By Costly Oma.
In my opinion, the impact of democracy has been lesser than anticipated in Nigeria. Since the inception of democracy in 1999, Nigeria has had office holders that were not held accountable to the promises of their manifestos. I don’t want to go back to count the items in the manifesto of our past presidents and governors in our country Nigeria and our states respectively.
We’ve had people who have promised XYZ when coming to take positions of offices and when they get there with or without our help, they kick start their own private agender that we never knew or that we were never told.
Listed below are the campaign promises of the current President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria President Muhamadu Buhari as documented by the International Press Centre (IPC), Lagos Nigeria. This list was first published on ipcng.org on 20th June 2019.
The Campaign Promises.
1. To engage one million N-power graduates and skill up 10 million Nigerians in partnership with the private sector.
2. To expand the school feeding programme from 9.3m to 15 million children, creating 300,000 extra jobs for food vendors and farmers.
3. To complete the Ibadan/Kano phase of the Lagos/Kano rail link.
4. To complete the Port Harcourt/Maiduguri line.
5. To complete the Itakpa/Warri link to Abuja, through Lokoja.
6. To complete the Second Niger Bridge and the East-West Road connecting Warri, Delta State, to Oron, Akwa Ibom State, through Kaiama and Port Harcourt in Bayelsa and Rivers State.
7. To establish a people's Moni bank.
8. To institutionalize the giving of soft loans of up to 1million naira to small traders, artisans and commercial drivers.
9. To increase the beneficiaries of trader Moni, Market Moni and farmer Moni from 2.3 million to 10 million.
10. To create more room for inclusion in government by achieving 35% of female appointments.
11. To give more access to youths as aides of cabinet members and through opportunities for appointments, in boards and agencies.
12. To introduce the special mentoring programme in governance with young graduates working with ministers and other appointees.
13. To reinterpret the education curriculum through coding, robotics, animations and design thinking.
14. Retraining of all teachers in public primary and secondary schools to deliver digital literacy.
15. Remodeling and equipping 10,000 schools per year.
16. To complete the 365 road projects under construction in all parts of the federation.
17. Provision of infrastructure and rebuilding the economy.
18. To sustain the anti-insurgency war and curb insecurity.
19. To fight corruption and revamp the economy.
20. To develop 6 industrial Parks in each of the geopolitical zones.
21. To establish 109 Special Production and Processing Centres (SPPCs) across each senatorial district of Nigeria.
22. To develop the Special Economic zone to quickly concretize our made in Nigeria for export (MINE) plan.
23. To expand the social investment program to eradicate poverty.
24. To ensure completion of Manbilla Dam and Bridge.
25. To ensure the construction of the Makurdi Taraba Borno rail project.
26. To complete the bridges across the stretch of River Benue in the Ibi local government area.
27. To continue to pursue agricultural policy by ensuring that fertilisers are made available in all the local government areas across the country, for easy access by farmers.
28. To resuscitate the Ajaokuta Steel Company.
29. To ensure the completion of the ongoing Zungeru Hydro Power project.
30. To include persons of integrity in the cabinet.
Just taking a look at those promises, what do you think? Your guess is as good as mine. How many of the items have been accomplished or even started? Our governors likewise, because we lack a system that can hold these people accountable for their promises. Like a man who wants to marry a woman and he promised her the world, then on entering the marriage, this woman is not even seeing a village, does she not have the right to divorce this man? If you ask me, she has every right to except she so chooses to stay.
We have a voice and we must speak and must speak and keep speaking. If the world likes it, it should act like it’s not hearing, but until the world is full of our statements and our voices, we are not going to stop as we are not prepared to stop.
Coming home to Yenagoa, just take a look at our environment, the only town we call Yengoa city. We only have roads that can be best described as corridors in the city, both the ones that were constructed before now and the ones still under construction, how sad.
You and I as learned people know that we have just three basic human amenities which are All-Weather Roads to villages, Safe Drinking Water and Electricity, before the others like sanitation, housing, fuel, connectivity, healthcare centre, school, playground and recreational facilities.
The number one amenity of getting a place developed in my opinion is Road. Good all-weather roads within the city and connecting the city to the villages and farms. infrastructurally constructing good, reliable, standard and durable roads according to the plan and state of the area.
The other two which are Water and Electricity can be shuffled to suit the immediate need of the people. We all know that Water pipes and Electric poles run by roadsides. There is a former governor of this state Bayelsa that run water pipes in this state without knowing that our roads were not standard enough and when the next governor came to power and started expanding the roads, those expensive water pipes were dogged out and wasted. What a wasted project among the learned class.
Water pipes and electric distribution poles are always found and arranged by road corners, owing to this fact, when once a particular road is subjected to frequent repairs and expansion, the water pipes will be dogged out and removed if not destroyed. The same goes for the electric distribution pole.
My brothers and sisters, if all the education and exposure our past and present leaders claim to have acquired, still let them act and behave this way then its time for us to ask ourselves questions: must we continue like this? what is the aim, purpose, vision and dream they have about the state before coming to govern, to lead and to serve the people they represent? My people, let’s face the truth and keep our gaze on what we know that is paramount, on what we know that is the light, on what we know as the truth.
The truth is that these people are taking us for a ride, a very expensive ride and we are the ones letting them. There must be a different set of rules laid down for contestants, aspirants and everyone to follow to get people into positions of leadership, both for the people to vote and the ones coming into office. It is said that we can't keep thinking the same way and acting the same way we use to when we want to get out of a bad situation we created. Therefore we can't keep doing the same things to get out of a problem by doing the same things we did to create those problems. We must act fast to think differently and act differently for us to get the kind of results we desire. And the time to act is now.
What I think We Must Do
Here is what we must do. We must ensure that:
Our procedures to get someone to govern us or represent us must be reviewed, changed and implemented.
- We must have a local government agenda, a state agenda and the country's agenda.
- They must present the list of their campaign promises
- And the list must conform to item number 1.
- They must prove to us that they know us well to represent us.
- They must prove to us that they know how much we have and earn before they start telling us what they have in mind to do for us. How can you say you'll buy a jet when you don't know how much you earn?
- And they must sign an agreement that they will do 70% of the total things they said of doing at least at the end of their second year in office and, to fail to prove to us at the end of the second year that 70% of their promises are undoubtedly been achieved, they will automatically step themselves down from whatever office or position they hold and will be equally probed for deceiving the public.
- We will go to court and have legal backing for the agreement between the people and the aspirants.
With these, our representatives will have a second taught when they are declaring their intentions.
It's time for us to stand up and say enough is enough. Let us let these people know that it’s time for their ride to take a break. We are the ones who put them there and they have no right to treat us in whatever way they want or feel best. We are a people, we are united, we are strong, we dictate the pace, we put them in office, they owe us and they must deliver or they are not fit to represent us. This is what we stand for and this is what we must get.
I suppose aspirants have personal agenda. Political parties have their party agenda. We the people need a country agenda, state agenda and local government agenda. The local government agenda, state agenda and the country's agenda should be more paramount. The aspirant agenda and the political party agenda should and must conform to the local government, state and the country's agenda.
Good point.
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