Buhari's Presidency: What Nigerians Want

Mohammadu Buhari is being sworn-in today as the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria.

According to Daily Independent, Nigerians are hopeful. Dashed hopes are revived and dead visions are revamped. There is anticipation of his sterling performance in office.

Without doubt, Buhari is assuming the Presidency on the pedestal of personal integrity and cannot afford to disappoint the people at this critical period in the nation’s chequered history.

Nigerians are not interested in what happened in the past. They already know the story. What they want is change, not as a slogan, but as a practical impact on their lives.

At each stage in a nation’s history, challenges arise, which sometimes serve as a justification for people’s clamour for new leaders.

 This is the basis under which Buhari was elected, and he should therefore set out to address those challenges immediately.

On three previous occasions, he canvassed for votes from Nigerians and was rejected. Now that he has recorded an overwhelming victory on his fourth attempt, he needs to remember that he got the votes on the ticket of his avowed uprightness and his promised capacity to perform. So, Nigerians will take no excuse for non-performance.

We recognise that the President has a herculean task of restructuring and re-engineering the entire Nigerian polity.

But restructuring also needs to go hand-in-hand with social and economic programmes to address the issues of unemployment and infrastructural decay in the country. We counsel him to scrutinise and internalise his political party’s manifesto and start implementing it immediately. Our understanding is that his campaign promises were rooted in the manifesto and people expect him to run with it.

Valuable structures are broken down across the country and he must begin to fix them immediately. These were his campaign promises.

To gain and retain the trust and confidence of Nigerians in him, he would have to work tirelessly and selflessly as if each day is his last. Nigerians are an appreciative people if they perceive sincerity in their leaders. That is why the decisions of government must be based on merit and in the best interest of the country. We enjoin Mr. President to re-read his victory speech of March 30, 2015 where he projected some of his programmes.

Taking him for his words, Buhari assures Nigerians that he will fight corruption which distorts the economy, destroys our national institutions and character, and worsens income inequality. To this end, he has promised to declare his assets and liabilities for the purpose of transparency and accountability. He will do well to fortify existing anti-corruption agencies. He also promised to tackle the hydra-headed Boko Haram.

The new President has pledged a just and principled governance where there shall be no bias against any Nigerian or favouritism for anyone on the basis of ethnic, religion, gender or social status. Nigerians heard all these words which he spoke of his volition and without prodding, after he was declared winner of the presidential election. We expect him to stick to these words. This is an opportunity for President Buhari to write his name not just in gold but also, and more importantly, in the hearts of all Nigerians.

The job of reconstructing a tottering nation is enormous but wherever he starts from is a good starting point. We wish to remind him of a few areas among many that he might need to consider for urgent attention.

Buhari should urgently tackle the issue of power generation, which has dropped abysmally from 4,000 megawatts to less than 2,000 megawatts. Nigerians are tired of hearing the same recycled story that attempts to heap the crass inefficiency of government on unscrupulous oil and gas pipelines vandals. If reviewing the power reform policy is the antidote for this perpetual darkness in Nigeria, let him do it.

Another worrisome area is the backlog of salaries being owed workers by government, both state and federal. No explanation can justify the non-payment of salaries. If government is demanding commitment, probity and accountability from its workers, it should pay salaries promptly, because a happy work-force is a productive work-force. Buhari has indicated his willingness to maintain regional cooperation with Chad, Niger and Cameroon. He also needs to fashion a way of addressing the threats of former militants in the oil-producing areas who want a fairer share of the oil wealth of their region.

Today, unemployment is biting hard in the country. Buhari has pledged to embark on a massive programme of industrialisation, including building railways, improving roads, ports, and crumbling infrastructure. T

hese could be other ways of creating jobs. But these laudable programmes may be hampered by lack of funds, due to the low global price of oil. The President will urgently have to start diversifying the economy. This is one method of curbing the current financial strait traceable to the unforeseeable disappointment from the oil sector.

Government should slash unnecessary expenses. The past government was busy upgrading its presidential fleet without recourse to the economic realities of the country.

 This is unfortunate, considering the global trend, which recommends that public officials should reduce the cost of governance and bring down the plush lifestyle of public officers. The number of the presidential fleet is outrageous and paints a picture of waste and insensitivity to the economic outlook and plight of impoverished Nigerians.

We notice that huge resources are wasted, as new governments customarily abandon laudable capital projects embarked on by former administrations. This is not economically viable for the country.

Credit should go to the government which completes a project and the one which conceives and starts it. For example, Jonathan’s administration recently began the concession of the Nigeria Railway Corporation to make the rail transport system in the country more vibrant. It is imperative for Buhari to ensure policy continuity in this regard.

These are the expectations of Nigerians from the Buhari Presidency. We, at Independent Newspapers Limited, wish Mr.President a fruitful tenure.