News Editor
Dr. Mike Omeri, ex-Director General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), urges President Ahmed Bola Tinubu to reconsider his governance strategies, emphasizing the need for sustainable solutions that benefit Nigeria and its citizens. Failure to do so, warns Omeri, may result in significant disappointment and a reversal of fortunes.
Omeri, who stated this while speaking in an interview with pressmen Friday, in Lafia, the Nasarawa state capital noted that the zeal, commitment of the president would remain a mirage unless Nigerians with goal driven ideas and passion for national development are encouraged to replace those he described as mediocre, who play with toys.
He added that national growth has continued to suffer set back because competent Nigerians were being sacrifice for those who win elections or given opportunity to decide the fate of the country and they have nothing to offer, as “they are minimalist, macro and limited to the vagaries of our self-imposed fault lines.
“I know people are yearning for change, things that would make life better for them and the communities. When politicians come we have those with ideas and those with promises. And most times it’s the people with promises that win the election without ideas of what to put together for the good of the society.”
According to him, the biggest bane of the nation’s progress is that politicians come to governance without understanding the idea of what the institutions are all about adding that what preoccupied their mind is what they will get and leave.
He explains “when politicians win the election, they don’t understand the institution, they are just there to make it.
“Like someone said politics has become an industry which people come to harvest forgetting that after 4 years they become ordinary citizens and they come to face the promises they made and never fulfilled.”
“People believe they can make money that would last them for life in the Nigerian system. The system has become weak with little capacity to check institutional lapses adding the politicians have succeeded in weakening the stronger instructions that would have protected the system to work in Nigeria.
“All the institutions that appear to be strong to help protect will power have been weakened by the politicians promises without understanding the institution they want to use for governance.
“So they use the regime protection mechanism, self-perpetuation strategy and power through our commonwealth to the detriment of growth, development and stability.”
He further admonished leaders at all levels to institutionalise the nation’s values and tradition also urged them to deemphasized appointment being made based on who you know if the nation must make progress..
Omeri added that “our universities should be made more engaging in tasks and product development. They should be involved as partners not rivals.
“Their research outcomes must be put to the test to ensure backward integration, inward capacity to elicit competition, build confidence and display competences for the progress of self, nation, and rest of the world; this will curb Japa syndrome, create employment and steady the things we value including, our culture, heritage and the environment.”
