Mr. President Please Wake Up and Smell the coffee! Femi Ojo

Picture courtesy of peoplesdailyng.com

“Femi you see what I have been saying about your blog, you have a message from DSA on your phone” that was Omotoyosi, my wife informing me early in the morning of last Sunday about Dapo Simon Ajeniya’s sms to me. Here is the message from Dapo Simon Ajeniya, a friend that I often call boss “Chief have you run out of articles or has PHCN and fuel finally taken hold on you?” Of course each time I get such sms, I feel inspired and it gives me more energy to do more. By the way, Dapo Simon Ajeniya is the CEO of Green36 Concerts and a young man with sophisticated opinions on many socio-economic issues.  But what came to my mind immediately I read DSA’s sms was, can anyone actually run out of articles on this country where all manner of things happen each second? As a trained social scientist, socio-political happenings are the ingredients of our analysis and as such these daily events in our polity give us something to write about always.

Yes, it’s been a while that I  published my thoughts on socio-political issues on my blog but it was not intentional, it was due to the rough terrain that I have presently found myself and believe me, it’s been really challenging lately but forward, we must look no matter what! So, my apologies to DSA and all of you for the period that I did not publish any article. I have lots in stock coming on my blog, kindly stay tuned!

Now there is something really worrisome in our polity today. Something that almost every lip in Nigeria talks about and something that affects every one of us. To say that the economy of this country is in a limbo and the present political actors have failed to show us clear economy philosophy and direction of this change regime is to indeed say the obvious. There is presently increasing murmurings and grumblings against Mr. President. The murmurings and grumblings are based on the high expectations from his administration of change. The redemption of poetic and hyped campaign promises by the current government are still in the state of obscurity and in less than 10 months majority of Nigerians expect Buhari’s magic to gradually start manifesting but alas! hopes are turning to despair and as such Mr. President is faced with the burden of expectations from all of us.

Like we usually blame our colonial master for the cause of our underdevelopment and subsequently in our post independent era, apportion blames on the military incursion into our politics and the military in return would often say that  our politicians were responsible for their incursion… today the blame game for our woes has found no end. The present administration has not stopped blaming the immediate administration for the present economic limbo but what the current regime fails to understand is that Jonathan lost the last election based on this same issue that has been over flogged by APC and her modern day fans. What Nigerians want is quick fix of the current economic limbo as hyped by the ruling government in the electioneering campaign period and show us clear economic thrust of this administration plus Buhari’s sense of urgency in tackling our challenges.

I am disturbed that the ruling party and her many proximate political actors often tell us what we already know and voted them to fix. Nigerians already know that there was so much corruption in the immediate administration. We know that Jonathan and his party wasted a golden opportunity to turn Nigerian around for good. Our people now understand that the 16 years of PDP was a disaster of sort in some aspects of our national life. We know that PDP is a bad looser that has no right to call the present administration a failure in less than 10 months in power. But what Nigerians want from our President are not over flogged excuses but clear policy direction and speed in tackling our current challenges.

I agree the country was met in a mess and was already neck deep in economic crisis that requires an emergency reaction. Therefore it was for that reason Nigerians utterly rejected Jonathan and gave their mandates to President Buhari. Our national life called for emergency electoral reaction that was punitive to Jonathan and gave acceptance to Buhari to urgently change things…so Nigerians decided it would be Buhari, a man whose candidature was over-hyped as the man with the magic wand!

Well some often argue that Mr. Buhari is not a magician and our President is only taking his time to fully understand issues and act strategically. This argument is good and make sense in a way but the dearth of this logic is that while doing that 10 months is enough time for the nation to see Mr. President’s clear economic blue print for development. I do not think Nigerians yet understand the policies of this administration. We have seen the player who wants to kick the penalty but the player is yet to let us understand the goalpost. The conceptual pictures of where Nigeria will be in the short term, mid-term and long term have not be seen. What we hear daily are poetic verbalizations that are disjointed from the President’s team. I say God forbid  that by the time we understand the change, these words of  John Maynard Keynes “In the long run we are all dead” will not be approximated to reality.

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