PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN: PREPARING NIGERIA FOR GREATNESS I believe am speaking to Donald the voice of a white man with a strange accent echoed at the other end of my mobile phone, apparently it was one of my good days when I took all my calls not considering if it was a strange number or not. I took a while to look up the number that called, it was not local, but a +183***. The caller was an American with an Persian heritage. yes this is Donald, and who am I speaking to please I responded, Fardin, the voice echoed. Oh, it was Fardin, one of the guys I contacted in one of my frantic efforts to stand ahead on my precautionary measures in the heydays of the advent of the Ebola virus. He is a virologist but very vast in world politics. I contacted him then to know if Nano-Silver solution could be used as an immunization against Ebola just in case the virus came close. But now, Fardin actually called to discuss facts and realities about Ebola with an impression that an average Nigerian was totally educated about the virus. I tried as much as possible to play his fears down. Fardin lives in Texas, and Texas is the American state that has the index case of Ebola in the United States. It is truly worrisome for them, just like it was for us Nigerians when the news and fears of Ebola sank into the minds of every Nigerian. So I took my time to tell him how we felt when the Ebola arrived Nigeria and how we were able to grow above the fears because every Nigerian did not wait for a prophet to inform him/her not to shake every hands and also to remember to wash his/her hands 5-10 times daily. It was also customary for you to find hand sanitizers in almost every car and ladies handbags. At a point, the fear of Ebola had turn to a joke. Everybody knew everybody was cautious. The government acted promptly, experts were brought in to assist. And then it was controlled. So I advise him not to lose his sleep over the fear of sudden death, but just to take basic precautions. Fardin was extremely impressed about the fact that Nigeria ended up not having up to 10 deaths compared to other West African countries that ended up with hundreds and thousands of deaths. I reminded him that Nigeria could arguably pass off as the most civilized and informed country in Africa. He agreed with me and gave a big kudos to the Nigerian government. He was sincere enough to tell me that Nigeria is growing at a rapid rate, and that it was just a matter of time for all investment roads to lead to Nigeria. He said the Asian and Eastern world powers are making frantic efforts to keep Nigeria as an ally ahead of the western world. As a matter of fact, that the US and Britain are in some measure embarrassed to come up and show their regard for Nigeria given the fact that at some point in time, they disregarded Nigeria. he said he had in his quiet moments studied the growths in Nigeria and noticed that apart from the issue of corruption, Nigeria was developing alarmingly in almost every sector of its economy with certain policies that may not be appreciated now by Nigerians. And moreso, Nigeria like every other African country where infrastructural development was nothing to write about, had suddenly woken up to develop its infrastructures. He pointed out that the Nigerian Health Sector had come up with policies that when implemented, will place the country as one of the best in life mortality. And that he also found out that even though the Asian world is better placed in power (electricity), but with the government policy for the Nigerian Power Road Map, and the world bank placing its guarantee to investors, making investment in the Nigerian power sector a hot cake for investors, Nigeria clearly stands a chance of having the best power sector in Africa and a better half of Asia. He reminded me again it was just a matter of time. Fardin seem to be so acquainted with African politics as he intermediately gave me comparisons in other countries of Africa. He also wondered why there was so much opposition to President Jonathan in Nigeria when in essence, he appeared to be the first President of Nigeria that had a focus. I took a while to explain the in-tricks in the Nigerian politics, where a section of the country believes that political powers should be limited to their region. And even though it was not strange to him, I gave him the genesis of how the current President came to be in power. He was meant to complete just a tenure of the former President, being a man from the section of the country that was never entitled to the leadership of the country. I made him understand that before the 2011 elections that brought President Jonathan into power, the born to rule section of Nigeria had threatened to make the country ungovernable. I explained to him how they kept to their threat. Fardin complemented President Jonathan for still making the progress he has made even with the level of insecurity and also with the kind of corruption in Africa. I made him understand that even with the progresses made, Nigeria presently is not only the largest economy in Africa, but also has the highest foreign reserve in the continent. It was easy then to explain to him that Nigeria has been able to attain these feats because for the first time in history, we have a budgetary capital expenditure at about 50% of our recurrent expenditure given the fact that a whooping N408.6 billion is budgeted for statutory transfers and another N712 billion meant for servicing our debt profile. The 50% mentioned translates to about N1.119trillion for our capital expenditure. These are in sharp contrast to the past where the ratio of our capital expenditure to our recurrent expenditure stood at about 4:1. So he could understand what it meant to have a focused government. Even though we cannot say we are free of corruption which we know it has been institutionalized in Nigeria, but the government has created other institutions to discourage it. With that I explained to him the for the first time in our history, the FOI bill was signed into law, so it allowed Nigerians to know for certainty how much is used for specific projects. It has also given a biting teeth to the much publicized Due Process. So corrupt officials have to be extremely creative to get away with funs without raising the eyebrows of Nigerians. It is a public perception that government officials are corrupt only to those that are far from the seat of government, but in the government circle, it is known that stealing government money is almost impossible. The Nigerian officials said to be corrupt have been limited to only taking heavy bribes from prospective contractors and to me, it is one great exploit that has been achieved by this administration. Fardin confirmed that as a passenger, your perception of the road cannot be same as that of the driver. Passengers with their limited view of the road will never have the same information as the driver of the bus, so it is totally not out of place when there is a general assumption that public officers are seen to be corrupt. And I totally agreed with him on that. Before I could delve into another sector, Fardin was quick to tell me that the glory days of Nigeria in the Agricultural sector was fast coming back as he briefed me that the United states was returning to be a great consumer of Nigerian groundnut and cocoa. I told him that the present Minister of Agriculture was a technocrat and he is fast turning the Nigerian agricultural sector to big business. Now the younger generation has welcomed agriculture as a worthy investment unlike the recent past where it was monopolized by the older generation in rural areas. Nigeria can be said to stand out in agriculture no doubt. And that is made possible by policies enacted by the current administration. Even as at that, it is also common knowledge that sectors like railway transportation that was only read in history are now being actualized. This government has gone as far as giving life to this industry that was totally death. And as I explained to him, it was a process that was leading us to closer to ranks with the developed world. Take for instance, even our major industries like the steel industry that was built in the Shagari administration and it never produced one sheet of steel, has just commenced production 32 years after. Fardin wondered what it would take Nigerians to know a focused and determined government when they see one. I told him that the opposition are not really interested in progress, but just wanted power by all means. It is always easy to find faults in anything, so they can always blame the government for every decisions even if it is what they requested for. Take for instance, I told him, the APC being the major opposition in Nigeria has been known to reject every effort, policies and achievements of the present government. When they asked for a decisive step to be taken to tackle the insecurity challenges in the North east of the country, and that was done, they went to the media to announce that the government was committing a genocide against a region and even threaten to drag the then Army Chief to the Hague. They asked for a National Conference to review our constitution and the President inaugurated one, they announce a rejection of the conference before it began. I went on and on to bring up certain instances, and my friend Fardin felt like coming to Nigeria just to donate some slaps to the leaders of the opposition. I told him it was not just the leaders, that there are Nigerians that for some reasons best known to them have still not seen any reason to accept President Jonathan as their president. Even though some of them still see his achievements, but they still insist the need a president with certain characteristics. If you ask them to provide a suggestion on who they would prefer, you will never get the answer. Some will name General Buhari as their choice, and you wonder why a former head of state should be doing in the seat of power 30 years after. Fardin reminded me that no great man was accepted in his time, they are usually accepted years later. He reminded me the history of Islam and Christianity centuries ago. Even Jesus Christ that has become the Messiah of over two and a half billion Christians today, he was never accepted in his time, He was rejected, blasphemed, accused falsely and nailed to the cross to die, yet he is accepted today as the greatest man that ever walked the earth. Mohammad was rejected fiercely in his time that he had to run away from his land to Medina, it took wars for Mohammed to be accepted by a few then, but today, the region that seeked him to kill is the same Arabs and Persians that are now championing his message. Even Ghandi was not accepted in his time, but he has become a legend now. So it is normal to see a sharp rejection of great men. Fardin went ahead to tell me that Gods messengers and anointed has never had it easy in history. So it is possible that this is the President Nigeria needs at this time to prepare Nigeria for its greatness as Nigeria would never move forward with the kind of leadership and mentality Nigerians has. It is known worldwide that every Nigerian is averagely or excessively smart and as such they excel in places where they have non-Nigerians. So Nigeria appears to be a battle ground for competitive race for success thereby killing the success in the competitive battle. Its like a jungle where the survival of every animal is only paramount to the animal. So normally, a man that can successfully lead Nigeria will be the one that does not appear smart in the eyes of the smart Nigerians. I totally agreed with Fardin. And it made a lot of sense to me. On the forth coming elections, Fardin made it clear that those it support of President Jonathan out- numbers those against him. It is just that the voice of a few evil men are usually louder since they make so much efforts to be heard. He assured me that all indices shows that President Jonathan has a divine assignment, and that until that assignment is completed, nothing will stop him. And I also agreed with him. Our very incisive call lasted for over an hour. My joy was that even though we have an opposition and haters that lived a life of hate against their country, there are millions of foreigners that loved Nigeria and its President. Like they say, Prophets are usually not accepted at home, but that does not change the fact that they are prophets. When I dropped the call, I could not find any greater joy than to pen and share Fardins perception of the Nigerian President.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 09:57:18 +0000
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