Former Director General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Dr. Mike Omeri on Friday urged President Bola Tinubu to review his strategies of providing enduring governance for the good of Nigeria and Nigerians or prepare to face total disappointment and reversal of fortunes.
Exchanging views with journalists in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, Omeri said that the zeal and 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 “mediocres who play with toys”.
According to the former NOA DG, national growth has continued to suffer setback because competent Nigerians were being sacrificed for those who won elections and given opportunity to decide the fate of the country, even if they have nothing to offer. He said: “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”.
He explained that 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 would get for themselves.
Omeri further said: “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 four 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, and 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”.
While appealing to leaders at all levels to re-institutionalise the nation’s values and tradition, Omeri also urged them to deemphasised appointment being made based on “who you know if the nation must make progress”.
He said: “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 saying this will curb japa syndrome, create employment and steady the things we value including, our culture, heritage and the environment”.
