EmogInspiration

“Our goal now is to build on the greatest accomplishments of the
past few years. Relying on the 7-point agenda that formed the
basis of our compact with voters during the recent campaigns,
we will concentrate on rebuilding our physical infrastructure and
human capital in order to take our country forward. We will focus
on accelerating economic and other reforms in a way that makes a
concrete and visible difference to ordinary people.”

On May 29th 2007, the World witnessed the successful handover
from one democratically elected Government to another in Nigeria.
In a speech that was filled with so much hope and expectation, the
President outlined the road map to achieving the goal of a better
Nigeria. He identified the areas that needed to be focussed upon
and also promised to declare a National emergency on power.

Lets take a look at his seven point agenda. On Power and Energy,the
aim is to develop sufficient and adequate power supply to ensure
Nigeria’s ability to compete as a modern economy and achieve full
industrialization by the year 2015. Food security emphasizes on the
development of modern technology, financial injection into research,
production and development of agricultural inputs which will
revolutionize the agricultural sector leading to a 5 – 10 fold increase
in yield and production. This will result in massive domestic and
commercial outputs and technological knowledge transfer to farmers.

On wealth creation, the focus is to diversify production especially in the
agricultural and solid mineral sector. Nigerian’s are to choose to work,
as hard work by all is required to achieve this reform. He also aims at
developing the transport sector in order to ease movement of people and
goods. The current minister of transport wept at the state of Nigerian
roads and apologized to Nigerian’s.

A research showed that our most valuable resource is arable land. Water
is close to the surface. Billions of dollars has been lost through unused
government-owned landed asset. Land reforms will optimize Nigeria’s
growth through the release of lands for commercialized farming and other
large scale business by the private sector. He also advocated for security
of lives and property with special focus on the Niger Delta where dialogue
will be the tool for conflict resolution not military force.

The final focus is on education. The two-fold reforms in the educational
sector will ensure firstly the minimum acceptable international standards
of education for all. With that achieved, a strategic educational development
plan will ensure excellence in both the tutoring and learning of skills in science
and technology by students who will be seen as the future innovators and
industrialists of Nigeria. This reform will be achieved through massive injection
into the Education sector.

The president believes that with all these targets clearly spelled out and
properly pursued and implemented,the rate of poverty in Nigeria will be
greatly reduced. There has never been such a clear and accurate statement
of the problems as well as solutions of our Nation like this before. Mr
President identified the areas we need to look into and how it will help us
become the top 20 economies in the world by the year 2020.

However, it is one year down the line, what is the yardstick for measuring
how far this administration has gone in achieving its objective of becoming
one of the top 20 economies by the year 2020? There should be some visible
growth in the areas mentioned above.

Though there has been some growth in these areas, the national emergency
in the power sector was only declared recently.  The minister of transport
promised a hasty rehabilitation of roads, we are yet to see it (especially the
Lagos – Benin expressway). There has been a series of meetings yet the
problem of security in the Niger Delta as well as security of lives and property
still persists. I will leave you to decide if this administration is keeping its words.
God bless Nigeria.