The common saying that wars are won in the map room cuts no ice with the PDP
One major difference Nigerians would soon come to see between the All Progressives Congress and the ossifying Peoples Democratic Party is the amount of intellectual rigour the APC will put into the formulation of its policies, programmes and governance, as against the sheer vacuity we have come to know with the PDP in the past 14 years; a situation so reminiscent of the NPN when Awo observed then that while he was busy working at solutions to the country’s problems those in that party were carousing around women of easy virtue. So languid has PDP become that, under Chairman Tukur, its National Executive Committee hardly meets , as and when due, but yet, as if in a payback for a Second Republic favour done him, he went all the way to exhume the octogenarian Umaru Dikko to head the party’s disciplinary committee. It doesn’t get more surreal. Nor can you ever hear of a think tank in connection with the PDP. Rather, what it has in quantum is a rash of reconciliation committees: first, the Tukur Reconciliation Committee; then the Anenih and, now the Seriake Dickson Committee which was launched a while ago with the usual PDP bravura, mirroring uncannily, the presidential flag off of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway project on which nothing else, other than a crippling traffic snafu that takes you four hours to reach Lagos from the Redeemed church camp, has happened since. Nor will the Dickson Committee be the last as jockeying for the presidential and gubernatorial tickets in the party is about to commence in full. We should therefore expect to still see the mother of all Reconciliation Committees. The common saying that wars are won in the map room cuts no ice with the PDP. Otherwise, why would they mess up a whole former President, yank off members of his group even from elective positions only to come back, running helter skelter, seeking rapprochement and asking him to reconcile their warring governors?
On the contrary, APC leaders, in these few weeks, but much longer in states where they are in charge of governments, have showcased their awareness that governance is no tea party nor is it about ‘family dinners’. The grim faces of the party’s leading lights -Akande, Buhari, Masari and others, as appeared on the front pages of many newspapers on Thursday, 22 August, 2013, at the launch of its manifesto, says it all. The entire week before that, party leaders and the party’s intellectual wing have been holed up in Abuja, working at the details of how to take Nigeria out of what the party calls Nigeria’s ‘ paralysis of 14 years’. Through some hard-headed interrogation, the party was able to flesh up its 8-point Agenda of: (1) War against corruption (2) Food security (3) Accelerated power supply (4) Integrated transport network (5) Free education (6) Devolution of power (7) Accelerated economic growth and, (8) Affordable health care,into what has been publicly announced to Nigerians as its Manifesto.
Nigerians are well aware of the score card of the PDP on each of the issues contained in that Agenda. Therefore, none needs be reminded about how the EFCC has all along been shackled in the performance of its duties under the supervision of an Attorney-General who must give prior approval to any case it intends to bring against those it has investigated and who, in most cases, have links to the ruling party. We have also seen how anti-corruption agencies, especially the EFCC, have again regressed into tools against the political opposition as is currently the case with the EFCC in Rivers State where like attack dogs, it is going ferociously after state officials in the wake of Wike’s promise to make life unbearable for the state governor. Corruption, under the PDP, has manifested in every aspect of our national life: in pension scams which ensure that some of our senior citizens die on queues waiting for their pension payments, in oil and gas, the mainstay of the nation’s economy where massive scams and oil thefts are the order of the day in spite of huge oil security contracts to sons of the soil; in the federation account being deliberately, massively shortchanged, in a single minister allegedly running up multi billion naira air travel bill, with no higher official of state able to rein her in; in diminishing power generation and distribution in spite of lies of hoping to become one of the world’s topmost 20 economies in year 2020; in increasing poverty and an unemployment rate that has certainty become a time bomb since majority of the victims, being university graduates, actually need no further lessons in how to make Molotov cocktails to make life more horrible for all of us.
Indeed, the PDP is too consumed with its own internal headache to think of solutions to these multifarious problems facing the country. Granted that it belatedly declared emergency in some states where Boko Haram had already established over lordship in certain areas and flew its flag, it was no doubt the equivalent of bolting the door too late. Such is the state of our insecurity today that poor Oyo State traders have twice been slaughtered in the north. You will not but wonder what constitutes the PDP’s manifesto which, of course, must have been written on the most expensive paper and published in glossy fashion since ‘it is the largest party in Africa’. You would almost think size is the issue, the way they bandy that about.
Operating from the background that Nigeria is already “trapped in a vicious cycle of political crises, social upheavals and economic under-development, and has, in fact, become, not only one of the most unstable countries in the world, but regrettably, one of the poorest despite its huge human and material resource endowments, the APC, after some serious brainstorming, has come up with a party manifesto. In the words of the Interim National Chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, the following are the issues the APC would eagerly devote its all to as a way of getting Nigeria out of its ‘near permanent trauma’:
It shall vigorously pursue the expansion of electricity generation and distribution of up to 40,000 megawatts in 4-8 years as power is the centre-point of the development process which, if inefficient, impacts negatively on any economy. Concerning corruption, the party says it will fight it by granting independence to the anti corruption agencies and repeal all laws inhibiting their performance. It promises to embark on public sensitisation campaigns against corruption and to encourage whistle blowers in the anti-graft vanguard. Special anti-corruption courts will be established and remove immunity from prosecution for elected officers in criminal cases just as it will prevent abuse of executive, legislative and public offices through greater accountability, transparency and strict enforcement of anti-corruption laws.
On the much needed restructuring of the country, an APC Federal Government will initiate action to amend the constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal Spirit. Regarding national security and defence, the party says it will decentralise the police and expand its local content to include community policing.
It promises to urgently address capacity building of law enforcement agents in terms of quantity and quality and to establish a well-trained, adequately funded and fully equipped, serious crime squad, to combat terrorism, kidnapping, armed robbery, militancy, ethno-religious and communal clashes nationwide. It will also push for more support in the security and economic stability of the sub-region (ECOWAS) and AU as a whole and maintain a strong, close and frank relationship with the international community. It will also secure our borders, which are currently too porous for effective control. For this purpose, it will establish a National Coast Guard to protect Nigeria’s coastal waters.”
On the economy, it promises to ensure that the Nigerian economy is one of the fastest growing emerging economies in the world. It will embark on vocational training, entrepreneurial, and skills acquisition schemes for graduates along with the creation of small Business Loan Guarantee Scheme to create at least 1million new jobs every year, for the foreseeable future.
It will create additional middle-class of at least 1 million new home owners in its first year in government and one million annually thereafter, by enacting a national mortgage system that will lend at single digit interest rates for purchase of owner occupier houses.”
The above, and much more, is what the APC has in store for Nigerians and I urge all Nigerians, including those currently trapped in the clueless party, to come over into the APC and take possession. It is ours and we must rise up and make it a mass movement because it means well for all.
