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An open letter to the president-elect – Part 2

By Olusanya Anjorin
06 March 2019   |   4:05 am
National debt Public borrowing is done in public interest; the masses are deeply concerned on the intermittent deficit budget as a huge percentage of the budget goes to the repayment of the debt and recurrent expenditure. The continued mounting debt without corresponding infrastructural projects is a mortgage on our children’s future that can be paid…

Buhari, afetr returning to Abuja from Daura

National debt
Public borrowing is done in public interest; the masses are deeply concerned on the intermittent deficit budget as a huge percentage of the budget goes to the repayment of the debt and recurrent expenditure.

The continued mounting debt without corresponding infrastructural projects is a mortgage on our children’s future that can be paid only in pain and inevitably, hampering the country’s development.

With your second term in office, you need to break the vicious cycle of falling for any subtle-foreign facility and look inward for huge revenue enlargement.

Excessive Poverty
To find solution to acute poverty requires monumental steps; our educational system should be reengineered to prepare for students for real life outside the four walls of the school.

Skill development is key. Your Government should deliberately promote entrepreneurship in the private sectors; this can be done through micro-financing to help startups, grants for those who want to go into farming.

The National social investment programmes (NSIP) embarked upon towards alleviating poverty and creating jobs is a good initiative – The N-power is providing jobs to graduates while the TraderMoni scheme has empowered millions of petty traders. However, considering the depth of hunger that exists in the land.

Government will do well to provide enabling environment for the private sector to thrive. Tourism, entertainment, arts and literature are fountains of wealth untapped for Nigeria.

National Social Welfare
The strength of a great nation is in its wellbeing of people. The welfare of the civil servants, the welfare of the private worker, the welfare of the wage worker and the welfare of the unemployed depend on the welfare of the entire country.

It is shocking how people can be led to fury or chaos or co-opt to bad influence because they are not meaningfully engaged.

Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made.

Nigerians are intellectually endowed and provision of enabling environment will allow the eagle in us to fly.

National Security
Anything that threatens the freedom of a nation-armed robbery, militancy, cultism and terrorist is a security concern and cannot be treated with kid’s glove.

No country can remain industrially strong with the incursion of a lethal terrorist. The threats of bizarre groups are increasingly becoming popular in different forms on a daily basis.

However it is worth mentioning that no amount of arms or ammunitions can produce the desired result devoid of the right attitude and commitment. What is of ultimate paramount is a collective responsibility of everyone in the society.

The reduction of high rate of unemployment and poverty as early reiterated will reduce the social unrest. I therefore urge you to continue to fan the ember of the next level of progress.

Invest in the Nation’s health
No one understand the importance of healthcare better than you having gone to foreign land for medical care during the earlier part of your first tenure.

The strength of Nigeria is in the good health of its people. Our country needs a next level from a ‘’a pale care’’ system to a true health care system where citizens don’t have to travel abroad for comprehensive health care.

This foreign trips cost tons of naira to Nigerians and contributing in negative terms to our balance of trade. We pray that from the interior of Sokoto state to the outskirts of Epe in Lagos State, they would all have access to quality medical care.

Talk to us but also listen to us
The people have always longed for a leader who will listen to them and attend to matters that are of deep concern. I urge you to listen to the voice of the downtrodden who pure out their heart, draw out inferences and not throw the baby with the bath water by so doing you won’t have to battle to sway public opinion against your government. You need to be brutally honest with citizens, tell them what they can’t have and what they must give up in order to save their children’s and grandchildren’s future.

Corruption
Corruption is like a scalpel sliced into the skin of the country’s flesh, it infects the private and public sector and individual.

A system where those who hungered for equity come with soiled hands. A system that has robbed us of rapid technology and economic growth but the question remained; will the guilty be brought to justice? The need to bring looters and corrupt bureaucrats to justice is seen as urgent.

It is often said that when you fight corruption, bees, ants and even python will be called upon to sting but I want to assure you that millions of Nigerians are solidly behind your back and are chanting Sai baba we need next level of action to preserve the future of our children.

Your ministers, senators, governors and other partners in progress who are on the driving seat with you can transform our nations if the will to change the status quo is there.

I hope those days of dishing out deceit and chameleonic ideas are left behind us, the era of window dressing falsehood as truth will be veiled, a period where light are shined on the stabber’s faces in the dark is here, an age where the sword of discord sown are turned to shard and vaporized, a time has come when some who were content with things as they were will be left alone, a moment when fountain will flow in its course and net curtain will be available for every curtains’ home. We can accomplish much more when our voices speak in harmony. This is my reverie for your government.

Some of us believed that the economy is really cooking for the first time since democracy returns but what can be said is that millions of inhabitants are yet to fill the impact, we urge the president to let the cook food be done and let all Nigerians shovel the dividends of democracy and not crumbs.

Then, can you saunter to Daura with a bounce in your step at the end of your second term.

Congratulations.
God bless Nigeria.
Concluded
• Anjorin wrote from Lagos.

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