Thirdly, Nigeria in 2023 will be needing a democrat and a thoroughbred one, this must be one of the strong standpoints of whosoever will appeal to the nation’s votes. This is because the nation’s democracy for it to grow and flourish will require that we build strong institutions and not strong men. Nigeria will need a leader that will allow for a true separation of powers, devolve power to the federation units and strive to uphold the rule of law. Of a truth, Nigeria needs to ramp its democratic credentials as it is only a democracy in name only, it was a missed opportunity for President Muhammadu Buhari as it was for President Goodluck Jonathan and President Olusegun Obasanjo, and though these persons may have a plethora of excuses for why they supported the killings of citizens in Odu and Zaki Biam, sponsored phony impeachments or conducted the worst kind of elections that would readily make the election riggers in the First and Second Republics grin with envy, there is no room for such excuses, not with the coup loving spree recently exhibited in West Africa and those who think a coup is no longer possible in Nigerian should have a rethink as all is the military need is a sort of excuse! The military wrecked severe damage on the Nigerian psyche and somewhat stunted our democratic culture haven been in power for a whooping 29 out of its first 40 years of independence.
Fighting terrorism and tackling insecurity ought to be the drive of any presidential aspirant for 2023, terrorism, banditry and insecurity have continued to spread its collective terrors all over the country while the nation’s security infrastructure has largely been reactive in its response. While the Buhari administration has done its bit and surely it deserves our commendation, the incoming president must rise to meet the challenges of securing the nation, which all put together will demand a brand new understanding of what national security translates to- the safety of the ordinary Nigerian and those who live within her borders.
Read Also: Wanted! A Nigerian president
The next president of Nigeria must be a university graduate as this will also enhance his leadership credentials. He must be a lover of education and must come with a mind to fixing the Nigerian educational system which is in coma. Such a leader must be abreast with the present ongoing in the educational sector as well as the present trends governing education in this age. He should come prepared to deal once and for all the issue of continuous industrial action in the Nigerian tertiary education system.
it is no longer news that the Nigerian University education system owing to a certain number of factors has surrendered its lead in Africa to smaller countries like South Africa, Ghana, Benin, Togo and Senegal with our universities holding distant rankings among the top universities in the world. The next Nigerian President must be willing to fix this
The is also the issue of poor remuneration and poor infrastructure. This in turn affects the quality of work and research capacity of such lecturers. The lecturers in turn have demanded for better working conditions and have resorted to the option of strikes to press home such demands. These strikes disrupt the academic sessions and ensure that a student who is naturally supposed to spend a maximum of four years may enjoy a ‘tenure elongation of two or three years. ’ Government’s poor funding of education largely means that most of our government universities (Federal and State owned) engage more and more students without receiving the funds to properly do so, small wonder our computer science students go through their four year study programme possibly without seeing a computer and while the world now feats on new software packages to create and deliver super applications, the Nigerian student who has the misfortune of studying computer science is fixated on outdated languages like Cobol, Fortran and Q basic. In such a situation the inevitable isn’t farfetched as the quality of the Nigerian graduate is largely eroded.
The next president must should see university education as a right and not a privilege, education under the 1999 constitution is one of the justiciable rights guaranteed under it. It cannot shirk its responsibility and yet expect socio-economic and development miracles to occur.
The next president of Nigeria must also look to the country’s foreign affairs which is indeed in a very poor shape. Of some truth, the Muhammadu Buhari administration has done its bit but then the challenges faced by Nigerians all over the world remains a blight on whatever efforts this administration has surely made. Nigeria’s standing globally and even within Africa, which it ought to make its sphere of influence is somewhat deteriorating. Whoever must lead Nigeria must be committed to what I call a Pax Nigeria with the lofty vision of not only restoring the nation’s lost glory but also the dignity of the black man.