buhari. He even asserted that his data came from the government and nobody has denied it.
Buhari’s advisers could not convince him to give ASUU N30 billion to save our tertiary academic institutions, which is the major investment in the future of our youths, but they can convince him to share trillions of borrowed Naira to purported Nigerians to lift them out of poverty, in the name of social investment. Let me note that what Nigerians need is not handouts, they are not beggars. They need security, power, jobs, infrastructures to enable them work and provide for their families. This is not what they are getting now and this is as a result of the mistakes of the regime of President Buhari. His advisers could not advise him that State Police has become imperative to give the State Governors the power to assist the Federal Government in fighting criminals who have overwhelmed the Federal might. They advise the President that the State Governors will abuse the state police, meanwhile their main motive is to use the Federal police to intimidate the State Governments not that they have the interest of the people at heart, otherwise how can you be arguing that the State Governors will abuse the state police when Nigerians are already going through their worst abuse in history in the hands of the outlaws. President Buhari should fully deregulate the oil industry and stop the oil thieves. Electricity must be restored at all cost. He must sack non performing ministers and officials and rejig his cabinet. Honesty is not enough, he must rise and supervise his cabinet to ensure that his objectives are met. Everybody must rise and defend this country by speaking truth to power because only the truth can bring solutions. If President Buhari harkens to the truth, he can still make amends with his remaining one year, but above all, let Nigerians work towards electing someone who will deal with these issues correctly, subject to the needs of equity and justice.