APC, “NEXT LEVEL” and reality – What President Buhari must now do differently, by 0tunba Lateef Owoyemi

“President Buhari and APC must truly pursue change, fundamental and sustainable change in every way in which governments after governments have managed our country. The concept of zero based budgeting must apply to every activity, namely, if this process or practice was not there before, shall we introduce it today?”

By unanimous consensus, the period of campaign promises and grand standing is now over. In a month or two from now, all shapes and sizes of analysts both well informed and not, will begin the traditional ritual of assessing how well or not President Buhari’s second term has commenced its work. Come 2023, APC will either be commended and rewarded or punished by the electorates depending of how well the Buhari administration is perceived to have performed. Briefly stated bellow are some ten things I believe the regime should do differently, if it is to take Nigeria to the promised “Next Level”.

First, APC and those who will direct the government must always remember that if one goes by the same route every day for 58 years, one must keep arriving at the same land marks and reaching the same destination. Since 1960, each annual budget has always featured a huge amount of apologies for why projected performances were not met in the previous year. President Buhari and APC must truly pursue change, fundamental and sustainable change in every way in which governments after governments have managed our country. The concept of zero based budgeting must apply to every activity, namely, if this process or practice was not there before, shall we introduce it today ?

Second, All concerned leaders must appreciate that the era of blaming previous governments for the ills of society, and failings to give Nigerians the better lives all Nigerians aught to have, has now passed. What has become critical, is now that we have endured four years and have understood the problems, what sustainable solutions are we poised to apply? This is President Buhari’s golden opportunity to immortalize himself. And that can only be through landmark achievements, not by crying over spilt milk or bemoaning our past.

Third. The APC as the party in power must be more proactive and more hands on, in how well or not the persons it has put in charge of Nigeria for the next four years, from the President, State Governors and the Legislators, are competently prosecuting the Party’s Manifesto. Whatever some elements may say, Comrade Adams Oshiohmole, so far, appears to be the right party leader at the right time. For the first time since short sighted persons successfully undermined Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his Action Group, the cardinal concept of party supremacy had been made worthless and irrelevant. By following absolute integrity, fearlessness and fairness, the current leadership of the APC should not compromise the re-establishment of party supremacy in our national political ethos. APC should not tolerate opportunism. The party should steer clear of accepting defecting legislators from other parties. With its current numerical strength in both chambers of the National Assembly, it can do without defectors. The new Senate President and the Speaker must give a written undertaking to the Party to declare vacant the seat of any party switcher, strictly as provided in the nation’s Constitution. The era of political rascality and shameless brigandage, and of unpatriotic party switching,must be pronounced dead and buried.

Fourth. The economy will never move to the next and higher level as long as the APC Manifesto promises one thing and the Central Bank Governor and his subordinates pursue another direction. No CBN governor but APC and President Buhari that will be blamed if the economy continues to perform below par, whatever the excuses, come 2023. The APC as a party, the Presidency, the Legislature and the CBN should form joint panels or committees of experts, to ensure that what the Party promised Nigerians are what the CBN is working to deliver. The APC cannot promise single digit interest rates and the CBN gloats over 14% or more. In my view CBN is getting too much involved in down stream sectoral financing activities, rather than concentrating on policy formation and regulation channeling its sectoral intervention funds to the established financing agencies and banks. How many times have we seen the governor of say Bank of England visiting rice farms or inspecting water dams ? One hears so much about local rice production, yet in my part of Nigeria, Ijebu, for over one year, to buy just one bag of the famous locally produced rice, has proved illusory! What is the matter, and how is government tackling this and similar issues? So far, I am yet to see a coherent, sustainable policy, on how the Federal and State governments, plan to curb unemployment, create sustainable jobs, in which sectors, when, how many, and how. The APC Party Secretariat should be quickly restructured to bring in a number of creative policy analysis experts, for those sectors or elements considered critical to the attainment of the Next Level, sector by sector targets and goals, each of which higher level goals, should be realistic, achievable and measurable. They should be quickly articulated and compiled if not already done. For instance, they may include, say “To raise the capacity utilization of 80% of Nigeria’s manufacturing industries, by at least 25%, in every year”. Yet another may be “to increase the volume and value of Nigeria’s agricultural processed food export, by not less than 15% every quarter or 60% year on year”. Power availability too must be dated and targeted as a key goal,the performance in which must be measured periodically and closely watched. Ideally, each Minister and agency chief executive should be supported with say three credible sector specific experts as part time advisers/consultants for the critical result areas of each functionary’s mandate. Ditto at the State level.

Fifth. Appointment and deployment of ministers should be taken more seriously than in 2015. To start with a specific number of positions, may be 50% or 60% should be earmarked for acknowledged sector specific experts of verified integrity and incorruptibility if our national affairs are to be taken to the next higher level within the shortest possible time frame. The APC should not abandon this critical work largely to the President and those few people very close to him. The challenges we face do not permit of trial by error. And the proven to be right people should be assigned to where they are best prepared to excel. Just as no serious change agent will appoint an accountant as Attorney General, we toy with the fortunes of the nation when for example we leave accountants who are trained experts in budgeting and corporate planning, and appoint a medical doctor or a civil engineer as Minister of Budgets and National Planning, just as when we ignore a well respected corporate mogul and appoint a finance expert as head of trade, industry and investments. I have great respect for each of the ministers in the current government but I consider it fanciful and toying with very serious national challenges when a lawyer is found better than a seasoned chartered engineer as our minister of power ! Ofcourse, in due course the none specialists in specialist positions will read, listen and learn about the fundamentals of their positions, but wether we like it or not, the nation must suffer unnecessary lossesrt and errors in policy choices whilst the technically unprepared appointees learn a few, and only a few, of the intricacies and peculiarities of the high positions they have, to my mind, been erroneously assigned. President Buhari must avoid such misplacements of top drivers of our national policies and critical result areas, when he reshuffles his cabinet. A final term is not the time for costly experimentations. APC as a party must be keenly involved in who goes to head which ministry if the party is to deliver better results and receive the applause of the electorates by 2023. Nigeria can no longer afford the luxury of experimental placement of round pegs in square holes. Poverty, hunger and public suffering will increase to revolutionary proportions! Those advising the President and his party on these matters, should always ask themselves the question ” Suppose I inherited a huge, complex but run down company, with critical indispensable needs, who and who will I employ and for which positions that are fundamentally critical to my success within the short span of only 4 years ? The President should think and act like a commander preparing to wage a war in which failure or defeat is not an option when choosing and deploying his next cabinet members.
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Sixth. The Presidency,the APC and its Legislators must be seen to be working and strategizing more intimately to deliver better benefits to the nation in all areas of national aspirations. The last four years witnessed two parallel government’s comprised respectively by the executive and the legislature without common goals or common plans of action. Our fancied “Separation of Powers” should not mean separation of core objectives and deliverables. Never again must Nigeria be subjected to the kind of shamelessness and crass irresponsibility in governance that Nigeria endured with the 8th Senate. The party, the executive and the legislature, must quickly identify what joint working groups they will need to form to achieve the major promises of the party’s compact with Nigerians, the frequency of each working group’s meetings, and how to measure and control their performances. No arm of the government should be allowed to act as if it elected itself into power without the sponsorship and support of the party. The APC chairman should not be apologetic in keeping each arm always aware that it had an irrevocable undertaking or compact with all Nigerians, to always act in consonance with the party’s ideals and the promises APC made to Nigerians prior to being elected into power. I am convinced that the masses of Nigerians are completely fed up with the rascality and irresponsibility of all preceding political actors and will readily queue behind any leader seen to be honestly acting to protect public interest and the welfare of the people. To this end all senior public and civil servants in the Federal Service and APC controlled States should by June 2019, be availed a copy of the latest Manifesto of the APC, for proper study and understanding and over the next 4 years, from time to time, be examined to assess their understanding of what the APC, President Buhari and the State Governors undertook to deliver to all Nigerians during the next four years.

Seventh. The country needs a credible and authentic feed back system. Towards this, the APC must agree a system by which each arm of the government submits to the nation through the party a quarterly report of its activities detailing what progress it is making in producing the deliverables the party promised to give the people in all key result areas, what challenges it is facing and what results it expects to deliver in the next quarter. The Party should disseminate such reports as widely as possible so that the public can judge for itself how its mandate is being fulfilled or not. In any war situation such as the position in which we now find ourselves in Nigeria, keeping the masses fully engaged in the war effort through appropriate channels of communication is very essential. Each of the existing government owned medium of mass communication should be sufficiently empowered to widely disseminate periodically, available information on what each ministry and agency is doing and planning to do. Each entity should be made to feature at least once a quarter on national television and radio to regularly showcase the ministry or agency’s activities and achievements, rather than warehousing same until the next election campaign time as just happened.

Eighth. The Local Governments need better attention. The local governments are the closest governments to the people. Their failure over the years to justify the reasons deter for their creation is in my view one of the reasons for the abysmal low voter turns out that we continue to see one election after another. Apart from those who “work” in them, most people feel no benefits from the existence of the local governments in Nigeria. In other countries local governments contribute so much to the welfare of the people in their areas both rich and poor. They build and maintain roads, own and run schools, hospitals and maternity centers. They clean up the streets, maintain parks and gardens and provide street lights. Some provide massive housing facilities for both the poor and the middle class. But in Nigeria, the State Governors hijack the monthly allocations to the local governments in their states. remit down a small fraction which the officials usually meet together to share. Hence over the last decade or two, there is no single local government in Nigeria that can be showcased as an effective unit of government. I do not support the idea that the local, third tier of government should be scrapped. Instead, and as a major plank of its Next Level project, the APC should hold an early dialogue with all its governors-elect, review the impact of the emasculation by State governments of all the local governments and get each governor to commit himself to doing two things within his first 100 days in office. These are first, abrogation of all State laws negatively impacting the financial and operational independence and effectiveness of its local governments; and second, ensuring that from June 2019, all local governments receive their monthly federal and state allocations direct. As a local government chairman in 1981, all our capital projects required approval of the State government. Such was possible only in a one party state as I could not imagine how a governor in a different party could over ride what my party in opposition could or could not do. If the Federal Government can not interfere in what a state government does, I do not see why the same freedom of action should not be given to local governments.

Ninth. Resuscitation of moribund industries. The next level cannot be reached without the creation of massive opportunities for millions of unemployed youths to be gainfully and sustainably employed. First a virtual Labour Register the data on which should also include the State, local government and town of residence of each employment seeker, should be created for easy access through the Internet or WhatsAp from anywhere in Nigeria. Every unemployed person resident in each State/ Local government area should be encouraged to access the Internet platform and submit all his or her relevant particulars and the nature of jobs desired. This initiative will allow the Federal, State and Local governments to have a more precise idea of how many Nigerians are unemployed at any particular time. All potential employers of labour seeking employees should be encouraged to use the Registry. Massive public enlightenment campaigns should be undertaken to encourage unemployed Nigerians to take any available and lawful job rather than idling away at home or engaging in criminal activities. Each tertiary institution in Nigeria should be encouraged to run on a continuous basis, skills acquisition and self improvement courses and jobs related training programs towards making the unemployed more employable. Specific financing facilities should be created for mature adults above 40, to vacate paid employments and create own enterprises eligible for CBN and Bank of Industry support based on the number of persons they recruit from the virtual labour register. The more mature and better experienced individuals and especially professionals are more likely to succeed at a new enterprise than young graduates just leaving tertiary institutions.A specific fund should be created for financing the reactivation studies and recapitalizing the moribund factories located all over the country that can still be profitably reactivated. Instead of allowing banks to take over and ground the operations of such indebted industrial companies, the relevant laws should be reviewed towards allowing such projects to be taken over and restructured by agents of the creditor bank, restructured and operated for a maximum period of say 5 to 7 years, before being turned over to the original owners as a going concern entity. This will ameliorate the current national disaster of thousands of industrial production facilities under lock and keys for sometimes more than a decade without any serious buyer thereby denying Nigeria of millions of sustainable jobs. Churches and Mosques should endeavour to empower their adherents.

Tenth. More attention and resources need to be given to all public sector establishments. Dealing with many public institutions is for now a nightmare. Most staff in ministries and agencies act discretionally, when they like, and how they like. Unlike in the past and in better managed countries where citizens are accorded respect and service, hardly do Nigerian civil and public servants answer correspondences from the public timeously or at all. As one official suspects the motive of another, and suspects every interaction as motivated by gratification, members of the public are often held hostage, with no one officer willing to intervene with another officer, on behalf of even a deserving member of the public. Hence each staff sees his or her desk as a private estate in which the official can act as he or she likes. On a number of times critical files disappear without trace. There are some departments where corruption and money sharing is alleged to have been instutionalized. The fight against corruption should now be broadened from past public office holders and especially politicians and the armed forces to all other arms and departments of government. More attention should be paid to monitoring the activities of all current serving office holders and the officials serving under them. Without a cleaner and less corrupt civil service and public service, departing to, let alone arriving at a higher next level will be merely wishful thinking and election time propaganda. No country can ever develop or rise to a higher level with a very corrupt cadre of public officials, high and low. Finally, many of us who had always supported and yearned for the leadership of Nigeria by General Mohammadu Buhari, are optimistic that he will leave a legacy for which Nigeria will ever remember and be grateful to him. That legacy should not be in the area of curbing corruption alone. During the last election campaigns so much was made of his perceived personal lack of business management and economic policy formulation and implementation experience . If he is particular about bridging that gap, it can be done by bringing into his cabinet, or in advisory capacities, acknowledged trustworthy professionals, who are known to be a “little to the left” by orientation or populist by indoctrination, persons known to be very knowledgable about how to manage different parts of the economy creatively and selflessly. There is no reason on earth why President Mohammed Buhari, cannot end his third opportunity of being Nigeria’s Head of State and Commander-in-Chief in May 2023,as one of the greatest Nigerian and indeed African leaders of all time. But the President should bear in mind always, that a wise and shrewd property developer with limited time and resources, and who aspires to build a durable and enduring edifice, will not deliberately or experimentally entrust the job of an electrician to a carpenter, or that of a welder, to a goldsmith !

*Otunba Lateef Owoyemi, a Chartered Accountant and Management Consultant, is a Past President of both the Institute of Management Consultants of Nigeria, and ICAN, and is CEO of LOP Consulting Ltd. White House, IDOWA, IJEBU. Email : lateefowoyemi @hotmail.com 20th April, 2019.