Our president, Mr. Buhari, must ride the tide and wave of this time to speak and mobilize Nigerians to rise up to the challenges of the time to fight corruption in both private and public life, denounce ill –gotten wealth, and rebuff those who are responsible for the misery in the land. These looters of our treasury have caused darkness, hunger, poverty and unemployment, and the society must turn their backs on them. Our president must channel all the positive energy and the excitement of triumph of the will of the people into a new sense of national renewal.
By Ese Isaac Erinmwingbovo
Retired Major-General Muhammadu Buhari was elected to lead our country to greatness, to afford all Nigerians the civil and economic rights and opportunities essential to human dignity.
By his election, Nigerians have placed their confidence in him and his ability to render free, fair judgment, to uphold our constitution and the oath of office – to reject any kind of religious pressure or obligation that might directly or indirectly interfere with his conduct of the Presidency in national interest.
When President Buhari, in his inaugural address, stated “I belong to all and not to anyone,” he essentially laid down a marker for his presidency for a free and fair judgment that he will be guarded by national interest.
That his decisions on every public policy will be his own as a free man not beholding to any one, political sycophants, political jobbers, and cabals, who have looted the Nigerian treasury and inflicted untold hardship on fellow citizens.
Nevertheless, Buhari has an enormous task at hand. He should not be under any illusion that the changes we seek will be easy, neither will the forces of darkness that have scotched the land go away quietly or fade away.
They will undoubtedly mount unprecedented strategies to continue their orgies of hardship by the deceit, corruption, and blackmail that are essentially their evil playbook.
The president must realize that Nigerians have been traumatized for far too long, that quick decisive action is expected of him.
This is not the time for the customary committee inaugurations, fact find commission, and prolonged debate and submission of reports and development of “white paper,” for the stakes are too high and the times are too grave.
Though the president has to carefully weigh all his options, for Nigerians, tomorrow is today and he must be guarded by “the fierce urgency of now”.
A time for “deliberate haste” and for “vigorous and positive action” must be his guarding principle.
The president must mobilize the nation, its youth, men, women, and those young at heart for the changes that we seek.
The president quoted Shakespeare in his inauguration “there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, omitted all the voyage of their life, is bound in shallows and miseries”.
Our president, Mr. Buhari, must ride the tide and wave of this time to speak and mobilize Nigerians to rise up to the challenges of the time to fight corruption in both private and public life, denounce ill –gotten wealth, and rebuff those who are responsible for the misery in the land.
These looters of our treasury have caused darkness, hunger, poverty and unemployment, and the society must turn their backs on them.
Our president must channel all the positive energy and the excitement of triumph of the will of the people into a new sense of national renewal.
To achieve a new sense of national renewal, President Buhari must ask Nigerians to pursue and dedicate themselves to course greater than self, giving them confidence to seek and aim higher.
Also, he must communicate to the Nigerian people, the purpose of sacrifice and hard work while he provides a new economic, social, and judicial framework to tackle the challenges of corruption and unemployment.
If the president “omits” and does not seize this moment, he will have made a costly mistake that may hunt him for the rest of his presidency. The president “must make hay while the sun shines.”
The new administration must develop economic policies that center around invention and innovation of Nigerians ingenuity.
Part of the policy should focus on agricultural technological revolution that will harness our farm resources as the main driver of employment and incorporate it with immediate energy policies to fuel economic growth.
The best of humanity thrives in a secure environment, and the Nigerians ingenuity will be unleashed, in a secure Nigeria, where Boko Haram and all other societal vices are reduced if not totally eliminated.
The Administration can learn a lot from Brazil and Singapore economic policies that lifted majority of the people from poverty with positive growth in all human indices within a short period of time.
For the majority of Nigerians that voted for the president, for the coming days, months, and years he will still need your help and your voice for the new Nigeria we want to create – a just society with equal opportunity for all.
As we embark on this journey together with the president for national greatness, we as a nation shall seek refuge in the word of Isaiah: “They that wait upon the lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run, and not be weary.”
As we face the challenges of building a new and prosperous Nigeria, we as a nation shall wait upon the Lord and ask that He renews our strength and not be weary in this great generational endeavor.
As President Buhari summons this generation for much needed struggle to transform our land, he must remember that the choice of his administration is not between APC and PDP, but between public interest and private comfort, between national greatness and national decline, between progress and status quo, we cannot afford national decline or the status quo. We must not fail.
May God bless our country Nigeria.
Ese Erimwinbovo, a public affairs analyst writes from the United States of America
