AN OPEN LETTER TO THE 2019 NIGERIA PRESIDENT-ELECT (PMB) – AVOIDING THE 10 SERIAL SINS OF PRECEDING GOVTS/ GOVERNANCE
By Segun Alade (MBA, ACA, ACIB, ACIPM, AMNIM)
27th February 2019
I write this open letter to the Nigeria president-elect as though he had never ruled before, for I believe in new seasons irrespective of the perceived errors of the past.
I first and foremost congratulate you on your declaration by the electoral umpire as the winner of the 2019 Nigeria presidential election. This is a golden opportunity Nigeria has just given you to now re-write the story of this nation for good. My prayer for this nation is that Nigeria will prosper again greatly and truly attain its humongous potential speedily.
Without much ado, I will go straight to my humble advice to your excellency on ‘Avoiding the 10 serial sins of the preceding govts’.
- Taking pleasure in being surrounded by mere praise-singers whose only concern is self-interest and not the nation’s fast development. This is perhaps the greatest of all the sins that blindfold past leaders.
- Playing the religion and ethnic card. No leader can ever be successful by playing this card, but unfortunately that has been the strongest card used by Nigerian political leaders over the years to keep the citizenry perpetually colonised.
- Using board appointments to ministries, departments and agencies as political reward, which had hitherto locked up the country with lots of inept leadership through the performance of many agencies.
- Intentional disregard for accurate data/ statistics of citizen.
- Devaluing the currency for the unspoken mere sake of having more Naira to share to the various arms of government, where the country is barely 5% self-sufficient in producing what it consumes. We keep blaming the one-time inept govt that used SAP nomenclature to destroy our currency & economy for a pot of porridge, yet every successive govt has done the same under different guise. This is the height of iniquity by our politicians. Some will even argue that it is to discourage importation, whereas no viable/ concise things/ policies are first implemented to encourage the local production of those importations they claim to want to discourage.
- Using state institutions for political war. Without exception, all preceding govts have done this to the detriment of the development of those institutions and by effect, Nigeria. I sometimes hear that our civil service is the most corrupt; but if that were true, it is because the leaders first use them to execute & perpetrate all those crimes, from stealing of the nation’s resources to using state institutions for personal political war, etc. When these examples are laid precedent, ingloriously the used-followers will follow-suit for their own personal gains too.
- Not having a clear/ measurable performance yardstick for ministers before portfolios are handed over to them. As against just the mere weekly FEC meeting where the borne of discussion is largely centered around contracts awarding and approving; for any visionary government, there is certainly no alternative to periodic (Monthly or Quarterly) performance appraisal meetings with the ministers, where core/ actual performance results are compared with the concise KPIs earlier handed over to them on assignment of portfolio. Without a clearly written/ agreed performance contract for each of your ministers and parastatal heads, showing their deliverables and what results MUST be produced by their ministries/ agencies each periodically, the CHANGE agenda may only continue to be a mirage. Ministers need to know that there are grave consequences for not delivering on their performance contract, otherwise it will continue to be business as usual, while the entire country keeps piling all the blame on you.
- Ignoring the voices and pains of the citizen by not directly getting news first hand. It is a usual practice for leaders to be surrounded by people who sieve out the information that gets their attention. In such a clime as ours, it often leads to the leader being cut-off the citizenry, hence, the possibility of insensitivity to the plights of the larger citizens.
- Complaining about the past and hardly re-creating the future. It is believed that politicians saw what the past was before coming to beg for our vote for the purpose of correcting those ills, hence, the lack of every moral right to continuously claim that it is the effect of that past that denies the nation of subsequent good leadership performance.
- Ignoring the power of fiscal incentives (such as rightly intentioned tax holidays & waivers, etc.) to local and international investors, with intentional pursuit of massive infrastructural development.
In conclusion, as we trust the nation into your hand once again, please be very conscious of the fact that EVERTHING RISE AND OR FALL ON LEADERSHIP and not on the past.
May Nigeria rise to greatness in earnest!!!
Segun Alade (MBA, ACA, ACIB, ACIPM, AMNIM)
27th February 2019