By MKPE ABANG
It is the dying days of year 2015; and by midnight on the last day of this December, many Nigerians – very much in their ‘custom’ – would scream from whatever nook or cranny they may be: Happy New Year, in welcoming year 2016. And, unfortunately, again as has become ‘popular’ or ‘customary’, they would expect the year, the incoming ‘new’ year, that is, to rain blessings upon blessings on them. They would as usual, forget that the year – each year – presents opportunities on end; that it is they, that must turn these opportunities and potentialities into realities.
In that same stream of thought, Nigerians are already expecting, even demanding, that 2015 was such a ‘difficult’ year; that 2016 should come quick, with its bags of blessings and goodies. But it is President Muhammadu Buhari, who unfortunately must bear the entire burden for the promises he made to Nigerians through and with his party, the All Progressive Congress (APC).
While Buhari counts himself as one of the luckiest Africans to defeat an incumbent president, he and many around the world, must give even greater credit to President Goodluck Jonathan, the man who made history on the African soil, for the first time, to have not only conceded defeat, but called his opponent to congratulate him even before the electoral body announced the results – in fact, while the results were still being collated.
Not even Paul Kagame of Rwanda, on whom several United Nations agencies, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), lavish – and continue to lavish – praises on democratic tenets, has or can achieve this feat. Just as a reminder, Kagame has already secured his country’s higher law making body to amend the constitution for him to run a third term; that’s democracy made in Africa. President Goodluck Jonathan is actually someone from outer space, we must admit.
Not even President Olusegun Obasanjo, who, after taking a full tenure of three years and eight months as military head of state, and later taking full two tenures of eight years each, as civilian president (that already made him a third-term president), still wanted Third Term as civilian president, can lay claim to being a such an exemplary democrat like Jonathan. Obasanjo’s grouse with those who truncated his third term agenda is now the gunpowder on the vendetta war he is waging against those who succeeded him; unfortunately, President Buhari is falling for it. What with ceaseless visits by Obasanjo to Aso Rock, and well received by Buhari – in the name of taking advice or wise counsel!
How can President Obasanjo for instance, pretend to tell Nigerians he is a saint of democracy, when he even risked the life of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, after forcing him on Nigerians at the risk of the benign gentleman’s health, even dramatizing it by calling on Yar’Adua while abroad, to assure Nigerians he was in good and sound health; how can he be the saint of democracy today? We suffer too much from collective amnesia. Today he is seen or portrayed as the apostle of war against corruption, when he in fact had to be booted out so he doesn’t stain democracy with his third term agenda.
Corruption in one word is dishonesty; in another word, it is exploitation. There are many other single words that describe corruption. Going by this, can we really say that Obasanjo, as civilian president, did not exploit Nigerians or that he was not dishonest to Nigerians? Even in the case of doing everything to ensure President Yar’Adua succeeded him, was enough to show the dishonesty that transcends even the word corruption. Because he had a personal agenda!
If he were the president that organised the election of 2015, Buhari would never have seen the light as winner. What does this tell us? So, hopefully the ‘fight against corruption’ will not just be a case of chasing a few enemies in the immediate government alone; but the dragnet would be thrown wide enough to catch all the itchy fingers; including as far back as those who have benefited from corruption right from when Obasanjo and Gen. Murtala Mohammed seized power in a military coup, right up to when the new dispensation of political experiment began on October 1, 1979, the very same that was shot down by Gen. Muhammadu Buhari on December 31, 1983, which dealt the deadliest blow to Nigeria’s nascent democracy. That is the only way the tap root of corruption can be identified and uprooted. Once that tap root is uprooted, the feeder roots will peter out naturally.
But now back to the future, after that momentary reminder of where we were and how we got to where we are today.
President Buhari has been reminded in far more arenas than necessary that he must not be fighting a selective war on corruption. But the greater fear is that he runs the risk of acting like the hunter who, after setting traps, sat by the traps to await the animals to come and fall into the traps. Whereas, the smart hunter sets the traps, goes about doing other things and returns much later to check if the traps have caught any game.
With the many anti-corruption agencies, the security agencies, and so much more, what President Buhari needs more than anything else, is articulating an economic agenda for his government and running on while those and every other agency carries on with their assigned responsibilities, including prosecuting anyone found to have run afoul of the laws of the land.
And this is where the worry on technology comes in. Without a comprehensive economic agenda, without a detailed economic policy, chances are that there would be no policy or focus on technology. The information and communications technology industry or the telecom industry does not respect nations, persons, creed or customs. It does not know whether a country is a developed country, a developing one (which Nigeria claims to be but is not) or an underdeveloped country (which Nigeria actually is). Technology is no respecter of boundaries either. Technology is like daylight. Dawn comes whether or not you’ve had your fair share of a sound sleep; whether you are a thief trying to take advantage of the darkness, whether you are someone working hard at night to take advantage of the quietness of the time so you can have rest during the day. Dawn breaks when it must break. So it is with technology.
If you have a well-articulated policy on technology, so be it; if you don’t have woe betide you. So, are we going to have our hands on just one plough – ‘fighting corruption’ blindly, without making haste to articulate a technology policy for this country even as 2016 is knocking at the door?
Perhaps President Buhari still thinks that he has four years for his government. Unfortunately he doesn’t. Having done seven months already, he has just three years and five months technically. But in reality, because the last year of his tenure will be for elections, he actually has just two years and five months counting from January 2016. This realisation should spur him to greater speed, especially in fashioning out an economic policy for his government, and along with it, a policy on ICT and telecommunications. It will not be a bad idea if indeed the economic policy is predicated on the ICT agenda.
Should there be no policy on ICT or telecommunications, we may just be acting in a reactionary manner without being proactive or following an agenda that we have set.
With this, President Buhari, his government and Nigerians run the risk of technology bloopers, where we would bump on one obstacle after another; whether it be the lack of enough steam to catch up on 4G or 5G networks; whether it be the absence of spectrums to run and expand the networks into underserved areas; whether it be the absence of broadband for deeper internet penetration across and into all nooks and crannies of the country; whether it be the falling standards in mobile voice distribution; whether it be in ordinary computer availability in schools or indeed, the growth of the indigenous software industry in the country.
We cannot run blindly on technology and expect to be a great technology country. We point too readily to India, to China, to Taiwan, yes, to Mauritius, even to Malaysia; on how they’ve advanced technologically. But we forget that these had plans, they drew roadmaps, they spread out technology policies. But more than anything, they implemented these plans – even when governments changed hands. After all, you don’t break down the government house simply because there is a new sheriff in the house; at the very most, you build a new one, like General Ibrahim Babangida did when he moved the seat of government from Lagos to Abuja.
What President Buhari owes his admirers, Nigerians and the rest of the international community, and posterity, including the young ones, whom he has yet to appeal to in his programmes, is to articulate an ICT policy, a policy on technology and telecommunications; and, to implement it; and, the time to spell that out is now; not after Happy New Year is sounded for 2016. It is high time already.