Sunday, May 31, 2015

RE: FW: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A New Nigeria?

My understanding is that Buhari is not part of the cabal you call the "lecherous elite". If my understanding is correct, it should not be too difficult for him to keep them in his outer-space. He himself has been in their outer space for many years. He knows Nigeria as well as any Nigerian of his age and circumstance should. He knows what challenges there are. He must know that the members of the said "lecherous elite" are arguably the direst of the challenges Nigeria has to overcome.

My presumption is that he ran for the office of president mostly as an outsider four times, because he believes that he has an ample choice of possibly optimal solutions to them and the will to implement them if he is given the opportunity. Nigerians who voted for him think so too and have given him the opportunity to move the country forward not backward or sideways.

Nigerians expect Buhari to keep his campaign promises to them by doing his duty- including keeping some persons out of the corridors of power as well as he can.

 

oa  

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2015 5:37 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: FW: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A New Nigeria?

 

"I believe that Nigerians will be ever grateful to Buhari if he sets Nigeria on a new, clear and solid, path to overdue, long-term respectable greatness. He will need to be genuinely thoughtful, sincerely purposeful, efficiently productive, and also do especially important things well and on time. Only he can stop himself from doing what is clearly possible to do by him, and has been done by less prepared leaders at different times in different countries. Nigerians are willing him to succeed." OA

Thank you  for elaborating beyond my on-the-spur apprehension. Two issues I want to respond to. You appropriately captured the issue of the elite insertion into the political process that stalls development. The wahala however is whether your 'distance' and 'surgery' metaphors are applicable. To what extent can Buhari actually distance himself from these lecherous elites? A leech has to be forcibly pulled off its grim but delicious meal of blood. Is Buhari really prepared to rock the boat? 

But rock the boat he must if he is going to meet half the expectations of Nigerians who have been denied for too long. The communion/community of expectations I referred to earlier is seriously and highly strung right now. It won't wait for the first hundred days to end before asking for the dividends of good governance. Everywhere you go in Nigeria now, people say stuffs like "Change has come..."; "Once Buhari gets in, all these would change;" "These people will be dealt with, Sai Buhari!" And they mean it!

Take a look at the image I attached. It's just one of the many images making their ways across social media right now. And they make for quite interesting political analysis of our current situation as well as a nice barometric gauge of what people are thinking. 

Will we ever get past 1% or manage to achieve 25%? Is it realistic to hope for 80%? Is the 'restarting' idea a wise one given the history of elite interjection in the process of governance for egoistic and egotistic purposes? How long is 'several months'? And can we wait, counting the numbers of cumulative years since independence that Nigerians have been asked to wait and sacrifice? Buhari has suggested he isn't a magician. Will the people believe the difference between political statements and political reality?

It seems everything has been calibrated to depend on Buhari (as your quote suggests). That worries me deeply.

 

Adeshina Afolayan

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android


From:"Anunoby, Ogugua" <AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu>
Date:Sat, 30 May, 2015 at 1:34 am
Subject:FW: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A New Nigeria?

 

aa

 

Nigeria has elected and sworn a new president into office. Your sense of apprehension is justified for n the country for god historical reasons. Nigeria has travelled this road so many times before that the drama that unfolded Friday May 29, in Abuja has assumed the status of a near meaningless transition ritual. Past expectations and promises were not realized. The hope is that this one will be different.

Many of the personalities seated in the front rows on the day are the usual fixtures at such events. They are mostly economic adventurers and political traders perennially scheming to and ready to prey on the president and senior government officials. They manage to frustrate, derail, or dis-effectuate whatever good and workable plans government may have to reduce the acts, and lesson the burden of misgovernance on the long suffering majority of Nigerians.

Buhari is well advised to not listen to any of them. They are the same people who have ceaselessly looted Nigeria's treasuries, and crippled Nigerians. Buhari, given his antecedents knows Nigeria at least as well as any of the said rampaging marauders, masquerading as patriots and advisers. They have mostly had their day. They always left Nigeria worse than they found her. They were the primary drivers and instruments of Nigeria's impoverishment and underdevelopment. They are mostly to blame for Nigeria's seemingly determined chase of national uncompetitiveness and underdevelopment. They have disingenuously, used public policy development and actions on every possible occasion, to create all manners of opportunities to enrich themselves and their cronies at the expense of Nigeria and Nigerians.   

These are the same people who were at different times, members of Jonathan's first or other stream of advisers and political operators. While some of these people may be Buhari's longtime friends and military superiors, Buhari, this late in his life, should know that loyalty to his country should outplay his loyalty to friends and former bosses if he is truly concerned about his country and his legacy. These people have been bad for Nigeria's past and present. Why should anyone believe that they could be good for Nigeria's future? Buhari should know that there is not much that is good for Nigeria that he could learn from them. Buhari should respectfully distance himself from all of them.  He should respectfully make a clean break from these charlatans who have become the recurring decimals in Nigeria's underdevelopment math. He should surgically remove them from both his inner and outer circles if he is to have a better than average chance to deliver on his campaign promises to Nigerians, and not make forlorn yet again, their expectations of and their hope in their president.

Buhari should seek and find a new core of technocrats and leaders for Nigeria's next century. He knows that Nigeria has experimented for many years now with economic teams largely drawn from international financial institutions. Buhari should seek and find home grown and other talent without international financial institutions' affiliation. The institutions' economics is development economics for some countries and under-development economics for other countries including Nigeria. He should think local for the most part. He has an enviable pool of talent to tap into. He must know by now that development is more likely to be real and enduring if it is home-grown and mostly organic. Imported development is usually seldom better than skin deep. He should model his government after Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad for example.

If Nigerians expect one result from Buhari's presidency, I feel confident to guess that it is that he does not do business as usual. He should be faithful to the constitution and expect all members of the other arms of government to do the same. He should respect the separation of powers enshrined in that constitution and encourage all branches of government to do the same, and call them out for not doing the same.

Leadership was not served on Buhari on a silver platter as it was on Jonathan.  He wanted it. He fought hard for it. He won it. He must not be an unsure footed leader. He must be a determined and willing leader. He must have the fortitude to take informed risks. Will he be an able leader? That is the question. The call of circumstance is that he be a transformational leader. He has taken the bait- he ran for the office of president and won. Will he answer the call? That is another question.

I believe that Nigerians will be ever grateful to Buhari if he sets Nigeria on a new, clear and solid, path to overdue, long-term respectable greatness. He will need to be genuinely thoughtful, sincerely purposeful, efficiently productive, and also do especially important things well and on time. Only he can stop himself from doing what is clearly possible to do by him, and has been done by less prepared leaders at different times in different countries. Nigerians are willing him to succeed.

 

oa

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2015 6:21 AM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A New Nigeria?

 

A NEW NIGERIA? 

 

I sat right in front of the television and watched the inauguration. I am actually not a ceremony person but this one fascinated me. Why? It is a transition. And all transitions are pregnant with possibilities. All inaugurals speak of new beginning and new directions. So I sat stonily and watched with a staccato beat of my heart in a cacophony of anxiety mixed with hope and expectations. I guess at this point in time, there is truly a communion of expectations across Nigeria. 

My heart beats in errant pace; I could also detect a sceptical intrusion. I just came in from the long fuel queue.

And I wake up regularly from a sweat-drenched and fitful sleep...my fan had been on holiday!

My University has also decreed a two-week break from academic business because Nigeria intruded in our normal service. And I ask: what good does a continually abbreviated semester bode for students whose future is already compromised?

I am still gazing at the screen but my wondering mind projects its own visual imaginaries on the unfolding ceremony. 

What will come out of all this?

The cameras panned the crowd and the compere intoned the names of the old guards

Atiku

Obasanjo

Abubakar

Mark

Tinubu

politicians

the intellectuals

the priests

the imams

the pastors

the press

the masses

and on and on

 

I'm not sure I could decipher the faces of the new Nigeria in the ecstatic crowd. But my gaze kept fastening on Buhari's face...well, not his face but his dark spectacles. Someone once said "no object is mysterious. The mystery is in your eyes." Is he going to look Nigeria straight in the eye? What was Buhari seeing behind the dark goggle? Is the goggle going to project a specific vision? Has his national adrenalin reached a critical energy mass that propels the optimal force of performance?

And then he mounted the podium...tall and regal. Head above all; alternating between sterness, expressionlessness and brief smiles. 

 

"I, Muhammadu Buhari, do solemnly swear..."

 

Nigeria needs solemnity at this national juncture. We really.need to disoense with business as usual! Nation building isn't ceremonial...the next four years will be tough.

"We can fix our challenges..." Yes, we can!

But who are the people to help us? What is going to be the shape of the Cabinet? Will politics again trump purpose and focus? Can we again afford sit-tight principalities and powers? What is the plan to unravel Boko Haram, electricity, medicare, education, public services, etc.?

I sincerely felt like joining the ecstatic crowd waving the symbolic brooms and jogging round the Eagle Square. I sincerely felt like holding up my hands in supplication, like the woman caught on camera silently intoning a prayer as Buhari took the oath. 

It seems that the best I can do, for now, is not to rejoice. I will rather retreat into that communion of hope while I await the call to action from my Commander-in-Chief. We should await the circumference of our collective expectations. 

It's time to take the opportunities that we have.

I wish us all a new Nigeria!

 

 

Adeshina Afolayan

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

No comments:

Post a Comment

 
Vida de bombeiro Recipes Informatica Humor Jokes Mensagens Curiosity Saude Video Games Car Blog Animals Diario das Mensagens Eletronica Rei Jesus News Noticias da TV Artesanato Esportes Noticias Atuais Games Pets Career Religion Recreation Business Education Autos Academics Style Television Programming Motosport Humor News The Games Home Downs World News Internet Car Design Entertaimment Celebrities 1001 Games Doctor Pets Net Downs World Enter Jesus Variedade Mensagensr Android Rub Letras Dialogue cosmetics Genexus Car net Só Humor Curiosity Gifs Medical Female American Health Madeira Designer PPS Divertidas Estate Travel Estate Writing Computer Matilde Ocultos Matilde futebolcomnoticias girassol lettheworldturn topdigitalnet Bem amado enjohnny produceideas foodasticos cronicasdoimaginario downloadsdegraca compactandoletras newcuriosidades blogdoarmario arrozinhoii sonasol halfbakedtaters make-it-plain amatha