BY DANIEL IDONOR

At a time when almost all Nigerians have lost hope in Nigeria’s ability to occupy her rightful place in the comity of nations of the world, one man that has repeatedly sounded optimistic that despite the socio-economic and political woes is President Goodluck Jonathan.

The strength of the President’s optimism and confidence may not be derived from the fact that he currently pilots the affairs of the single largest black nation in the world, or out of sheer patriotism, but because as the occupant of the number seat, he is not unaware of the causes of our failures in the past, and the right path to follow to achieve greatness.

President Jonathan who may not be able to achieve all that he wants Nigeria to become in four years, has his faith rekindled in the progress and prosperity of the country as an entity, after the conduct of the 2011 general election, widely acclaimed to be free and fair.

He had, in January 2011, in far away Istanbul, the capital of Turkey, said that some people never wanted him to contest the presidential election because they believe that it was not possible for a sitting president to stage free and fair election; but that he promised them he can be interested in the poll and still provide a level field. Today, that is history because he delivered; and with another vow to make the 2015 exercise better.

Fixing public institutions
Another move by the present government which many view, can speedily transform the systemic collapse that has remained the bane of our underdevelopment, is the ongoing reform of the all public institutions. ?President Jonathan has expressed optimism that Nigerians have the capacity to transform the country into a world-class economy, but that what the country needs are strong institutions to drive the process.

In a brief remark at a National Lecture: “Nigeria in Transformation”, to mark Nigeria’s 51st Independence Anniversary which held at the International Hall of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abuja, he stated that Nigeria, like many developed countries of world, has the potential to grow and become great.

The President vowed that one of his major priorities for the next four years would be to build strong institutions by fixing the existing ones, upon which the government would kick-start the process of the development.

He said “if we have well managed ports alone, the income we receive as a government from the trading activities alone will be enough but we are still running a deficit budget because there are a lot of leakages, things are not being done properly. If we fix a number of institutions that we must fix, it may be painful but we have to do that. People will complain that politics is being used but must be done by the time these institutions are fixed”.

The Economy
Hopes for a greater future for Nigeria also abound in the current economic policy of the government. Already, the country has put together a very strong economic management team, with Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, immediate past Managing Director of the World Bank, as the coordinating minister of the team.

The team has secured FEC’s approval to order the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, to go after notorious tax evaders across the country – government is owed a whooping sum of over N170bn. Okonjo-Iweala  explained that the 2012 budget which is expected to be presented to the National Assembly in November would be based on $75 per barrel of oil with the expectation that 2.48m barrels would be produced per day by 2012; noting that the figure is expected to increase to about 2.6m barrels by 2015.

The minister also disclosed the desire of the Federal Government to gradually increase capital spending from between 25 and 27 per cent now, to 32 per cent by 2015, noting that the government also intended to keep reducing domestic borrowing.  She said that while N862bn was borrowed in 2010, the government planned to reduce the figure to below N800bn and keep reducing it so that the nation could have a sustainable domestic borrowing situation.

Agriculture
Jonathan’s managers of the national economy, in a bid to revamp the agric sector and ensure food security, has unveiled an Agriculture Transformation Action Plan, ATAP, aimed at revolutionalising the agriculture sector of the economy in the next four years. The action plan, Mr Akinwumi Adesina, minister of agriculture and rural development, said is to make agriculture not as a development issue but as purely business with emphasis on partnership, investment and accountability.

Adesina, spoke in the company Okonjo-Iweala, Murtala Nyako, governor of Adamawa state and Aliko Dangote, chairman of Dangote Group of Companies, after the team’s meeting, noting that through the ATAP, government aims to diversify the agriculture sector, especially where the country has comparative advantages.

Specifically, Adesina said rice production would rise to two million mt, cassava 17 million mt and sorghum one million mt. He said when fully operational, the sector would create over 3.3 million jobs within five-value chains – Rice, Cassava, Sorghum, Cocoa and Cotton with many more jobs to follow. He estimated that “over N300 billion ($2 billion) in additional income in the hands of Nigerians farmers, over N350 billion ($2.2 billion) injected into the economy from rice self-sufficient and over N60 billion ($380 million) injected into the economy from substituting 20 per cent of bread flour with cassava flour)”.

Explaining policy further, Asedina said cocoa beans production is projected to increase from 250,000 mt with a yield of 300 kg/Ha to 500,000 metric tons with 500 kg/Ha with a job target of 360,000 by the same 2015.

Okonjo-Iweala emphasised that the aim of government is to hands off subsidies on fertilisers stressing that “the policy is aimed at getting fertilisers to the farmers at 95 per cent as against the 11 per cent today”.

Government, she said, cannot wait for all the infrastructure to be completed first before designing the transformation programme adding that attention would be focused on key infrastructure areas.

Security
There is no doubt that these are certainly not the best of times for Nigeria as far as global security challenges are concerned. But in as much as the government would want every of its efforts towards tackling the menace of insecurity to bear fruits, it continues to intensify efforts to, at least, reassure the population of the government’s ability to protect lives and property.  Only recently the government initiated the provision of an electronic national identity card for all Nigerians of 18 years old and above at the cost of N30.66 billion by the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC.

The Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, said that the e-national identity would assist Nigeria tackle some security issues as well as solve so many statistics challenges in various sectors of the economy, explaining that the system will also bring down the cost of data management by the several public institutions including banks, pension commission etc.

One area where the programme will be very useful for the nation is national security management since all citizens’ data are expected to be captured. The first phase of the exercise is expected to start from this year to 2013.

The area of agriculture and security are very crucial because a netion of hungry people can not be creative just as an insecure nation can not attract the much needed investments.