The instinctive assessment of President Muhammed Buhari’s, one year in office is: “so far, so good.” I do hope and believe that if everything is put in place, we might realise there would be real change. I give him credit a lot and he is therefore in a position to sensitize the international community on the problems of Nigeria.

Obasanjo did the same thing and it looks like the pattern. I disagree with people who say he has travelled too much; I think the travelling is concomitant with the office the President and hence performance.

I don’t agree with the drama associated with his fight on corruption; it is a war against corruption in the media. The basic approach has not been taken. The government has interfered too much in the workings of the security operatives and agencies fighting corruption, like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) and even Police. There is too much arbitrariness and impunity in the fight. People are arrested and held behold the normal procedures. There is an abuse of rule of law in this fight.

There is no way the government can achieve anything worthy of the trumpeted fight against corruption. It is painful that this fight is not fought in the courts but behind the scenes. Nigerians need to see people jailed. The signs are there that Buhari will only be following the footsteps of his predecessors on corruption. He will make the noise and Nigerians will never get to know what really happened. Since 1992, how many people have been tried, convicted and jailed for corruption? Will Buhari change that? Nigerians are watching.

The economy is still wobbling giving the impression that he and his party the APC were not prepared to rule or govern.  The economy is bad. If Nigerians were not highly law abiding, there would have been a form of distortion in the social tranquility. Buhari did not assemble the real experts. What he did was to assemble old theorists. He should re-examine his strategic options towards the economy.

I am an advocate of an equitable federal system. The way this country was structured it was like an attempt to go back into unitary system; it will spell doom because of the configuration of the federation.

Federal system should remain the way it is but it should be strengthened. There is no reason for the South East to have only five states. That is not normal. If they believe that no zone should have more than six, they should make South East six or in the alternative, nothing should be based on the number of councils in the states. There should be equality of states and councils, which will translate to an equitable sharing of the federal allocation.

There is imbalance in the administrative structure of the country. When we look at the Federal budget, we see the legislators from the South East complain bitterly of over dosage of budgetary allocation to Northern states. That should not happen in a federal system. What we have presently is a federal system in name not in function.

● Dr. Chuks Osuji is former Director of defunct Mass Mobilization, Social Reconstruction and Self Reliance (MAMSER) in old Imo and Anambra states, author and public analyst