The deep sighs, fear and trepidations that greeted Mister president’s first year in office, on a raw Sunday morning in May, is borne out of the perception of the people, on the impact the apostle of change had on the nation’s political,economic and social circumstances. In fact a raw portrayal of a nation that promises so much but always delivered very little;a nation that offered its people a pretty rough deal in a 16 solid years of sizzling romance of democracy, and of politicians and public servants rampaging its chests.

No matter where you live, the government has been a source of constant distress. That today, stress and its resulting debilitating illnesses impact workers and the average Nigerian,helping us feel like the worn heel of an old shoe, tenser,less effective and uniquely unable to perform to full capacity. “Birds,”they say, can’t fly best with the wind ,but against it .”

It appears the government is beginning to institute a programme of reforms and is pressing for the immediate implementation of the much desired changes. The cuts in government spending will have far-reaching implications for the future, we must therefore stop niggling about every kobo we spent.

But like the flower that blooms in adversity, the ruling party wants the good people of the nation to really appreciate the effort of the president, who in all fairness, has retained his virtues tremulously amidst all the nation’s latest misfortune- misfortune which prudence and common sense could not foresee, but could have prevented;even as the nation continue to waddle in a quagmire;the impact of low crude oil prices,increase in pump price of PMS, the hike in electricity tariff without a corresponding improvements in service delivery, an unstable dollar-naira relationship and now the new slogan, ‘Technical Devaluation.’

Nigerians have always shown that they do not have a memory like a sieve, as they recollect the past administrations myths of marching forward looking backwards and some of their sociopolitical and economic policies that have somersaulted time and time again, falls that has reverberated in a quiet rumble{but not an applause}in the savannahs, and even beyond . Such is the effects of the march on the remains of the rubble of 16 years president Buhari is to command.

The nation is right now overcome with grief and deep sorrows caused it by the violent bruises to its wellbeing and a recovery process that has become complicated and fraught with often unanswerable questions. How could the ruling elite do this to a good but poor people. They were being purely selfish, simple. They thought about nobody but themselves!Their feelings will take time to resolve.

The politicians take to their heels at our lowest moment, as they leave us standing upon the seashore, there we stood and watched the ship of state with the self-contradictions inherent in its being and once an object of grace, beauty, strength prosperity and hope spreads her white sails to the cool morning breeze, she hangs like a speck of white cloud then,she’s gone. Gone where?Gone from our sights. She’s just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left.

The nation’s diminished size and status is in us, not her. We are watching with pains and patience her coming under PMB, to take up the joyful shout, ‘Here she comes!With prosperity and hope brought back’.

The lesson from the president’s speech is that he knows he doesn’t have a moment to waste,and going by his anniversary address,one is immersed in thought of an imminent announcements of further cuts in government expenditures as he plans to take immediate,decisive and continuous action,without any shred of fear, here the word ‘fear’ means a strong dose of respect for something,the treasury looters, and any such distractions as”avengers”, “MASSOB”, “Fulani herdsmen” inclusive, that are life-threatening, dangerous, or alarming, and who have failed to consider the wider implications of their actions.
He knows the ship is burning and the occupants are asleep. Break down the door, if he has to, salvage all drag them out of the sea of despair, but save them he must,if does not intend to leave a legacy of destruction for the next generation. Speculation has even reached such a pitch that a decision will have to be made immediately,hearing of which may hit the nation like a 2-by-4.

He needs to as a matter of necessity go after those who take the wrong way, those who tried to crash boundaries of social grace, decency and good sense by taking wrong advices from the wrong motivation, wrong desires and wrong people. There’s a chance he’ll be misunderstood, criticised, and rejected. Sure. But he must on his own be sufficiently motivated enough by his love for the fatherland and oath of office, as he applies tact, reasonableness, intelligence, wisdom and boldness to do or say what needs to be said and with will and love strong enough to tell the truth while there’s still time.

The ruling party should by now be tired of shadow chasing the outgone administration, enough of PDP this or that,the whole nation is guilty of the crime of complicity, conspiracy and high treason against itself. Hence, the nation must begin to focus less on who’s at fault and more on the job of reconstruction and re engineering with a regenerated spirit though in an unregenerated body, and a potential to accomplish great things. We should be less critical and more complimentary as we invest energy and time and be willing to take another look.

What  ‘Change’has to contend with and get right in the nation’s complicated recovery process, as the dwindling fall in oil price of late, the unstable and largely unpredictable foreign exchange market, the suspension of subsidy are pointers that spoke volume and the ear-piercing shriek in the unspoken and undisguised body language{and one may be right in the conjectures}, is that,the nation is seeing a new face of another Structural Adjustment regimen, call it technical devaluation, it’s only a matter of semantics, and its just as you like it.

The benefit of hindsight however revealed that all the past attempts at restoring the nation’s once budding but now failing economy through austerity measures had always turned out to be anything but a blessing. The failures of this measures has made the nation entering into the mainstream of world politics and striving to approach the much desired freedom from economic shackles pedestrian and distant.

The good thing is that in spite of his’limitations’ ,PMB has been chosen for a monumental task, and he has indeed shocked the world into realising that he is willing,indeed ready to assert control over the face and direction of the nation’s political and socioeconomic development. This willingness and readiness has served as a’go home order’, on those who have monopolies our frail and ailing economy.

While it is going to be difficult to prevent economic problems impinging on life and environment, he must follow this initiative up by a proven set of homespun solutions to the nation’s political and economic malaise, but first by tackling and winning the war imposed by corruption and fleece all around, as obstacles to the nation’s path to progress and prosperity.

The truth be told, requesting and expecting PMB for the miracle of instant economic turnaround, with our current mindsets, philosophy and culture will amount to attempting to turn him to Spiderman, that is going to pile more pains on the hapless masses, without a change in the people’s character and culture and ethos.

Nevertheless, the nation do not require this pseudo-IMF recipes and prescriptions for economic growth and development,if the PMB administration is able to diagnose and offer appropriate prognosis to the nation’s economic ills. On this page,PMB must tackle the pervasive inequality, wanton poverty, lack and neglect, of course, leadership comes with its own backpack of complications. This will make him to keep his bosom franchised and allegiance to the nation,its people, spirit and dream true, clear, clean and neutral, and without yielding forces or escalating the slumbering sparks of restiveness in the creeks, MASSOB, etc, sparks that could leap into fiery and fierce flames.

Yes, once there is peace internally, government can then manage the rough balance between Nigeria and Europe. The nation has always be dealing with a withered hand-a ‘small nation’ disappearing in the maw of giant ones, even though our economy was given a boost by the possession of a large and immense volume of crude oil,{with oilfields as livery yard, living proof of our leaders incompetence} .As the president tries to queer the ‘Avengers’pitch ,he must come to terms with the fact that Nigeria have not prospered from expanded international trade and opportunities to expand enough;shift the whole emphasis of our economies with systemic improvement in productivity, curtail the underlying trend of inflation which is still upwards and corruption which has made Nigeria a victim of conquest.

This administration must make it possible for Nigerians to develop industries strong enough to survive in the international market place even as it encourages the consumption and patronage of Made-in-Nigeria goods.

The administration after this one year romance, and for the spark in the relationship not to die, must embark on

i.ambitious programmes aimed at raising living standards;and change this trends:

ii.the country’s expenditure has been financed by intensification of the rate of crude oil exploration using monopsonistic trading controls and bunkering;

iii.the expenditure patterns encouraged more monies spent on recurrent and less on capital;
iv. by external borrowing and inflation of the public debt through internal monetary measures;

v.investments in agriculture, industry, trading .

All of the above are outdated models of government financial administration, PMB must have noted that the nation got itself immersed in the present cul-de-sac as a result of a combination or aggregate of all these factors, which had presented to the nation a slow and distorted growth. In the process our external indebtedness rose and debt service increased foreign exchange reserves sharply. This coupled with increase in pump price of premium motor spirit aka petrol and its domino effect on transport fare and boarding.

The tragedy of this development is that incomes become low,that may lead to erratic demand of increase in wages, and access to basic services, such as health, education and housing so limited and chronic in the past, suddenly become acute, and investment in the energy cum power sector inadequate, one has to go this far in order to appreciate the enormity of the problems on hand.

It is only the people’s peculiar physical constitution and resilience that could account for why Nigerians are still standing and are able to solve every major survival problems which confront them;such that their population could and did expand in measure with the slow but unsteady expansion of their productive capacity.
It is strategic imperative, absolutely so,that the government makes a quick decision to prevent further decline of the system, that has always been in imminent danger of collapse under an unconscious but complex overlay of social conventions.
Today, as the administration should be aware, the nation is now faced with crisis of ‘over-population’of a not too critical widening gap that is between the upward curve of population growth and now much flatter or even falling curve of indigenous production of food and other prime necessities. Suddenly, the nation has found itself exposed to a world which had developed quite different systems and with this, a far greater technological
power-technologies stimulated by the needs of society, which are now of growing complexity and wealth far beyond the nation’s pitting limited talents and technology.

Because of the ever increasing population already very rapid government must improve rural incomes, achieve food
self – sufficiency, provide basic services, attempt to enlarge and improve rural infrastructure and significant improvement in agriculture technology and the inflexibility of the nation’s economy which has prevented diversification into products with rapidly growing markets.

It would be dangerous for the government to begin to make cute remarks, clever ,especially in a rather annoying way, the same old conventional wisdom about solving poverty-more and more money doesn’t work. What was the volume of the nation’s budget last year about+4trn in the current year we are talking of +6trn, and we still back the problems of underdevelopment, hunger and lack.
For crying out loud, what is so threatening about teaching this army of amenable young people that the way out of poverty is by investing in themselves. What is the risk,one wonders.
The way you help the poor improve their lot in life is to empower them to do it themselves. Government positive contribution is the key to develop pride and breed self-reliance,respect and motivation, it must do more than enough to make more people access the opportunities this country has to offer.

The grim pictures on display should compel the nation to design programmes to

i.restructure and diversify the productive base of the economy in order to reduce dependency on crude oil;

ii. to enforce fiscal discipline and balance of payment viability;

iii. to reduce the dominance of unproductive investment in the public sector;

iv.improve the the sectoral efficiency and enhance the growth potential of the private sector and eliminate distortions, so as to realise benefits in higher economic growth;and

v. implant beliefs in the youth.

Economic adjustment of whatever nature and name under the prevailing global economic climate and a new world order is merely a cinema of the mind, and especially   with the volatility of the crude oil market, which unfortunately, is the nation’s mainstay, except the price of crude oil increases appreciably and steadily in real terms,then with the increased weight of oil in total imports, even relatively small price increase will have a large impact coupled with belt-tightening and discipline.

In the interim, and as a stopgap,  government must provide adequate incentives for agricultural production, as the trade -exchange rate programmes may further compound and make a mess of the adjustment programme, because of the tendency to let real official exchange rates become overvalued because of higher inflation at home and abroad. The wide gap between official,parallel and black market exchange rate which seems to suggest that the foreign exchange rates do not reflect its scarcity, in an economy that could not generate the much needed investment capital.

The nation’s leaders have always been separated by a decade of different philosophies, thereby, forcing the nation through the din of confusion in the polity, and Nigerians are beginning to be bored. Though we live in an age that seems to diminish service and exalt glitz, and some of our preferences and practices may not be very important,but our principles can not be compromised, not anymore.

So we’ll not allow our leaders to further mess up our sense of perception or paralyse our dreams. PMB must choose who have his ears and there must be no elephant in the room, but content of character, power of thought, wisdom and motivation.
The nation must be seen to be constructing a new vital social ethos and traditions that can outlast the administration, and can give us the moral foundation and character on which to revive a nation that is capable of achieving its potential.
This would show what could be done with imagination and a bit of lateral creative thinking. It is said that ,the only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. Luckily, Nigerians are no sticks-in-the-mud, that resist change;the sea change,but calmly waiting to take the ball from a scrum, even as cost of living seems to go up every day.
The experiment with ‘change’ ,should not be the beginning of nothing neither should it be a hard sell tactics of mealy-mouthed politicians. Talking about dejavu!it must be a time for real politik and approach to politics based on the actual circumstances and needs of our people.

The nation can experience a one eighty degree turnaround in the next 365 day. May he derive the courage,strength and sound health for the task ahead.

Last line:violence in relationships and marriages is growing at alarming rate. The abuse includes physical assault, rape, molestation, psychological threats, stalking and financial coercion and lately deaths. At the heart of abuse lies a desire to gain and maintain control over another person. And as a woman it’s particularly important never to allow loneliness or your nurturing instinct to coerce you into a position of vulnerability, if you find yourself in that kind of situation, ‘blow the whistle’ immediately,expose the offender and sick help.

Jimi Bickersteth

Jimi Bickersteth is a super blogger and a writer.

He can be reached on Twitter
@bickerstethjimi
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