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Obasanjo�s reforms
U. J. NKAMUKE
THE inability of Nigerians, especially the elite, to see where the PDP government of Obasanjo is taking us to worries
me stiff. You read or hear statements that show desperation from people as high as the Sultan of Sokoto who wanted
the federal government to put time tag to its reform agenda so that the masses can look forward to the day of eldorado.
Other big mortals insist that this is about 44 years we came out of Egypt but Cannan is not yet in sight or put
pointedly, from the worries that is today�s fad, desperation is erroneously pushing our people to ask whether there
are no graves in Egypt that we are brought to the desert to die for nothing.
Such doubting Thomases are naturally not looking well because the PDP government had crossed many red seas with
rag-tag army � hastily assembled � against forces that are attacking it from all fronts � ethnic militia, economic
saboteurs, unfaithful religious people, external commodity prices (including oil), insensitive national assembly,
bellicose labour force, china of human rights� groups, plethora of polemical students and their ingrate lecturers,
whose money income is equal to real income.
For once, let Nigerians think straight, think positive, have faith in the system and trust the piloting ability
of the President based on his pedigree and his patience in listening to his amarda of advisers, advisers to advisers,
ministers (some of whom had been in governments since 1960 or are children of the old seers) assistance, special
assistants, senior special assistants. Also because our President is widely travelled and is still travelling,
it will be a mistake to conclude that the positive result of such travels are not visible. I use this opportunity
to denounce anyone who accuses the President of gyrating, junketing and running Nigeria in the air. Did he elect
himself to those Commonwealth, African Union and ECOWAS positions. Or can�t people see that it is from the president�s
hindsight of our NEPA surpassing its target that he persuaded African leaders to adopt NEPAD, so that it can be
like NEPA.
I believe in extrapolation because that is the soul of stochastic mathematics. Short-sighted people see everything
from deterministic view- point but life is not like that and our president and the PDP know this: Therefore they
follow the Chinese proverb that if you look at one side of a coin, you are benighted but if you look at two sides,
you are enlightened.
An analysis of the reform key points of the President shows that he is on course in all the departments and true
to his didaction of IBB in 1985, his reform (OBJ�s) has a lovely and loving human face and conscious of his statement
to Abacha that naira should not slip to anything lower than N22 to a dollar, our currency is gaining everyday although
it will take detractors a Napoleon to see the gain. He, therefore, rightfully graded himself A+ on October 1 with
all the parameters to back his grade improved water in all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria, well paved road network
and Operation 500 roads for repair and signboards congratulating Mr. President for FERMA initiative, seaports and
airports where you clear your goods in one day, security of lives and property, etc.
Critics and detractors are quick to point at the so-called correct pricing of the downstream sector of Nigeria�s
mono-wealth spinner � the oil. To begin with, credit should go to the President who placed the faith of our oil
management on three trusted hands from his South West zone so that he will be completely in charge, superlative
speaking. Who will blame him? What he placed it in the hands of South-South persons and the people disappear in
the creek or in the hands of South Easterners and they call for stay at home or join MASSOB or Northerners and
they decide to employ the Talibans. So the choice of the triumvirates/musketeers who include the President himself
as Minister, Kupolokun as NNPC henchmen, and Gbadamosi as a price modulator and moderator cannot be faulted. The
worst they can do is join OPC and the minister of Justice �Olujimi� has given OPC a clean report of finding � they
are not as sinister as others and so can be tolerated. National character has no room here because insistence on
it will truncate our nascent democracy.
On the issue of fuel prices, the mad increase in international benchmark prices; invisible fraudulent contractors
who have collected over $800m to repair our refineries and disappeared like quicksilver with the money and in fact,
some said, damaged the refineries the more so that the refineries� resurrection will not be too soon; the inability
of ICPC and EFCC to catch these fraudsters; the sympathy for importers of petroleum products who will be made jobless
with perfect working of the refineries; the conspiracy among major marketers not to build refineries in Nigeria
and refine our God-given crude, are all beyond the Presidential mandate. EFCC is busy with Dariye�s $10,000 or
so money and the ICPC is busy with TV jingles that warn you not to trust even your father should he tell you to
jump. The President should not interfere with their jobs. Even if Ribadu � the EFCC henchman � accused government
officials of being the most corrupt and Akanbi singled out the police as the most corrupt institution nko. What
concerns the President?
So like a rational man who should not preside over his own personal liquidation, the president chose a reform agenda
that will be beneficial to all Nigerians � price hike.
Oh! I nearly forgot three new traits to national security � seized ships on bunkering mission that suddenly slipped
through the fingers of the police and the navy into the sea and the crude was sold at a give-away price because
it is contaminated; that egghead called Achebe who would not keep our secret and decided not to stand with his
equals � the likes of Jerry Gana and Mantu, and be decorated and, who, worse still, can�t see what Fanipower�s
son saw after criticising the President in 2001 and finally this bad transparent international that improved our
mark marginally this year our attaining third from bottom, a notch up from our second position in 2003. Brave!
We are above Haiti.
Woe to shortsighted people who always say, �Reforms: What Reforms." Take the issues that have to do with security,
for instance. Has it not been certified by this noble regime that death by armed robbery is excusable? For every
high profile death, the presidency will go beyond his mandate and do the police work � investigate and announce
the possible source of death within 48 hours, i.e., the ubiquitous armed robbers operating with unimaginable sophistry.
When once those robbers kill, we should accept such death as the victims� fate. Period. If the relatives castigate
anybody for heightened insecurity, they are just blowing issues out of proportion. Our, put it this way, do we
want the police to stop their "stop and search" during which time a toll of N20 is collected to beef
up their ever expanding belts or stop guarding the president�s people like Chris Uba and others, (Achebe is not
jealous of Chris) or be in the wharfs as task force (es)? Should they go about investigating the death of Bola
Ige or Dikibo who would not keep quiet or who were too careless to have entered a city without informing the state
police command or let all their orderliness go and eat at the same time. Big men who can�t even provide food for
their security details merit their fate! They allow them eat from mama put. Shame. We have never had such reformed
police in all our period as a country. They even achieved a feat of capturing dead men at Okija and ordered for
their autopsy to determine whether they were strangulated and put in coffins as camouflage.
On judicial reforms. This regime has so far done noble. They had obeyed all judgements against them including ordering
the IGP to withdraw security details from a recalcitrant governor who has the effrontery of saying that his election
result and that of the President were written on the same table. It is sheer naivety to ask the same IGP to obey
another court order to reinstate the same security details of the governor. How do you expect government to obey
contradictory orders from courts of equal jurisdiction. They can�t blow hot and cold or probate and reprobate at
the same time and most importantly the efficient NIPOST has not delivered the mail carrying the last judgment to
Abuja. Ever slow NIPOST. No Ngige can do with Bakassi boys.
To ensure that judges work very hard the government recalled a judge from vacation abroad to deliver judgment in
a case involving antagonistic and tavistic NLC which behaves like a communist party in a unipolar ideological Nigeria.
Again government was vindicated, viz Oshiomhole with all his gragra does not have his name and office in the statute
book. Shame on him and his comrades. They should have learnt from Ibori�s case that a name or title can be inserted,
removed or doctored. Government promptly obeyed the judgment 48 hours later by increasing fuel. Surely this is
neither judicial rascality nor executive lawlessness. We should blame Oshiomhole for pretending that he has a "wedding
garment" not the President who organised the party and fished him out. Diligent President.
Our government does not always want to worry the Supreme Court considering the age and workload of their lords
and so any suggestion that this administration should have gone to the Supreme Court to interpret the constitution
in issues of sharia or local government is done in bad faith and should be resisted.
About the bloated bureaucracy and the age of the advisers, assistants and ministers, no close observer of the administration
can fault their action. There is merit in recycling, repainting, panel beating used, overused and ever � ready
� to � be used nationals. There are willing people. If some had been in government since 1960 nko. Does it reduce
the age of their ideas. Senility is conterminous with wisdom. Check out Methusala in the Bible.
But who even said that the stewards are old. This regime has compensated the children of all known politicians
of yore � check out Chikelu � his son as Information Minister has got approval to showcase the wonderful works
of the government round the world. In Greece, for instance, he will tell them how wonderful the CCC which was not
given a single contract in preparation for Olympics at home, is at home in Nigeria, having the singular honour
of constructing the road flagged off by the President himself and having done that with just five people using
diggers and shovels and completed the road from Onitsha to Aba before the mandatory 18 months. How marvellous is
the President�s choice of contractors to work in the East. Surely Julius Berger is not qualified. New contractors
are to be encouraged especially when the chairman is a big Oba. The young shall grow. Other youngsters with blue
blood in the government include the motor-mouth Femi Fani-Kayode (adviser on something � yes � adviser on challenging
whoever challenged the President); Awo�s child as ambassador, Abraham Adesanya daughter, even Wole Soyinka�s children;
Shagari�s son who runs a ministry that gets irrigation project approved every Wednesday in every Federal Executive
Meeting. But his mandate for water provision stops with the North. Again good reasoning � the South has oceans
and so what do they need water project for? The rhyme of Ancient Marina ("water, water, everywhere, but no
water to drink") is not applicable to the South. If Lagosians, Onitsha and Ijaw people like, let them defecate
in their lagoons. Shagari�s son will never emphathise with them until the whole of north gets water as compensation
for surrendering power to the south.
On the issue of the President�s mannerism and comportment especially as it concerns his so-called abusive languages,
general opinion is that he is being maligned for nothing. If he called the CAN chairman an idiot or said CAN his
foot, is that why the small man in Abuja should copy such language and use it against the Senate? Let�s put it
properly, as a President do we not all agree that he is everybody�s father and if by some mathematical commutativity
he indeed is a father of all, can�t a father call his child idiot if they veer out of the way. How many of us can
say that their fathers never called them idiot or even worse names. All said, the President, for his age and disposition,
is right to see us all as idiots because we cannot even understand simple arithmetic computation of liberalisation
of oil sector.
About his mannerism while addressing press conferences especially during the monthly media chat, he just has to
teach naughty journalists who are impervious to reasoning. Yes, he has to ask the questions and answer them because
the journalists are too slow and that is why the Information Bill can�t be passed like the labour democratisation
(you are at liberty to call it emasculation) bill and because you can�t just let these people have access to everything
state secret when they can�t organise a drinking competition in a brewery. The only good reform in information
sector of Nigeria is the (wide) spread of NTA and Radio Nigeria. The duo of Ben Bruce and our durable Gromyko �
Prof. Jerry Gana � ensured that NTA was available 10kms apart and the elevation of our Joseph Goebel�s �of verdict�
83 (remember NPN elected) fame � Dr. Tony Iredia � completes the circle of reform. Today NTA is ubiquitous and
that enabled the first lady go round in declaring them open. What an open state policy.
Carry on with the reform, Mr. President and the PDP. We are solidly behind you because we see you as a tailor who
provides pockets while making dresses for a corpse. The corpse, like 95 per cent of Nigerian population who are
enjoying your reforms, will need the pocket yonder.
�Nkamuke is the deputy co-ordinator, JDPC, Lagos.
© 2004 @ Champion Newspapers Limited (All Right Reserved).
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