Your Excellency, Mr.President, it does not matter anymore who wins the 20I5 elections. Nigeria at that time will need a leader who can manage widespread poverty at the Federal level and state governors, unlike the wastrels we now have, running the show. By 2015, Nigeria’s crude oil exports and earnings will be far less than what we realize now.

In a few weeks time, the Jonathan administration would have completed its second year in office after the 2011 elections – although it will also mean that President Jonathan would have completed his third year as President. It is time to take stock; to ask what has been achieved and what remains to be done.

The media, including me, made a terrible mistake a few weeks ago. It all started from a story in the PUNCH newspaper of April 5, 2013, by one Friday Olokor, titled “Only 27.2% of Nigerians’ll be poor by 2015 –NBS.” The title was totally misleading and other commentators, apart from me, reacted to what, we knew, was a fallacious statement. As it turned out, the Chief Executive of the National Bureau of Statistics, Dr. Yemi Kale, had already sent a correction to media houses in Abuja. Our copy at Vanguard had not reached Lagos by the time I wrote. That was the source of the error on my part.

The floods, which devastated many parts of Nigeria in 2012, should not have caught us by surprise – but they did. For more than a generation, scientists have been warning a deaf world and its leaders about the imminent catastrophe which would follow relentless global warming as mankind heats up his own “home” – the earth. Furthermore, we knew for centuries that the year starts in January and moves inexorably to December.

Many Nigerians over the age of 60 would recollect that statement. Right from our homes to our primary schools and, if we were lucky, our secondary schools, that moral admonition was drummed into our heads. Tell the truth.

The first part of this series ended last week with the observation that the singular leadership provided by former Governor Victor Attah gave the oil producing states the economic power they now enjoy. If they want to extent that triumph or even consolidate the gains made on account of the fight for Resource Control, they need another leader to fight for PIB 2 – not Jonathan who is too involved in 2015 to fight for anything else. Read on.

The oil is produced in the Niger Delta, yet, it is the people of the Northeast and the Northwest and a little of North-Central , almost nothing for the South-West and South-East, that own and control these oil blocks. Almost nothing for the South-South, Niger Delta oil producing areas”.

The two most engaging Ministers in President Jonathan’s lackluster cabinet, are, arguably, Messrs Adewunmi (Ade), the Federal Minister of Agriculture and Aganga (Segun), the Federal Minister of Trade and Investment. They are both eminently erudite, impeccably dressed, full of mesmerizing data, big dreamers and mostly misleading.

Even a fool, in Nigeria,now knows that the last thing anyone should believe is anything announced by the Federal Government of Nigeria, its Ministers, agencies and especially the President’s Special Advisers on Media and Publicity. When Abati or Okupe appear on television, people switch to other channels.

The National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, one of the most efficient and least appreciated parastatals, in the country today, recently disclosed that “overall growth in real GDP in 2012 was 6.61 per cent, which is a decline from the 7.43 per cent recorded in 2011”. There are several inferences to be drawn from that statement alone. But, only two will be addressed here.

This is developing to be a serious case of persecution of a Yoruba businessman by the Federal Government. Bi-Courtney had sued the Federal government for breach of contract and had been vindicated by the courts, both at the High Court and the Court of Appeal.

“The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria is set to take possession of properties belonging to the Chairman, Bi-Courtney Group of Companies, Dr Wale Babalakin, over a N13.4bn debt…But, for “clerical errors”, one of the properties in Lagos would have been taken over on Friday”. PUNCH, Monday, February 11, 2013, p 30.

The easiest racket to run in Nigeria today concerns job vacancies. Either by posters, or through adverts in newspapers or by word of mouth, scammers smile all the way to the bank offering jobs that oftentimes don’t even exist. Governments and their agencies account now for the lion’s share of this growing and lucrative crime.

The Minister of Agriculture, once a brilliant prospect for his position, is gradually giving his Fellow Nigerians more jokes than food with every announcement coming out of that Ministry. His latest joke about supplying ten million GSM phones to farmers has received a lot of attention in the media; there is no need to over-flog the issue.

Till today, the top twenty countries remain among the most disciplined and have the lowest tolerances for corruption and laxity. Till today no Minister in Japan, or Russia, can promise to add so many megawatts of power and fail to do so without losing his job and being black-listed permanently from public appointment.