A former All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) National Secretary, Chief George Moghalu, highlights how some government officials are missing the point in carrying out their assignments. He spoke to KUNLE ODEREMI

How would you describe the state of the nation?
There is a palpable feeling of listlessness in our country today. There is an environment of fear and uncertainty. Businesses cannot operate under these circumstances, which means jobs cannot be created. The economy is stagnating and people are hurting where they feel it the most, their pockets. The civil society has disconnected from engagement with the government and this too creates its own problems. Although there are legitimate grievances against the government, one gets the feeling that these grievances are being hijacked by certain interests for parochial gains.

This situation exists because the government has failed to articulate and explain to the population, a vision for the country. There are attempts now to do that, but it’s like closing the barn door after the horses have run away. Essentially, the government has lost control of the narrative and may find it difficult to recover it again.

How did the country get to this worrisome state?
It took us years to get here. What we see today is not the creation of this administration. I think in this regard, the current administration has been unfortunate in that it has inherited a time bomb that is quickly approaching dead time. We got here because for years, successive administrations failed to address the fundamental problems that were facing our society, concentrating instead on the artificial. We ignored education reform for many years and created an atmosphere where impressionable young men could be recruited in large numbers to kill their fellow citizens and fight their government in a mission that defies explanation. What is Boko Haram? Do you imagine for one moment that young men, well-educated and facing bright futures in an economy that is growing, or at the very least stable, will be as susceptible to the lures of this organisation?

We ignored the job of building proactive security machinery because our leaders chose to use the agencies of state to pursue political, personal and electoral objectives. Consequently, faced with a new security threat, those agencies have been caught on the wrong foot time and time again. Public infrastructure such as roads and railways don’t break down overnight, but because we have no maintenance culture, government has allowed these infrastructure to decay without building new ones. The government itself has become too large, spending 70 per cent and more of the federal budget on recurrent expenditure and less than 25 per cent on capital projects. This was, and remains, a recipe for disaster.

On the issue of subsidy, if successive governments had made any serious efforts to identify the areas of corruption and prosecute offenders in the subsidy regime, it is unlikely that this government would now have felt the need to take the kind of drastic action it has taken, resulting in the massive national paralysis we had to live through. We could have built three to four additional refineries in the last 10 years, especially at the time when we were receiving extra income from the increase in the international price of crude oil. We failed to do this, and public officials instead became richer than anyone ever could have imagined by awarding fraudulent Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) contracts that never worked.

My point is, we didn’t get here by accident. It took time. It required massive levels of inactivity by successive governments. This administration isn’t helping itself much by bringing out spokespeople who sometimes sound like they’re trying to blame the Nigerian people for the failures of successive governments.

Are you saying the present situation could have been avoided?
Of course, it was avoidable. At many points in our recent history, we could have taken steps to reroute the course of our country, but there was no political will to do so and those in government expected the music to play on forever. The music is about to stop and yet some of them are still dancing.

This administration could have picked economic and infrastructural reform and concentrated on it as the priority of this administration. If I were in a position to advise the president in his early days, I would have told him that his number one job was to rebuild public confidence in government because success in other areas is dependent on this. And he could have done this by reducing the size of the Federal Government by at least 40 per cent from what it had been in previous times. An across-the-board cut of that magnitude would have sent a clear message to the country that this president is different and has a different plan for the country.

I would have advised the president to rejig this ‘Transformation Agenda’ because it had no specific agenda that Nigerians could readily relate to; it had no core. Instead, I would have proposed a national economic development plan that would have specified which projects, which areas, which sectors the government intends to invest in. The plan would have included specific goals, clear-cut implications with specific time frames and it would have been presented to the National Assembly to pass into law as part of the budget. That process alone would have ensured that the political class is carried along. The president himself should have granted interviews and gone to town hall meetings across the country to sell the plan. The massive crowds you see protesting today could have been standing behind the president as he pushes his plan through the legislative process. You will remember that at the time of his election, the president had enormous amount of goodwill that could have been sustained and translated into political capital.

What is the solution?
First, a serious attempt must be made to rebuild public confidence in government. The Nigerian people must start to feel that their government cares about them. That is when they will be willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt. The government should send an addendum to the National Assembly on the 2012 Budget Bill, cutting drastically the administrative and recurrent expenditure and diverting such towards specific development projects in every region in the country. The size of government across all arms should be reduced.

Public transportation infrastructure, namely roads and railways, should be the number one priority of the government now. Every existing federal road should be upgraded within the shortest possible time frame to ensure free movement of goods and people across the country. A workable plan to ensure that major thoroughfares linking the major trade routes in the country increase within the next two years should be on the table as soon as possible.

Government should abandon the idea that it would ever be able to provide enough energy to power all the businesses and homes in a country as large as this one. The sector should be opened up to private investment. Government’s only role is to provide the regulatory framework to ensure that the public isn’t ripped off by private businesses providing what would otherwise be a government responsibility.

What do all these challenges portend for the country?
We are at a juncture in our history where every action, every utterance can have ramifications beyond what is intended. We have a choice of rebuilding our country rapidly or we can allow it to disintegrate. Anybody who imagines or suggests that the upheavals we are seeing today are merely temporary doesn’t understand history and should not be listened to. The old ways can no longer work. What may have been acceptable conduct in the past will no longer be tolerated; government officials who earn and spend more than successful businessmen must become a relic of the past. Political leaders and office holders must now realise that in the future, they would be dealing with a restive population more eager than ever before to defend their rights and their positions, and they must adapt to this new reality.
The government must begin to speak the language of rapprochement, as opposed to the language of confrontation. Policemen opening fire on unarmed protesters at the slightest provocation is no longer an acceptable situation and such matters must be looked into.

What is the implication of the security challenges? What is the way forward?
The magnitude of our security challenges should not be underestimated. A stick-and-carrot approach to Boko Haram and the extremist groups should be employed. An avenue should be created that allows those who are willing and ready to leave the life an opportunity to do so while ensuring that those who chose to act like enemy combatants are treated as such.

Our security agencies must be proactive. We must invest in intelligence gathering. In the aftermath of the September 11 attack on the United States, Department of Homeland Security was created to streamline all the efforts of the domestic anti-terrorism agencies. I am not suggesting that such a massive new bureaucracy should be created, however, we must find a way within the existing security framework to achieve the same purpose.

This government must also realise the importance of symbolism in political communication. Sometimes, how the government responds to an attack on its people in the first few hours and days of the attack becomes a bigger story than the attack itself. A smart response boosts the government and reassures the people, a bad one leaves the populace feeling bitter. The government’s immediate response to every major incident in the last one year leaves much to be desired. The president’s handlers should go and study the manner in which former President Bill Clinton responded in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing as a master class in presidential crisis management.