The Way the Cookies Crumbled Managing Sin – Peeping into 2023 from the Ocean of Agony not a Tea Party -By Jimi Bickersteth

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing; this season of fraternal clash of the people and power, its attendant high wired drama, intrigues, betrayal, distrust, and conspiracy all around.

Drama, intrigues whose every plot and denouement varies in mood to engage every emotions would, in any case, not afford one the luxury and opportunity of a holiday, not even a Valentine celebration.

The discordant tunes from the ruling party, the lily-livered opposition, the crushed audience and rollercoasting living standards were the glaring evidences that this times it appeared the nation was losing it big time!

Hunting the hunters!. The last few days have witnessed the return of the queues at pertroleum filling stations across the federation in Africa’s crude oil headquarters, so to speak, and in all fairness, after a lull of about seven years of the PMB’s administration.

Curiously, somewhere amidst the labyrinth of the present national malcontents, was a layer of an almost ‘non-existing’ NASS, in situ. A legislature, that, so far, has been like ditch water, passive, subsumed, docile, and itself, like the people it represents, in need of a virile, upstanding and productive leadership.

Fine enough! The queues at the filling stations were coming shortly after the stupid but culpable importation of the methanol-laden petroleum product by some ‘identified’ culprits. The moment thus, serves as a nunc dimittis to the PMB’s administration.

An administration that has become by composition and actions, stale, and by inference, become like ‘split milk,’ and, almost too late in the day to cry for its culpability, its demeanours, missteps and maladministration. You’ll wont to ask yourself, what’s the way forward.

While ruminating for what should likely constitute a set of values that if followed could help heal the nation frontally and on all sides holistically, I stumbled on what eventually became the title of this treatise from a long list of James Hadley Chase paperbacks, and strictly, the semblances ended at that.

I know for good measure that the fundamental principle on which the nation’s power-holders operate is to protect themselves and everything they ever have, whereas, the fundamental principle of true leadership in any civilised and democratic clime is to give of yourself with no holds barred, to wit: compassion, caring, concern, and, all other sentimental emotions that gives you goose bumps. Afterall, leadership is based on commitments not convenience.

But the present crop of leaders have became impervious to applause and approval and die to ego, reason why they have been vulnerable to people and circumstances. The cause(s) of the effect(s) of why the nation is today overcome with a state of grief, deep sorrow, despair and violent bruises to its well-being, and a recovery process fraught with often unanswerable questions, outright insincerity, and thus, looking complicated.

How on earth could this crop of ruling elites do this evil to the good but poor people. In any case, the ‘big boss’, chief writer, and the Ebora at the Otta farm had told the world waiting for his forthright but acerbic write-ups, that the present administration was like a spent horse, by inference, a spent force! and you don’t ever flog an old and tired horse missing its rhymes and rhythms.

The nation ruling elites, particularly, under the current dispensation, have been purely selfish, simple!. A political class that thought about nobody but themselves! There feelings will take time to resolve. As they have allowed the Nation make a 180° somersault, due to their lack of courage, strength, political will.

The ruling elites have watched unperturbed the seeds of compromises of the nation’s past grown to rebellion in full bloom. The political elites thought it could manage the consequences. Well! the camera kept filming every aspects of the present administration, as it failed to restore society.

What is the way forward, you’ll ask again! Its not too far away, if you tarry a while.

No doubt, the present events confounded, distressed embittered, limited and destroyed the nation we used to know. At their lowest moment, politicians, standing upon the seashore, with insincere alignment and realignment, they stood and watched the ship of state, once an object of beauty, grace, strength and hope, spread her green-white-green sails to the cool morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean, she hangs like a speck of of green-white-green cloud, then, she’s gone.

Gone where? Gone from the peoples sights. She’s just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was prior to departure.
The nation’s diminished size and status is in its people, not her.

I concurred with my inner feelings that the way forward, and solutions to the nation’s malaise(s) lies in 2023. The elections in 2023 should showcase and also portend for the nation a new beginning. Hopefully, a free and fair general elections and its umpire’s (INEC’s) neutrality would augur well for the nation.

The people were eagerly waiting! Waiting and watching with infinite patience, and of course, pains, the possibilities of the nation coming back to them, to take up the joyful shout of, “Here she comes!” with prosperity and all the lost hopes brought back, which probably will signpost a new beginning, and a contrast to the present ‘curse’ and leadership absence.

The ruling party, the APC have proved time and time again that it’s an aberration and a labyrinthine complexity of party politics, a third-class substitute after a first-class blunder, whose seeds of compromise was growing to rebellion sooner than expected.

Could the happenings in the party under Buhari amount to the expected implosion of the party? Hmmmm! But, one thing is clear though, the ‘sin’ the men loved and the women permitted have entangled the leaders and by extension, the nation.

You think you can manage sin! In reacting, those who lost in the internal power game, their ambitions and attempts to seize the control of the party, first have to resolve within themselves, what makes you think you’ll be believed by those who barely know you, if you’re not credible to those who knew you best.

The nation’s leaders have always been separated by a decade of different philosophies, greed, inordinate ambitions, tribal sentiments and ethnic chauvinism, thus, forcing the nation through a din and confusion in the polity, and Nigerians are beginning to get bored.

Poor leadership or leadership absence, if you like, cannot be allowed to further mess up the nation’s sense of perception, and paralysed dreams of compatriots. The new leadership desired in 2023 and that which the nation must vote for, must chose wisely who have his or her ears.

There must be no elephant in the room but content of character, power of thought, wisdom and motivation. It must not be caught up in an endeavour that time somehow seems to be altered. Must be sound and deeply aware, without being self-conscious, stretched or challenged, but without a sense of stress or worry.

Coming on the heels of this PMB’s regime’s valedictory, the new administration, whoever they might be, must be primed and motivated enough to note that upon inauguration, they don’t have a moment to waste, even as they set plans to take immediate, decisive, and continuous remedial actions, without any shred of fear.

Here, the word ‘fear’ means a strong dose of respect for something, the treasury looters and those that have wilynily mortgaged the nation’s destiny and future growth, and any such distractions, Avengers, IPOB, MASSOB, Boko Haram, or such like inclusive, that have become life-threatening, dangerous, or alarming to society.

Today, the ship was burning and the occupants are asleep. If you have to salvage the nation, breakdown the door and drag them out of the sea of despair, but save them you must. The new beginning must as a matter of necessity go after those who take the wrong way, those who try to crash boundaries of decencies and legislation and good cause(s) by taking the wrong motivation and wrong desires from the wrong people.

There’s a chance, they’ll be misunderstood, criticised, and rejected. Sure. But, must be a sufficiently motivated leaderships, bound by the love for the fatherland and the oath of office, as it applies tact, sound intelligence, wisdom and boldness to do and say what needs to be done or said, with love strong enough to tell the truth while there’s still time. It should deviate from the irritating conspiracy of silence of the present.

In 2023, the leadership do not have to wait for extraordinary opportunities, but use the ordinary and make them great in an extraordinary manner. The present leadership were beginning to suffer from the surfeit of classical misrule, and enough of PDP this or APC that.

The whole nation-state have became guilty of the ‘crime’ of presumptuousness, complicity, conspiracy and high treason against itself, and must begin to focus less on who’s at fault, since, all have failed this nation of abundance and embarrassing riches.

The focus should be on total reconstruction, re-engineering and rebuilding, with a regenerated spirit in an unregenerated body, with a potential to accomplish great things. In 2023, the nation should be less critical and more complimentary and invest energy and time and be willing to take another look.

What the ‘Buhari’s Change’ had to contend with but found pretty insurmountable and did not get right in its self-induced, complicated recovery process, is the ‘how to’ factor in the nation’s rebuilding and reengineering phases and processes are:
i. the ever dwindling fall in crude oil prices in recent time,
ii. instability of the exchange rates,
iii. the questions and insincerity of its fuel subsidy regimen,
iv. the unanswered national questions of inequality, and,
v. unfair distribution and redistribution of the nation’s largese, all of which were pointers that spoke volumes.

The ear-piercing truth shrieked in the unspoken and undisguised body language is that the nation had entered a new phase of Structural Adjustment, call it Technical devaluation, if you like. It’s just a matter of semantics to state that the regime was managing an economy in crisis.

With the benefits of hindsight, past attempts at restoring the nation’s once budding enterprise but now failing economy with austerity measures and belt-tightenings are pointers that had turned out to be anything but a blessing, for administrations after administration had kept the nation dithering.

As a result, the nation entering into the mainstream of world politics and striving to approach the much desired freedom from economic shackles have become, not only pedestrian, but has made its economic independence, (what with its immense local and foreign debt portfolios), look distant and at best a mirage.

A nation carries the liability of its weak and docile leadership, the people certainly, deserved better than that. In 2023 the aspiring leaders must come with no burden and or limitations, educationally and health-wise. The nation-state need a wholly homespun solution to its economics and political malaises, but by first tackling and winning the war imposed as obstacles on the nation’s path to progress and farther prosperity by corruption, graft and fleece all around. One strong opinion here, however, is that the nation do not need any pseudo version(s) of the IMF recipe and prescriptions for economic deveopment in Africa, south of the Sahara, which are often an invitation for chaos and instability.

The leadership in 2023 must be able to diagnosed and offer appropriate, proper and effective prognosis to the nation’s economic ills. The general tenor deep down seems to suggests that the economic recovery plans in this season of global recession and meltdowns under a leadership looking backwards is not in the nation’s hands, and that the developed world and emerging economies must exercise liberal economic control(s), loans, aids and grants.

What a perplexing and streaked outlook for the future, bearing in mind that, such attempts have failed in the past, and may indeed, still failed, if the nation refuses to put in place:
i. an effective and efficient debt management portfolios,
ii. curtailed the overbearing influence and horrible circumstances of the ‘thieving politricktians’ in government and leaders who cannot endeavour to be altruistic, open, and transparent, even as it strives to maintain the honour and integrity their office(s) conferred on them.

The truth be told, that requesting for leaders in 2023 to be the best the present leadership were not was in order, but, with the situation of the nation as it were, its no-philosophy, no-standard cultures, and discipline, expecting the miracle of instant economic turnaround in 2023 would be a misplaced optimism. There must of necessity be a change in the peoples character and culture. However, the imagination of the leadership and the expectations of the people must not dim the clearness of their judgements.

One strong opinion is that the leadership must tackle holistically, the pervasive inequality, wanton poverty, lack and neglect in the land. Yes, leadership comes with its own dose and backpack of complications, the leadership in 2023 must permit itself to display manhood and more courage, as it would not have the aces as yet, but must keep its bosom franchised and hold true allegiance to the nation, and, its people’s spirits and dreams, and lead them from this quagmires to terra-firma.

The leadership must continue to shop for ideas for bailing the nation out of the economic doldrums and solutions to its multiethnic, non-secular, and multinational sentiments, including resources control and Value Added taxes, on these grounds it must pledge equity, without any of the states in the north or south feeling shortchanged in the least. There is therefore, the need for a political solution(s) even as it strikes a balance always, so as not to yield forces or escalate the slumbering sparks that may leaped into fiery and fierce flames.

There is a rough balance of political forces between Nigeria and Europe, two great divides, and a reasonable degree of competition in the market, but Nigeria always dealing the cards with a withered hand. Even though, the nation’s economy was given a boost by the large and immense volume of crude oil, but Nigerians have not prospered from expanded international trade and opportunities to:
a. expand enough,
b. shift the whole emphasis of its micro and macro economies with systemic improvements in productivity,
c. curtailed the underlying trend of inflation which is still upwards, while,
d. corruption has finally made the country a victim of wholesale conquest,
e. the new leadership in 2023 must make it possible for Nigerians to develop industries strong enough to survive in the international market place, even as the consumption and patronising of made-in-Nigeria products are encouraged.

The PMB’s administration after all of its seven years romance could barely manage a late rally and assault on the boko Haram scourge, a loan-ridden railway and road construction, the incoming administration must embark on ambitious programmes aimed at raising living standards of the people, whose problems started from the basic premise that:
i. the country’s expenditure has been financed by intensification of the rate of crude oil exploration using monopsonistic trading controls,
ii. illegal bunkering,
iii. its expenditures pattern encouraged more monies spent on recurrent expenditures than on capital vote,
iv. by external borrowing and inflation of the public debt through internal monetary measures,
v. investments in agriculture, industry, trading and petrochemicals by those lucky few who have access to oil blocs and resources from the Banks and other financial institutions, and,
vi. by any means that come to hand, looting, graft and large scale fleece by public and civil servants.

The i-vi, were the points that signposted PMB’s failure. But it refused to acknowledged that the nation got itself immersed in the cul-de-sac as a result of a combination and or aggregate of factors above, in the process, the nation’s external indebtedness rose and debt service increased foreign exchange reserves sharply, which prompted the senate President to opined recently, that, the nation’s ”economy is in real crisis;” hence, the slow and distorted growth experienced by the people. The tragedy of this development is that incomes become so low, leading to limited, shoddy or outright unavailability and access to basic services, such as health, housing, qualitative education. The investment in the energy/power sector was quite inadequate.

It is only the people’s peculiar physical constitution and resilience and to some extent, the global, volatile crude oil market that accounts for why the nation was still standing with no real money, no food, no roof over their heads, no light, pummeled by agitations for self-independence/resource control some of which had resulted in killings/maiming and are able to solve every major survival problems which confronted them; so that their population could and did expanded in measure with the slow, but unsteady expansion of their productive capacity.

The nation-state was now faced with crisis of ‘over-population’ of a not too critical widening gap that is between the upward curve of population growth and now much flatter or even falling curve of indigenous production of food and other prime necessities; suddenly, has found itself exposed to a world which had developed quite different systems and with these, a far greater technological power – Technologies stimulated by the needs of societies, which are now of growing complexities and wealth far beyond the talents, scope and depth of the nation’s technology. Today, in the nation’s commercial capitals, everyone wants to be a car dealer merchandising used vehicles shipped from Europe by kith and kin, or Akube and OKRIKA, (no pun intended) that’s the nation’s own ‘technology’.

The appearance of new methods of making a living always confronts mankind with new problems or organisation and conflicts between those attached to the old ways and those who want a clean break with the past. In view therefore of the complications of the ‘Change’ agenda on the people’s ethos and expectations, and, on the other hand, the tremendous speed with which technical change is taking place in the world today, it is not surprising that those problems and conflicts should be very acute, and the faint-hearted should feel the nation is in a very bad state and not likely to get out of it, anytime soon.

The nation’s internal structural problems and the external factor (pricing of crude oil) fuelled by policy inconsistencies, such as, trade and exchange rate, backward agricultural policies; too little attention paid to administrative constraints in mobilising and managing resources for development and a public service left in a lurch. Widespread weaknesses of planning, decisions making and management capacities led to the apparent slow growth of the nation’s economy and were the raison d’être the nation was in a depressed and disturbed state. These and more are the burdens, complications and liabilities the new leadership in 2023 is being called upon to shoulder.

It would be dangerous for the new leadership to make cute remarks, clever, especially in a rather annoying way the same old conventional wisdom about solving poverty – more and more money doesn’t work. What is so threatening about teaching young, poor of the poor that the way out is by investing in themselves. What is the risk, one wonder. The way you help the poor improve their lot in life is to empower them to do it themselves. Government’s positive contributions is the key to develop pride and breed self-reliance, respect and motivation. It must do enough to make more people access the opportunity the country has to offer.

The nation’s grim pictures should galvanise and compel the nation to in 2023:
i. design programmes to restructure not only politically but also as the new leadership sought to diversify the productive base of the economy in order to reduce dependency on crude oil,
ii. enforce fiscal discipline not rascality and balance of payment viability,
iii. reduce the dominance of unproductive investments in the stagnated public sector,
iv. improve the sectoral efficiency and enhance the growth potential of the private sector and eliminate distortions,
v. note the ever increasing population already very rapid and improve rural incomes, achieve food self-sufficiency, provide basic services, adequate incentives for agricultural productions, design rural empowerment schemes, enlarge and improve rural infrastructure and significant improvements in agricultural technology and the inflexibility of the nation’s economy which has prevented diversification into products with rapidly growing markets.

Economic adjustment under the prevailing economic conditions is a cinema of the mind, especially, as the future of the crude oil market remains largely volatile, and, except the price of crude increases appreciably and steadily in real terms, then with the increased weight of oil in total imports, even relatively small price increases will have a large impact. Ironically, the trade-exchange rate programmes may make a further mess of any adjustment regimen, because of the tendency to let real official exchange rates become over valued because of higher inflation at home and abroad.

The PMB’s administration was at a lost hitherto, and failed on that strength, the new leadership must work out diligently the arrangement of increasing use of trade and payments restrictions, the large profit opportunities offered smuggling, the wide gap between official, parallel and black market exchange rates, which seems to suggest that most official foreign exchange rates do not reflect its scarcity in an economy that could not generate the much needed investment capital.

In this flow, the true idea behind the job of leadership is to invest its abilities to create value for Nigerians; to plant and build and invest ways that would cause our people to flourish. Though the nation in an age that seems to diminish services and exalt glitz.

Success demands efforts and perseverance from both the led and the leaders, it will never come merely because it is craved. Some of our preference and practices may not be very important, but our principles regarding personal liberty, integrity, morality – these are not up for sale or compromise, hence, the nation must be seen to be constructing a new vital, social etho and tradition which can give us the moral foundation and character on which to revive a nation that is capable of achieving its potential.

The throughput would usher in a desired change not only on the surface, affecting only the material side of life, but must also reach the deeper levels of the nation’s thinking pattern, mental images, emotions, beliefs and response in situation of need. Its not too late to start.

This journey of 2023 should not be the beginning of nothing. Talking about déjà vu! It must be a time for real politick and an approach to politics based, as it were, not on the mere feelings of some cabal or mafia but must be based on the actual circumstances and needs of the people.

#JimiBickersteth
Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger, public affairs commentator and writer.

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