Guest
As posited last week, in our dear native land Nigeria, the solution to every problem lies in committees, commissions and boards of enquiry. If our leaders were to receive awards for every committee, commission, and boards of enquiry they have established since independence, ours would be the most decorated political leaders in the world. As events over decades have proved however, there is a clear lack of political will to implement the recommendations of the hundreds of committees, commissions and boards so far established.
Let’s consider the Justice Uwais’ committee on electoral reforms for instance. Following the local and international outcry against the clear dishonesty that marked the 2006 presidential and governorship elections, President Yar’Adua established that committee to fashion a new electoral system for the country. But the committee members did a job which the President appears to find too good to implement as it would not serve the interests of the established, corrupt oligarchy that controls our country. Hence, the president held on to the juiciest apple in the electoral pie, appointing the chairman of INEC. After all, a puppet can only be controlled by the puppet master. This is a clear breach by the President of a promise he made to Nigerian workers since reforming the electoral process is a key part of the seven-point agenda.
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Anyone in doubt as to the president’s resolve to reform our electoral process needs only to review the election re-run in Ekiti State, where the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Ayoka Adebayo, went AWOL from duty due to alleged pressure to announce cooked results. To date, neither the REC nor the Presidency has explained what pressures were brought to bear upon her and those behind her disappearance and reappearance. Even though the Ekiti election has been ‘concluded’, we are yet to hear the last from the workers and peasants of Ekiti State.
Neither have we heard the last word from millions of unemployed Nigerians who roam the streets of Abuja and our state capitals in search of non-existent jobs. Obviously, no one who graduated from our institutions of higher learning over ten years ago or recently but are yet unemployed could be fooled into believing that the National Youths Employment Action Plan (NIYEP) would create one million jobs annually between 2009 and 2011. As it stands, five months into 2009, the Federal Government is still in the process of coming up with “statistics on the target number of jobs to be created by various ministries and parastatals and other sectors of the economy”, an imperative data for addressing the mass unemployment which currently pervades the land.
Meanwhile, Nigerian unemployed youths are keeping their fingers crossed while awaiting the delivery of the first one million jobs. It’s easier said than done. It is one thing for the Ministry of Labour to set job creation targets for government and other sectors of the economy like the Labour Minister promised at the National Employment Summit, it is another matter for those targets to be realised, given the gross lack of political will exhibited by theYar’Adua administration. It is for this very reason that this writer found the Minister’s attempt to share the guilt for the ticking human time bomb we call unemployment between government, trade unions and employers very much amusing.
Since the inception of this administration, government has never been tired of promising to embark on the implementation of “mass employment creation programmes in the public and private sectors”. Yet, rather than facilitate an enabling environment for growth in the private sector, our leaders are too busy festering their own nests to bother about collapsing industries. Otherwise, they would have been very concerned about the loss of over five thousand workers in the textile industry alone and would have put in place a programme for upskilling and retraining those who have had to be retrenched simply because the government could not stop the influx of cheap Chinese textile products. One can only hope that the Skill Development Authority the Labour Minister is proposing would coordinate skill acquisition activities in both public and private sectors.
It about time President Yar’Adua redeemed his image and that of his government by fulfilling his promise to Nigerian workers. If the President is indeed serious, here are some test cases for him to crack by way of assuring disparaged Nigerian workers. First, the President should as a matter of urgency ensure that outstanding corruption cases against ex-governors and politicians, most of whom unfortunately are his friends, are fast-tracked and justice done. The second thing Yar’Adua needs to address very urgently is the power sector that has become a bad ulcer that appears to feed on the medication applied for its cure.
President Yar’Adua should not only declare a state of emergency in the sector, he should ensure that all cases of corruption related to the sector are brought to speedy trial. The President might want to consider setting special economic sabotage and anti-corruption courts to speed up the trials of all those accused of bringing our power sector to its knees via the N5 billion scam. It is not enough for President Yar’Adua to assure Nigerians that the 6000 MW he promised in his inaugural speech to deliver by the end of this year will be realised. What Nigerian workers expect from the President is that he meets the target and very quickly too. Hopefully, this time around he would keep his promise to place the interest of the nation above “every other personal interest” in order to deliver light to every Nigerian home at the touch of a switch. Enough of pandering to sacred cows!!!
