2023 polls will make or mar Nigeria – Ojukwu

…Says Nigerians must elect President, Governors who will use collective wisdom to revive economy

From Boniface Okoro, Umuahia

A renowned Abia-born Economist, Agu Ojukwu, has predicted that the 2023 general elections would be a make or mar polls for Nigeria.

Ojukwu, while briefing newsmen in Umuahia, the Abia State capital, said that Nigeria would only escape the impending doom of sinking as a nation only if they elect leaders who could fix the economy in six months.

Ojukwu emphasized that such leaders, especially the President and Governors must be willing to deploy collective wisdom of the people, particularly, economists and development experts, to revive the country’s dwindling economy.

“This 2023 election is a make or mar election. Whether anybody likes it or not, if this election fails, everything will scatter,” Ojukwu warned.

“Nigeria is embarking on a make or mar 2023 general election. Presidential and Gubernatorial aspirants are already talking about how they will fix the economy in four to eight years, a programme which all successive administrations, since the civil war ended undertook under various titles with limited success, as none of these administrations, at any level, tried to fix the economy as a system, using the fail-safe approach.

“This resulted in a steady emasculation of the economy and culminated in the negative synergy that Nigeria is experiencing and suffering today.

“There is no guarantee that any of these aspirants and candidates can turn the tide using his sole knowledge or that the electorate can elect the more capable of the lot with their present mindset, orientation and gullibility, hence this press conference.

“The only thing that will guarantee the change of the status quo is to advocate the election of aspirants and candidates that are likely to use the collective wisdom of the people to lead them.

“This collective wisdom refers to the best idea (approach, method, process, knowledge, skill and tool) that emerges from a competition of ideas conducted for that purpose,” he said.

According to the Strategic Management/Organisation Development Consultant “since the civil war ended, no Nigerian government has succeeded in fixing the economy, attributing this to lack of a developed economic system. “People have been developing the component

parts of the economy, but they have never developed the economy as a system. No economy grows when industries are dying,” he said.

He said that aspirants or candidates promising provision of infrastructure have nothing to offer but those who have plans to build a sustainable economic system.

“Building roads, providing water and electricity are not the starting point of economic development. They are actually social overhead infrastructure to support businesses,” he said.

He noted the critical factor in the 2023 polls was about electing capable hands and advised that more attention should be paid to choosing the President and Governors because “80 per cent of the factors of success of their level economy can be influenced by them while only 20 per cent can be influenced by other stakeholders.”

Proposing how the President to be elected in 2023 could tackle the teething economic problems facing the country,  Ojukwu asserted that the national economy could be “rapidly emancipated to start working effectively within three to six months,” using an intellectual process.

“This is guaranteed as long as the new President is willing to use the scientific means and tackle the real issues…. The process for doing this is knowing the score, finding the improvement needs, introducing the requisites changes and controlling the process.

“Economy problem solving can only be made evident through a deliberate search-for-fact-and-truth effort, using a scientific (professional, systematic, and methodical) process that is spot on, evidentiary and easily repeatable and verifiable,” he added.

In order to achieve the envisaged revamping of the economy, Ojukwu made several appeals to the electorate and agencies concerned with the electoral process.

He appealed to political parties to “nominate the most likely person who can be open minded and seek to use the collective wisdom of the people to emancipate the economy so that it can inspire businesses and everyone to dream more, strive more, and reach their inherent potential.”The Consultant equally appealed to INEC to ensure that candidates are made to engage in debates with each other, as well as be questioned by voters on competence issues;  and appealed to the electorate to “stop signing praise” because it does not “add value.”

Rather he advised the electorate “to hear and question all aspirants profusely on the policies and programmes they plan to introduce to make the various industry types gain industrial competitiveness and thus create opportunities for investors to prosper before deciding on an aspirant or candidate to vote for.”

To those seeking political offices, Ojukwu said they should tell the electorate how they will take them to the future of their individual potentials, adding that they should “seek to understand the mechanism for rapid economic development because the people have become impatient and will not tolerate any delay in improving their lives,” and “realize that government is about people and not things.”

He said the incumbent President and State Governors should provide the basis for measuring growth of the economy by “quickly conducting a productivity  measurement of the national and state economies to reveal the score and show if the national and state economies  truly have the capacity to inspire businesses and the people to superior performance or not, so that aspirants and candidate can see the truth now and start planning how to fix the productive gap as soon as they win their election.”