Tuesday, 31 December 2013

Nigeria, our attitude and the journey ahead By Adelaja Adeoye (@adelajaadeoye)

This short note is written just to encourage us to play our part and also share my little knowledge and ideas of happening in our nation. Nigeria is a country blessed with both natural and huge human resources, it is often debated that what more do we need to get our nation on the right path? This question kept resurfacing over and over again, I will like to point out here that our unmaking is largely due to bad political plays and incompetent people at the helms of affairs. You may also like to agree with me against all odds that our governments in the recent time has been trying to put the nation on the right path. One of such is the recent privatization of PHCN,
proposed sales of Nations refineries and other assets. Our major unmaking is the issue of corruption and how to reduce or eradicate it. Until when majority of this government agencies where corruption thrives are handed over to private investors in the case of NITEL, we cannot do same thing over and over and expect different results Under Jonathan Administration! One point we must note is, un-bundling Public sector is critical to our huge gains. Nigeria will continue to struggle for economic survival is our economy is not largely private sector driven. Chunks of our annual National budgets will continue to sink in recurrent expenditures will less impact on citizens. Only when government privatize most of it assets with good policies and guidelines to protect the citizens from exploitations and break the power of monopoly or sectoral gang up against consumers. Then Citizens will be the gainer and government intentions and effort will be applauded. In the case of privatization of PHCN, I believe with time and assertive efforts by the government to properly monitor the investors, we would have a Light Up Nigeria and our living in dark life will be history. Our Nation will have enough resources to provide basic amenities such as good roads, healthcare, education, good and portable water et el when government have less burden on recurrent expenditures, new jobs will be created vis a vis new capital projects. In this case government will be the initiator of Job creation at every point and later hand over to private investors. Diversification from crude oil driven economy, agriculture is the most viable sector critical for our survival, oil will dry up someday or shortfall in international price, inability to sell as we used to sell before due to international competition. Our Schools need to revamp academic curriculum to compulsorily include agriculture at every level of our education. The mind of our youth and Citizens must be disabused from the much celebrated white colar jobs. The only way corruption can reduce is when every citizen have conscience to do the right thing, no amount of policies can stop corruption when people are not willing to stop it. The plague called corruption can be reduced by automating most of the bureaucratic nature of our systems of government. Every political top office holders and their appointees must be able to account for their stewardship at every time. They must run a very transparent government. Politicians need to tone down the way and manner politics are being over heated for the sake of personal gain, they need to consider the consequence of there actions and inactions on common man on the streets and future generation. Both the ruling and opposition at every level of government needs to find a way of working together to ensure we have a better Nigeria, rather than the unnecessary politicking, adversely the youths will learn this bad trend and they will continue same during there time. We have history as a nation, we must uphold the believes of our founding fathers, we must improve on them for the betterment of all citizens. Politicians should play peoples oriented politics not self seeking politics as we are witnessing across most of the political divide in Nigeria. We must create a meaningful democratic environment for overall progress and developments of our people. Credible people should be allowed to lead and run governments at all levels, Nepotism should be reduced to a reasonable level. god fatherism and man know man should be eradicated. Self seeking and over bearing attitude of our politicians should be thwarted by citizens. Citizens right protections should be another area our legistlators should work upon, our labor laws should be reviewed to avoid perpetuating exploitation of our citizens and human resources by foreign investors and local capitalists. I will personal like to suggest to government at the center to review our much celebrated NYSC programmes, it should be reformed to Graduate skill acquisition and self reliance programmes. Out of thousands that participates year in year out, only few are so lucky in the end while many becomes jobless and redundant after NYSC. People should be taught how to fish by themselves. This will astronomically drive our SME and middle class status. Thereby reducing and gradually closing the gap between the rich and the poor, crime and other related vices will tremendously be on a decline. Lastly, the way and manner we use social media, print media for information dissemination is contravening to the best practice and acceptable industry ethics. Politicians and some group of activists are no helper here. We need to use every tool we have for the over all good of our nation, this tools should not be use to raise false alarm, it should not be use to create unnecessary political enmity, it should not be use to create false impression about government policies, it should not be use to mislead the public and create a damaging impression of our nation on the international and global sphere. 2014 will surely by the grace of God be peaceful in Nigeria. I personally appeal to all our leaders to tone down the heated politics and be guided in there utterances. Happy New year ADELAJA ADEOYE Twitter: @AdelajaAdeoye E-Mail: AdelajaAdeoye@yahoo.com

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