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Latest events have proved that neither Gumi’s intervention nor military deployment can be a solution to our escalating security and economic crisis. No solution, in my view, can work until the undeniable drift in equality is addressed. Government, as a matter of urgency should think and act on the followings:
Reverse the trend towards inequality by restoring the middle class as the surest agent for redistribution of national wealth. The argument that Nigeria’s economy breeds poverty is incontrovertible and it is clearly beyond all arguments about poor and miserable wages;
Pay our legislators who draw millions monthly-by merely sitting down like the rest of us-on the basis of pay-as-you-sit. Let’s gauge their patriotic zeal for once. It could also mean a movement towards equality of prospects. Politics should no longer be a business venture;
Provide jobs for the teeming unemployed youth. The recent approval of elongated service years for regular teachers was unnecessary and shouldn’t have been regarded as a basis for compensating teachers while hitherto common benefits have either been reduced or completely abrogated;
Equip and provide the military with all that is required to succeed in its sustained campaign against insurgency/terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and other avoidable crimes;
Restructuring of our federal structure is now a must and urgent. What is the problem with the legislative arm of government? May I know their useful function – still blaming the military for a warped and jaundiced constitution after 20 years of uninterrupted democracy;
The nation must jettison restrictive justice in favour of distributive justice. Things must be seen to be equitably done to forestall rising agitations for self-determination. The quota system and principles of federal character must be adhered to;
Engage in massive infrastructural projects that would encourage me to live in, for example, Malete, Afon, Okuta, or Esie rather than Ilorin where majority now unwilling to obey law live;
With the confirmed kidnapping of another 300 girls in one of Zamfara Girls Secondary School, the country must fastrack a process of negotiation with bandits and insurgents. Why? They are products of failure of responsible and responsive governance of our not too distant past;
The point here is that if bold and swift steps are not taken now, this administration would have left no legacies at the expiration of its 8-year rule. It could also mean that the managers of our collective destinies have given up about our corporatism.
Nigeria, in the circumstances, does not only require a new life but a new way of life. It is time for professionalisation of leadership. Wishing the President, other stakeholders in our national project and the entire nation at large best of luck as we seek the nearest exit out of self-inflicted logjam..
Ishowo-Isiaka Adebayo can be reached via:
ishowo2013@gmail.com
