“I
recommend you to take care of the minutes, for hours will take care of
themselves.” P.D Stanhope
At the beginning of this
year, I published a projection of what I thought will be issues that will give
the year its character. I just had a glimpse at the material again, and I will
leave you to judge the manner events played out against the projections. Almost
at the end of the year, these are my views on them.
i) President
Jonathan has failed to restrain massive official corruption, and his political
ambition has split his party and is raising tensions across the country;
ii) Governors are
now in many camps, but they will still be major determinants of what happens in
the PDP, the APC and in 2015;
iii) The opposition
has waxed stronger, and today poses the greatest threat to the PDP’s
stranglehold on the nation’s politics. But it has many sensitive issues to
resolve, and very little time to resolve them;
iv) Insecurity and
crime have grown in the year, feeding off a weakening state policing
infrastructure and a military which appears to be adopting a strategy of
chasing an insurgency around while its leadership speaks with the government;
v) The Stella Oduah
saga says all there is to say on corruption under the Jonathan administration;
vi) The National
Assembly has had a tough year overseeing a leaking executive and walking around
minefields which challenge its integrity at every turn;
vii) We did not learns
our lessons from the floods of 2012. In 2013, we lost as much as we did in
2012, and spent even more. The rains are proving lucrative sources for
financial accumulation and major drains on public resources;
viii) The Super
Eagles won the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations, restoring some credibility to the
quality of our football. The nation is ending the year with an even greater
achievement: the FIFA Under-17 World Cup.
Lets be chainable to the
administration. Nigeria won two cups in one year under it.
The
makers of 2013
President Goodluck Jonathan says 2013 will
be the year of his greatest impact. Most Nigerians will hope so. Leaders of the
opposition and sceptics who hope he will disappoint again will pay for their
hostility with higher costs for diesel for their generators, higher costs to
protect and secure life and limbs, and uncertainties over whether a President
who performs badly all through this will allow a free and fair election to
determine his fate in 2015. If 2013 will be the year President Jonathan will
affect our lives most, what factors will be at play in shaping it?
1.
President Jonathan
The President’s character will be a major
factor in terms of what he does in 2013. It cannot escape him that the vast
majority of Nigerians are resigned to his rating as the least effective
Nigerian leader in history, and their levels of cynicism over his capacity to
alter it are alarming. He could transform his persona and generate new levels
of personal courage, commitment and zeal to deal more decisively with many problems
threatening to swamp the nation. If he can do that, he will then focus on
overhauling his decision-making machinery. Key Ministers involved in managing
the economy and infrastructure are now serious liabilities. Many others are
content to just tag along without adding value to the quality of governance. He
has too many powerful people without specific responsibilities but massive
influence over decisions and policies. Some of these are what Alhaji Asari
Dokubo recently lashed out at. The President needs to clean up his Augean
Stable which is now a veritable source of corruption, tardiness and
incompetence. If he does not do this, he will achieve even less in 2013 than he
did since 2012.
It is also important that he evaluates his
position in relation to running again in 2015. The more he keeps the nation
guessing, the more he will attract latent and active hostility and opposition
from members of his own party, especially governors from the north nursing
ambitions; south-east politicians and an opposition receiving a major boost to
merge from his perceived ambition. The President’s best bet is to renounce any
ambition to run in 2015, and make that decision public. He can then tackle
serious problems with a single-minded devotion, and step on toes which will
otherwise hide behind his ambition.
2.
Governors
Governors will constitute a major
influence in shaping 2013. Together, they can frustrate the President’s plans
on Sovereign Wealth Fund and other key policy instruments around the economy,
and possibly around constitutional amendments. They have many sources of
conflicts among them, principally around resource allocation and constitutional
amendments. These will reduce their potency as a group, but only slightly. Some
PDP governors among them have presidential ambitions, and if they can lean on
each other and trade favours, they will be the most decisive influence in
determining the outcome of the fight for the PDP flag. They are likely to be
influential in determining President Jonathan’s plans towards 2015 which will
have to be made clearer in 2013.
3.
The opposition
The opposition will be influential in
2013, provided current talks end up producing a genuine merger, and leaders
that can threaten the PDP and Jonathan’s ambitions. Sticking points in negotiations
such as who will emerge leader and flag bearer in 2015 will be difficult to
resolve, but if they go beyond 2013, they are unlikely to result in any serious
challenge to the PDP’s dominance.
4.
Insecurity and Crime
Threats to national security from the
insurgency of JASLIWAJ (Boko Haram) are likely to continue to challenge the
nation. If the administration sustains its current basic strategy of deploying
large numbers of security personnel around locations and highways in 2013, it
will expose them to more localized hostility, with little impact over the
capacity of the insurgency to continue to threaten citizens and the state. If,
on the other hand, government undertakes a radical review of its strategy with
focus on intelligence gathering as well as involvement of communities in
managing the crisis, it could substantially limit the capacity of the
insurgency to wage war in 2013. Review of strategies may include tapping into
communities to build bridges with the insurgency, and engaging it in discussions
within the year.
Serious crimes such as kidnapping, crude
theft, armed robbery and piracy will most likely escalate in 2013, unless the
administration addresses major weaknesses in its law and order assets,
particularly the police. Substantial part of this asset has been compromised by
corruption and chronic incompetence, and violent crimes are feeding off its
weaknesses at alarming rates. Small arms availability is now a bigger threat
than even the Boko Haram insurgency. Unless major steps are taken to
restructure the nation’s policing capacity and improve discipline and
professionalism, life for most citizens will become even more insecure in 2013.
The military is being stressed and exposed to dangerous levels, and the year
will likely highlight the impact of this exposure.
5.
Corruption
The image of the administration as weak
when it comes to dealing with corruption will be made worse unless genuine
results show in the efforts to prosecute subsidy and pension scams and other
reported cases of corruption around official circles. The perception is that
the administration harbors too many untouchables with powerful positions and
intimate relationships with the presidency. Of all the issues which the
President needs to stamp his authority on, none is more important than dealing
with run-away corruption. 2013 will be decisive in this respect, because 2014
will be a campaign year, and tills will be seriously raided for resources to
prosecute the 2015 elections, whether Jonathan is a candidate or not.
6.
National Assembly
2013 is likely to witness more frictions
between the presidency and the legislature, particularly the Representatives.
Disputes over budget performance and implementation, the P.I.B, constitutional
amendments and corruption will pitch the executive against the legislature in
more noisy and untidy disputes. As the year runs out, political ambitions will
tamper with these quarrels, and both sides may sheath swords or raise voices
over the accumulation of resources for campaigns, or in deference to considerable
muscles of the party and governors.
7.
The Media
The administration has been fighting a
losing war with the Nigerian media. Its perception of being assessed by a
biased and intrinsically-hostile media may make it less-disposed towards
improving its own image, or performance. A marked improvement in performance in
the first half of 2013, though unlikely, will alter the manner the media
portrays the administration. Failure to do so will leave the administration
even more poorly-assessed by the nation’s media.
8.
The elements
2012 was a bad year for millions of
citizens affected by the floods. It was only a matter of good fortune that
massive losses were not compounded by severe food shortages. The nation cannot
pay the same price for another disaster in 2013.
9.
The Super Eagles
If the Super Eagles win the Africa Cup of Nation in
South Africa in 2013, they will redress the alarming decline and waste which is
now a feature of the nation’s sporting fortunes. If they fail, as the nation’s
Olympic Team did to justify the huge cost of supporting their campaigns, more
and more Nigerians will write off our sporting legacies in 2013
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