23 PRESIDING QUESTIONS FOR 2023 PRESIDENTIAL QUESTS: THEIR AMBITIONS VERSUS OUR CONVICTIONS

 

PREAMBLE

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has slated the 2023 Presidential election for Saturday, 25th February, 2023. Therefore, from Saturday, 17th September, 2022, to Saturday, 18th February, 2023, I shall be reeling out weekly, one critical question over a period of 23 weeks, for all the 2023 Presidential candidates. Please repost each question every week till it reaches all the Presidential candidates or their close aides who may be willing to give their feedback via @toluademujimi on twitter or @adetolu ademujimi on linkedin. It is an opinion-shaping inquisition via 23 fundamental questions about the Nigerian project. Please take note that there are NO RIGHT or WRONG ANSWERS as such! It’s simply a reflection of each candidate’s opinion, thought and conviction on specific issues and Nigerians should expect that these stances shall influence their respective administration’s philosophy, policies and programmes if elected as Nigeria’s President come year 2023.

The 23-week long session shall be divided into four sections;

Section A – Reform of governance structure for decentralization/federalism, economic revolution & security restoration

Section B – Revamp of physical infrastructure

Section C – Recovery of social architecture

Section D – Remodeling of political culture

“Our administration will construct schools, roads, hospitals & rails and secure the nation” is a famished presidential campaign rhetoric that no longer moves mountains. “I’m in the race to promote peace, justice, unity & progress” is a blank political promotion line frequently used by Presidential hopefuls in Nigeria that tells nothing. Away from those kinds of unconvincing and unbinding electioneering talks, there are crucial interrogations to be made at Nigeria’s crossroads called 2023 Presidential elections. One civic duty of mine, like all other Nigerians, is to ask such essential questions from those who aspire to lead us.

As important as it is to acquaint ourselves with persons desiring to occupy the number one seat in the land by digging into their backgrounds, we perhaps need more than knowing if he/she is for instance, corrupt or incorruptible. Political events of the recent past have proven to us that a saintly Mr. President might yet not know the critical road to Nigeria’s promised land and the hard lessons from these are fresh and rife. That an incorruptible President mounts the saddle and keeps our coffers safe from the filthy hands of public pilferers neither guarantees that our commonwealth will be effectively harvested for greater yield nor more justly, equitably and efficiently distributed to reach majority (even if not all) Nigerians, particularly the 70-80% of us residing at the subnational level.

This intellectual inquisition is therefore not unconnected with the fact that every President’s leadership strategy is primarily driven by ‘his/her convictions’ about the problems besetting our nation, and marshals his/her solutions in that line. It is imaginably more imperative to thus inquire of their clear stance on critical issues in order to rather impress on them, ‘our convictions’, which override their ‘ambitions’ of presiding over the current contraption called Nigeria.

EXAMPLE

206 million-populated Nigeria with less than $US25 billion Federal Government’s (FG) 2021 budget based on revenue receipts from crude oil (soon-to-be-jettisoned fossil fuels) and non-oil sectors is factually a poor nation falsely portrayed as rich (because of the large-scale public corruption and ostentatious life of public office holders), Unfortunately, the very educated Nigerians aren’t even aware of this bitter truth. If the State of Maryland (with a population of 6.06 million people) in the United States generated $US47.4 billion as revenue in 2021 (source: https://dbm.maryland.gov/budget/Documents/operbudget/2021), Nigeria is a poor country. Lionel Messi’s base salary of approximately $646,000 (N245.48 million) per week in 2021, amounting to $141.3 million (N53.694 billion) total earning per annum (for 1 person; and that's before considering his lucrative deals with the likes of Adidas and Pepsi), was more than the combined Federal Allocation and Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of some States in the same year. To what extent do you agree with these positions?

a. I strongly agree              b. I agree     c. I disagree             d. I strongly disagree

Answer: I strongly agree

 

Dr. Adetolu Ademujimi is a Change Ambassador under the Ondo Service Improvement Programme (ODSIP), Medical Doctor, Author, Reformer, Coach and Public Policy expert who wrote in from Akure in Nigeria. Email: ademujimi@yahoo.co.uk; Twitter: @toluademujimi; Instagram: @adetoluademujimi; Linkedin: @adetolu ademujimi

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