Memo to Goodluck Jonathan

Dear Acting President

I have refrained from offering my views on what your priorities should be as President until you offered signals that your Presidency would be a real and not notional one. The strategy of your adversaries has been to delay or diminish your ascension to power in order to render you at best a transitional leader-a regent who occupies the throne in a caretaker and ceremonial manner until a substantive head is chosen. Please Dr Jonathan, do not accept this job description! Irrespective of how long or short your reign is, you are the defacto Head of State and Government of Nigeria, and history would judge you on that basis.

Some of your initial actions demonstrate that you understand what is required-removing Michael Aondoakaa as Attorney General; constituting an Advisory Council headed by General T.Y Danjuma (giving you credibility within the military) and composed generally of accomplished persons; replacing General Sarki Muhktar with Lt. Gen Aliyu Gusau as National Security Adviser; and now dissolving the cabinet, all suggest that you understand the dynamics of power in Nigeria. I am sure you recognise that there are some critical institutions whose leadership you must still replace for your hold on power to be complete and assured. In reconstituting the cabinet, while you cannot ignore political constituencies, you must not allow yourself to be blackmailed into appointing as Ministers persons whose loyalties are to other people.

Apart from loyalty, the critical criteria should be performance and integrity. The time left is short, and so you cannot afford to have ministers who will not hit the ground running. Your ministers should be people with a clear understanding of the sectors to which they would be posted. This condition will be particularly critical for power, Niger-Delta, defence, finance, education, health, aviation, transportation, solid minerals and agriculture ministries. You may also need someone with a credible international voice for the external affairs ministry. Many commentators are advising you to forget about running for office in 2011. I think you should ignore such advice, which is probably offered at the behest of persons who intend to discourage you from running in order that they or their sponsors might run! However your actions in this stint in power must be motivated not by any desire to contest for office, but by the desire to transform Nigeria. The irony will be that transform Nigeria, and all options may be open to you!!!

Given the limited term, you need to be focused on a narrow agenda. I suggest that your priorities have been defined by providence-resolving the crisis in the Niger-Delta; finding a sustainable solution to our embarrassing power shortages; and conducting credible, free and fair elections in 2011. I will personally hope you can also accommodate strong action on the anti-corruption front. This does not mean that other areas of governance will be immaterial, but your priorities will have to be limited to these few to maximise your impact. Your best bet will be to appoint extremely competent and honest ministers so that they may also deliver progress across the board.

As a Niger-Deltan, you are well-placed to deal with the situation in the region. I have written several times that the crisis requires massive investment in infrastructure, especially road, rail and marine transportation, provision of skills training and jobs for the youths, better governance by the state and local governments in the region and security and law enforcement. But the fundamental problem relates to the structure of our federalism which arguments about “resource control”, “true federalism”, revenue allocation etc hint of. I suspect however that dialogue around these fundamentals are better deferred till the post-2011 environment. Concerning power, please be assured that there is no mystery about solving our self-imposed crisis. In 2001, a power policy was produced at the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) at around the same time a Telecommunications Policy was also produced.

Both the telecommunications and power policies in fact became laws-the NCC Act 2003 and the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) 2005 respectively. Nigeria has implemented the telecommunications policy almost to the letter and transformed its communications sector. In contrast, entrenched interests first delayed promulgation of the power policy into law by four years (!) and thereafter frustrated the implementation of the law even after its passage. Instead they have thought up several ruses-National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) and huge government sponsored spending all of which have made no impact. The model in EPSRA will work-privatise the generation and distribution units in PHCN; appoint a credible management for the transmission company, encourage private investment in generation and distribution and allow the regulator, National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to function. Since 2007, the government has pretended EPSRA does not exist and wasted national resources in a fake search for alternative solutions!

Your other challenge is to conduct a free and fair election in 2011. Many in your party will put you under pressure to reject such a notion. I am convinced that Nigeria cannot survive another rigged election in 2011 after the 2003 and 2007 fiascos. Do not let history record you as the one who presided over the final nail in our nation’s coffin. Conducting credible elections requires you to immediately reconstitute INEC with fair-minded persons of integrity. Professor Iwu and his colleagues cannot command the trust of Nigerians and the international community.

As I mentioned earlier I hope you can also accommodate effective action against corruption. Without that, the resources, will power, as well as local and international support to transform Nigeria will not be available. I wish you and our nation well.