Re: Buhari Vs Jonathan: Beyond the election
(Nigeria) By Dr. Kayode Fayemi.
We commend Professor
Chukwuma Soludo for his insightful and incisive article published in the
Vanguard Newspaper of January 26 under the above title.
We agree with
Professor Soludo that if the political parties, including ours, must justify
the overwhelming enthusiasm of Nigerians about the 2015 elections we must
remain focused on the issues that matter most to them, which is the progress of
our country and the well being of our people. Indeed, this has been the driving
sentiment of our party and our campaign all along.
While we accept his critical comments on our party, more for
the intentions than for the letters, we believe some clarifications would be
quite necessary. We wish to emphasise that our party, the All Progressives
Congress (APC), presents a real option to Nigerians. Professor Soludo expressed
the sentiments of most Nigerians when he spoke about the incalculable damage
that the PDP under President Jonathan has done to the Nigerian economy and the
unprecedented hardship that his six years of the locust has brought upon
Nigerians.
However, the APC does not intend to ride into power on a
mere rhetoric of 'change'. The change that we propose is fundamental in many
ways as it is critical to the very survival of our country. This in itself
presents a major distinction between our party and the PDP. Perhaps, the most
compelling argument against the People's Democratic Party today is that its
government and leadership does not even see that Nigeria is in trouble. While
majority of our people wallow in abject poverty, and the gap in inequality gets
ever wider by the day, PDP has wallowed in self-celebration of imagined
accomplishments. How can a party or a government even begin to solve a problem
that it does not believe exist. Like in all things, PDP is stuck in denial.
APC does not promise Eldorado. Neither our candidate nor our
manifesto has made such promise. Our programs are based on the critical
awareness of the difficult task ahead, while holding out a ray of hope to our
people. The promises that we make reflect our conviction that the people must
be at the centre of development. And that any economic growth that leaves the
majority of the people behind and does not protect the weakest and the
vulnerable among us is merely delusionary.
Professor Soludo has drawn our attention to the striking but
unfortunate similarity in the nation's economy in 1982-1984 period and what we
are experiencing today. Back then, a period of sustained high crude oil prices
had also ironically led to unsustainable debt levels and introduction of the
austerity measure. Just as it happened more than three decades ago, it is
difficult to explain how a sustained period of oil boom should ultimately lead
to austerity measure except to say that huge opportunities that the period of
boom presented were frittered away by mindless profligacy, wanton corruption
and bad economic choices made by the PDP government, which has rewarded a
protracted period of boom with uncertainty and austerity and is still asking
for another mandate to do more damage.
If we sound upbeat in our manifesto, it is because we
recognise that this crisis period also presents us a great opportunity to
restructure the economy in a way that improves the quality of lives of our
people by ensuring that our economic growth is job led. Our party has
identified job creation as a critical priority of government. We have noted
with concerns that Nigeria’s unemployment rate of 23.9% should be seen as a
national crisis. And if this government was more sensitive to the enormity of
the challenge that this presents, it would be reluctant to jump all over the
place in self celebration while so many of our youths are wasting away. In the
immediate future, our priority is to tackle unemployment and provide good jobs
by embarking on a massive programme of public works, building houses, roads,
railways, ports and energy plants. Over the long term, we believe we must wean
Nigeria off its dangerous addiction to oil which currently provides 80% of our
spending leaving us at the mercy of volatile international oil prices. Even as
a Federalist party, we believe that an economy that is dependent on a commodity
that is so dangerously exposed to price volatility must always prepare for
eventuality through savings and investments once the agreed thresholds are met.
What we disagree with is the unilateral and arbitrary deductions in accruable
revenues in a way that hampers the development of the Federating States.
Going by the government's own statistics, is it mere
coincidence that the three States with the lowest unemployment rate - Osun,
Lagos and Kwara - are all APC States?
This is evidence of our Party's ability to tackle this problem head-on.
APC’s policy thrust will create an enabling environment and incentives for the
formal and informal sectors to lead the quest for job creation. This will be
done in addition to skills acquisition and enterprise- training to ensure our
youths are equipped with the appropriate skills to take these jobs. Merely
introducing a National Qualification Standards would power a whole new world of
opportunities for our artisans by launching them into the international job
markets. We note the issue that Professor Soludo picked with our figure of
720,000 jobs. We need to clarify that this is limited to immediate direct employment
opportunities from public projects and maintenance works only. Our manifesto
actually promises a lot more jobs but we see that as the product of the
enabling environment we seek to create for private sector job creation,
especially in high opportunity sectors like agriculture, construction,
entertainment, tourism, ICT and Sports. APC economic policy is driven by an
overwhelming concern for the level of inequality in our country today.
Specifically, to quote from our manifesto, we intend to achieve our
job-creation agenda through:
· Massive public
works programme especially the building of a national railway system,
interstate roads, and ports. These projects must commence early in the life of
the new administration.
· Establishing a
new Federal Coordinating Agency - Build Nigeria - to fast track and manage
these public works programmes with emphasis on Nigerian labour.
· Embarking
vigorously on industrialization, public works and agricultural expansion.
· Diversifying
the economy through a national industrial policy and innovative private-sector
incentives that will move us away from over reliance on oil - into value-added
production especially manufacturing.
· Reviving
textile and other industries that have been rendered dormant because of
inappropriate economic policies.
· Reinvigorating
the solid mineral sector by revamping our aged mining legislation and
attracting new investment.
· Developing a
new generation of domestic oil refineries to lower import costs, enhance our
energy independence and create jobs.
· Working with
state governments to turn the country into Africa's food basket through a new
system of grants and interest free loans, and the mechanization of agriculture.
· Encouraging and
promoting the use of sports as a source of job creation.
· Creating a
knowledge economy by making Nigeria an IT /professional/Telecom services
outsourcing destination hub to create millions of jobs.
· Filling the
huge gap in middle level technical manpower with massive investment in
technical and tradesmen's skills education.
· Ensuring that
all foreign contractors to include a plan of developing local capacity
(Technology transfer).
· Creation of six
Regional Development Agencies covering the country with representatives from
the Federal government, States and the private sector to manage a new
N300billion growth fund.
Our obsession with job creation stems from the fact that we
believe we must focus on actions that would serve the twin purpose of closing
the gap in inequality and creating opportunities for our people, especially the
youths. Our current situation is dangerous for the stability of the country.
The Human Development Index position ranks Nigeria 152 of 169 countries
surveyed. This is incompatible with the present administration’s insistence on
celebrating GDP growth and our absolute economic size hinged on a routine
rebasing exercise. As many commentators have pointed out, rebasing the GDP is
not an achievement. Rather, it is a mere statistical adjustment that does not
impact on the real or imagined standards of living of the people. So, we also
wonder what this PDP government is celebrating. And maybe it is not that
difficult to explain when one discovers that a small elite has captured the
state and converted our commonwealth into private gain, becoming
disproportionately rich from massive corruption while poverty has deepened. The
income gap and illicit capital flight are growing alarmingly. Instead of
investing in modernizing our economy, massive theft has starved the country of
desperately needed resources for infrastructure and public services and left us
dangerously dependent on fluctuating global oil prices for our economic
survival. For the ordinary Nigerian, the much-touted economic growth cited by
the present administration has not translated into employment or development.
Over 100 million Nigerians are struggling to make ends meet on a regular basis.
We understand Professor Soludo’s concern on the cost of
implementing our various programmes, especially those relating to social
welfare. The enormity of this challenge is not lost on us. We also know that
sometimes, going into government is like buying a "no testing"
electronic equipment. You may never know the true state of what you are buying
until you get in. We want to assure Professor Soludo and other likeminded
Nigerians that our policy team is looking at all the options – including the
worst-case scenario of a completely empty treasury. We are however confident
that by blocking avenues of wastage and corruption alone, savings could run
into trillions of Naira that could be deployed for productive use. Even so, we
agree with Professor Soludo that savings from corruption alone will not tackle
the enormous challenges we are likely to confront in government. We are however
comforted by the fact that a four-year period provides opportunity for phased
implementation while growing the resource base as well as changing the culture
of graft while reducing the cost of governance.
Quite significantly, we know that periods of economic
downturn also potentially provide opportunity to lay the foundation for real
economic restructuring and development; and we can reflect on how Singapore
under Premier Lee Kuan Yew and the United States of America under President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt used historic moments of economic downturn in their
countries to launch a period of sustained development and a new deal for their
people. General Buhari has never claimed to have the magic wand nor the answers
to all of the country’s problems. His greatest assets would be his moral
authority borne out of his self-sacrificing integrity, his sincerity of purpose
and his patriotic zeal to return Nigeria to the path of progress and genuine
development. He is committed to utilize
competent and committed people of integrity wherever he may find them. This is
precisely why he promised when flagging off his campaign in Port Harcourt on
January 5, 2015 that if voted into power, it would be an opportunity to, in his
words, "finally assemble a competent team of Nigerians to efficiently
manage this country”. This is a clear sign that a meritocratic process will govern
the appointment of those that would be entrusted with managing our economy and
country. His stint as Head of State shows a track record of using
self-sacrificing professionals in his governance team. His previous cabinet
included the likes of Dr. Onaolapo Soleye, Professor Tam David-West and
Professor Ibrahim Gambari.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) is determined to lead
Nigeria in the direction of change that is so urgently required. And even as we
prepare for the immediate rescue mission in 2015, our minds are also set on
building the necessary democratic institutions that would entrench our
ideological conviction as a progressive and people-centred party. A National
Progressives Policy Institute is part of this plan in the near future but we
are very clear about the enormity of the task ahead. We would not seek to
underplay it. We are supremely confident that we are equal to the task and we
appreciate the commitment of majority of Nigerians to this quest for change.
Dr. Kayode Fayemi heads the Policy, Research and Strategy
Directorate of the APC Presidential Campaign.
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