By Ayo Oyoze Baje
Anyone still blaming
the former President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration for all our current
socio-economic woes, one year after leaving office, must be wallowing in
self-deceit or simply living in fool’s paradise. Government is a continuum.
Furthermore, when a leader takes over an institution, be it public or private,
he inherits both the assets and liabilities. As he builds on the assets, he
seeks ways to mitigate the pains inflicted on the people by the liabilities.
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| *Buhari |
One sweet victory leads
to a new set of challenges. It is never a stroll in the park, nor a picnic in
paradise. The top of the ladder, as the wise ones say, is not meant for
dancing, or dithering to take decisive actions. Successful leaders find the
reasons to succeed, not giving excuses for failure.
It would, therefore, do
the spokespersons of our president a world of good to henceforth stop looking
over the shoulder and laying all the blames of the failure of the Buhari-led
government to frontally tackle and reverse the country’s dwindling economic fortunes,
on the previous administration. Political campaigns, couched with sleazy
slogans should have ended over a year ago. Now is the time for those who the
electorate invested their trust and goodwill on to roll up their sleeves and
get down to brass tasks.
After all, what is leadership all about? It is about having the vision to
identify the led majority’s most pressing challenges and mustering the
Capacity, the Character, the Courage and the Commitment to finding lasting
solutions to them. It is about engendering team spirit; working with the best
of hands and brain to deliver the so called ‘dividends of democracy’ to the
good people of Nigeria.
It is not about any individual, no matter how knowledgeable, to exhibit a
philosopher-king mentality, pretending to know it all and foisting his views,
sometimes puerile and out of sync with modern governance practices on his
people.
Truth is, this
administration needs all the assistance it could get. One of such is an
economic think-tank, made of top technocrats who could read the next direction
the global productive pendulum would swing and internalise it to proffer
solutions to existing challenges. Such a group would have informed the
president on the need to focus more energy, time and resources on revamping the
tottering economy, soon after he took over the reins of governance. But one
year after, there is no crystal clear direction where the ship of the economy
is heading to.
