OPINION

President Muhammadu Buhari undertakes the political ritual of Independence Day broadcast to the nation this Sunday morning, in a speech that highlights major strides in the pet themes of the administration: anti corruption, war against terrorism, economic revival and infrastructure development.

The President comes before the nation with a better result than he had-shown the year before.

This is an important year for Nigeria, not only because the economy has just exited recession.  The fight against terrorism has turned the corner with Boko Haram pushed to the fringes of the Lake Chad, restricted to hit-and-run strikes.  In this fight, Nigeria is no longer standing alone.  We are being supported by our neighbours and the international community.

On the war against corruption, the President, in a story he told the cabinet illustrated  how far the war had come.

Fifteen years ago, he said, someone hinted to him that a day will come in Nigeria when they will show a man a house he owned and he will say “no, it is not mine,” denying thereby its ownership. Knowing Nigerians, the President himself did not apparently believe this will happen in his lifetime. But we are already there.

Nothing confirms this more than the eerie silence in the courtroom when the Lagos High Court  judge, Justice Chuka Obiazor asked the question: who owned that Diezani Allison-Madueke USD 37.5 million Banana Island property? No one stepped forward to claim it. It was thereafter forfeited to the federal government. In the same way and manner several others are being so forfeited.

With serious efforts being made to improve the ease of doing business, government just instituted a visa-on-arrival scheme at our major airports. We may not be clearing goods in 24 hours at the ports just yet, but things have changed so much, to the point that importers no longer wait for eternity to remove their goods from the Lagos Harbour.

Violence in the name of religion and ethnicity is being tackled as effectively as can be done.  The success against Boko Haram in the North-East is being matched with success in the North Central States, troubled by farmers-herdsmen. There is now a gradual return of calm and order, in turn paving the way to the return of workers to the farmlands and increasing food production.

In the South-East, the proscription of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB has removed tensions in much of the country, bringing with it relief that the nation is not up in flames as its promoters had planned.

The President comes before the nation against the backdrop of a bumper farm production that hit a new record high, impacting positively on the economy by hammering away at food price inflation.

In his speech while presenting the 2017 ‘Budget of Recovery and Growth,’ President Buhari restated his abiding belief in the adage that a nation that cannot feed herself is a slave nation. He described this period as one of great opportunity.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) defined this as thus: “If you had to sum up our vision for the Nigerian economy in a few words, these would suffice. Grow what we eat, produce what we consume.”

Speaking on the same issue, the Minister of State, Agriculture Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, who frowned at the nation’s  $22 billion annual food import bill, said: “We are at a very critical time in our nation building. The cardinal objective of this administration is to see how we can feed ourselves in the shortest possible time because we can no longer afford the import bill of $22 billion on staple foods. So the objective of this government is to be able to produce enough food for ourselves and export.”

It will not amount to an overstatement to say on this day, October 1, the real independence we must be  celebrating is freedom from enslavement to foreign food sources and the arrival of that moment that has seen us are feeding ourselves as a nation.  Government just won a major victory against food importation and food price inflation.  It is a critical battle won with a direct bearing on the budget of all citizens. As a saying goes,the touchstone of a good administration of any government lies in the benefits that accrue to the last person.

The economic situation in 2015 when he took power was broken, characterized by mismanagement and corruption; a primitive type of corruption that weakened the ability of government to tackle poverty, at the same time holding the nation from the race towards development. At a time when oil earnings had dropped significantly, President Buhari inherited a country heavily dependent on food imports but he realized soon enough that for things to change, he needed to usher in an era of expansion in agricultural production.

Nature herself became more generous.  The rains were good this year and last year and this, combined with government policies on local fertilizer production that is about to deliver 10 million bags by the year’s end and delivering credit to farmers on low interest.  All these, coupled with the supply of improved seeds have together led to increases in crop and cereals production, fisheries, eggs, poultry and these are still getting better.

Local fertilizer production has led to annual foreign exchange saving of more than USD200 million and eliminated annual subsidies in the region of N60 billion.  The cost per bag of widely-used NPK brand dropped from N11,000 to the current price of N5,500. Growth in agriculture has in turn translated to good fortune not only for farmers but also for producers of consumer goods due to increase in purchasing power.  The National Hajj Commission said 80 percent of this year’s pilgrims were farmers. In many of our towns and villages, young men are abandoning the occupation of driving Okada and taking to the farms.

Following increased efforts by the security agencies particularly the Customs, this county’s agriculture is emerging from the strangulating competition of foreign food suppliers who have swamped our markets with foreign food at prices that are subsidized by foreign governments. When country neighboring you with a population of less that 1/20 to this country’s becomes the world’s second largest importer of parboiled rice, you that a new game  is in play.

As we celebrate the 57th year of our political independence, which many radicals had derisively called flag independence, it is apt that the nation steps forward to mark the freedom from the political and economic shortsightedness of the past that tied Nigerians to the consumption of imported food.

With everyday, month and year, government under President Muhammadu Buhari is unraveling problems that have absorbed the public mind for years without solutions in sight.

Government policy of economic diversification is leading to a multiplication of wealth and riches for those who have seized the moment.

As the President said in that budget speech, “Across the country, our farmers, traders and transporters are seeing a shift in their fortunes. Nigerians who preferred imported products are now consuming made in Nigeria products. From Argungu in Kebbi to Abakalaki in Ebonyi, rice farmers and millers are seeing their products move. We must replicate such success in other staples like wheat, sugar, soya, tomato and dairy products.”

Although Nigeria is not the only country to face the problem of food price inflation, the Buhari administration had in the past two years come under unprecedented attacks by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.  However, now that the administration has overcome that volley, this talking point has  suddenly disappeared from their lips. Month after month, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS has reported government as having put in place good policies and actions  that are taming the monster of inflation.

The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN correspondents recently visited markets in Plateau, Benue, Nassarawa, Kogi, Niger and Taraba States and found that food costs have gone down.

NAN found that nine tubers of yam, which used to cost an average of N3,000 were sold for between N1,300 to N1,500 depending on their sizes.

The price of Garri, Cassava flour, according to NAN had come down from N380 and N400 per measure to between N220 to N260.

A farmer in the region attributed this change of food prices to good rains, return to farming by the youths and the security situations (which) has improved, making it possible for farmers to go to their farms.

Elsewhere in the country, reports show that a 100 kg bag of Guinea corn, maize or millet which cost N16,000  a year ago now sell for as low as N8,000.  One hundred kilogram bag of home grown rice is down to N20,000 from N32,000. One hundred kilogram of of beans is down to N26,000 from more than N30,000 a year ago.

What all these tell you is that government is aware of the problems facing the citizens and is working day and night to solve them.

President Buhari has a vision of building a new nation which resents and fights corruption, free of terrorism and a nation in which the poor have food to eat and a roof over their heads; a country in which the youths are job creators, not job seekers.

What it means to achieve food self-sufficiency is that the scarce foreign exchange available to the country can be used to procure plant, equipment and industrial machinery to drive the industrialization of the country; that we will not be spending all the money we earn on food import but spare much of it to develop infrastructure as the administration is already doing with power, railway and roads.

The strive for the achievement of food self-sufficiency in two years of the Buhari administration is gradually ushering in the real independence for the people of Nigeria without any dramatic flair. In the coming years, government policy as manifested by the school feeding program will take us from food security to nutrition security and hopefully, to a country in which no one is hungry. A country in which the people grow what we eat, and eat what we grow.

I met Professor Itse Sagay for the first and only time thus far one evening in the early 1990s. It was at his office in the law firm he set up somewhere around Alaka area of Surulere in Lagos after being forced out of the University of Benin—where he was dean of law—by a dominant reactionary group which could no longer stand his principled position on issues of the day.

Then, one young lawyer, Ogaga Ifowodo, worked in the firm. It was those heady days of fervent pro-democracy activities, when the term “hidden agenda” was a popular refrain ascribed to the transition rigmarole of the military regime of Ibrahim Babangida. I was then a staff writer at TELL magazine and had walked into Sagay’s office for an interview on the state of the nation.

Recalling the encounter now, it is striking that the learned senior advocate still retains the penetrating intellect and clear-sighted forthrightness with which he dissected military rule and its destructive effects on the polity. Then, as now, one could feel a man oozing with genuine patriotism as he radiated an acute sense of equity and justice, and awareness of the imperatives of democratic accountability and good governance as preconditions for the survival of Nigeria as a corporate entity. In a country swarming with an army of incorrigibly dishonest, thieving, opportunistic, wicked and self-centred elites whose only passion is to relish the mind-numbing suffering of the vast majority of the people, a man like Sagay is often hard to come by.

Put him in the same league with contemporaries like Gani Fawehinmi, Alao Aka-Bashorun and a few other irrepressible senior citizens at the front of the unending struggle for the triumph of social justice and orderly society, and the categorization would just be apt. A distinguished academic, titan of the legal profession and accomplished rights activist imbued with an indomitable DNA for saying it as it is, Sagay is also a dyed-in-the-wool defender of the oppressed. There are very, very few Nigerians of his privileged status who are consistently putting their heads on the chopping blocks in advancing the cause of a better society.

From his effusions, there is no doubt that Sagay is extremely angry about how post-colonial Nigeria has been terribly mismanaged over the decades by successive leaders—rulers more appropriately. And justifiably so, because no one who lives in Nigeria or lives elsewhere but aware of the great potential of the country would not be thoroughly disgusted by the long years of abominable leadership served by politicians and the military. In fact, not to be angry about Nigeria’s development trajectory would amount to a criminal diminution of the essence of being a stakeholder in the viability of one’s country.

Therefore, only individuals and groups such as the APC party leadership who have so far shown clearly that they are beneficiaries of the prevailing dysfunctional system will be affronted by Sagay’s anger, deployed in intermittent but consistent critical takes on the country’s situation, especially under a party that promised wholesale change but is still busy, after more than two years, struggling to spell what it promised. The typical “rogue elephant” that it is, the leadership has displayed crass incompetence to the point of unwittingly serving as the agency for the gradual depletion of the goodwill that earned it victory at the 2015 polls.

Rather than attack one with a long-standing tradition of objective criticisms, the party should honestly search its soul to find out whether Sagay was not correct in his assessment of its leadership. Given the timid, cry-baby response often witnessed when issues demand firm and decisive action from the party, which honest observer will not vindicate Sagay by handing down a verdict of unforgivable weakness on the party leadership? For example, yes, it is supposed to be a democracy, but the routine open defiance of the party by members undermines party cohesion, and any leadership that allows that attitude to linger qualifies to be described as not only weak, but also incompetent and directionless.

When a man who is not a member of the party but works for a government formed by the party offers a dispassionate critique of the party, no matter how blistering, the party would do itself great favour by stepping back to take a holistic look at its modus operandi. To reflexively hit back at Sagay without any iota of shame, describing him as one who was retrieved from “oblivion” to serve this government, is not only wrong, but also insults the integrity of one of the authentic champions and enablers of the current democracy, in spite of its glaring distortions, that the APC leadership enjoys today. Sagay has never been in “oblivion”; instead, since the start of the 4^th Republic he has always lent his courageous voice to issues concerning how to create a better Nigeria.

And the APC leadership must know this: Sagay is one of the very few people who confer credibility on this government and make the public view it with some respect. No one, other than President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, enjoys that status. Certainly, Sagay is not a man to trifle with. It is not for nothing that he was appointed Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC). And without his expert input, there is no way the anti-corruption war would make this much progress.

Therefore, instead of seeking to counter Sagay’s well-meaning criticisms, the APC leadership should first be full of thanks to Buhari for bringing such a man on board, and then shower praises on Sagay for his invaluable service to the APC and the country.

Godwin Onyeacholem is a journalist. He can be reached through email: gonyeacholem@gmail.com