As Nigerians continue to debate the appropriateness or otherwise of the recent hike in the price of fuel and electricity tariff, President Muhammadu Buhari expressed the determination of the present administration to provide stable electricity to every home and industry.
To achieve that objective, the president said the federal government would consider the economic challenges individuals, families and businesses have to contend with.
The president spoke during the First Year Ministerial Performance Review Retreat held at the State House Conference Centre in Abuja.
Represented by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the retreat, the president said the target of providing 11,000 megawatts by 2023 is, indeed, realistic and realizable.
Tellingly, the president said that having adequate supply of electricity would strengthen operations of many businesses and improve the living conditions of Nigerians.
He said that the crucial decision to increase tariff on electricity was made at the beginning of the year, before the outbreak of the COVID-19. He, expectedly, and rightly so, argued that failure to take the seemingly painful decision would be detrimental to the economy as the country will, inevitably, witness “regular light cuts.”
The president is right because, owing to the importance of electricity to the country’s economy, it will be unfair for government to delay or refuse to take decision that could make the product adequate and its supply better.
Agreed, this decision is painful to Nigerians, but it is necessary and the pains are temporary. In fact, in considering the importance of electricity to economic development, it can be arguably said that citizens’ focus should ideally be on adequate supply, not tariff.
After all, electricity is a major contributor to a country’s economic development. It is the wheel that drives most aspects of everyday life in a society. A country is a compendium of activities and people whose progress is driven by the infrastructural components.
Electricity is the source of fuel for so many sectors of an economy. We all live by electricity. Our hospitals need electricity for the safe delivery of children and for surgery and other purposes. Our airports need electricity to work and ensure the safety of aviation industry.
Every country lives by the activities of its workforce and electricity is the number one amenity that is the lifeblood of many activities in the country. It is essential for industries, which all need electricity to power their engines.
The welding and other artistry fields in the country need electricity to be able to work, and all aspects of life in today’s world are reflecting around electricity.
Electricity is so important to the economic development of every country because it brings investment opportunities for the country. In a country with a fair share of electricity, investors come in because the cost of production is minimal compared to where there is no electricity.
No doubt, electricity is cheaper compared with running on power generators. Electricity helps to reduce mortality rate in the country because the hospitals will be efficiently powered and such is a key factor in service delivery at hospitals.
In countries with better electricity, good production and preservation are higher. In such environments, agriculture productivity is high because the electricity can help in powering irrigation, food preservation and seed preservations. They enable the country to have fewer damages to agriculture products because they can be kept in storage facilities to avoid wasting them.
Electricity improves the standard of living of the people in the country. This is very important for the economic advancement of a country. If the people live in better conditions, it has ripple effects on every aspect of the country.
It reduces unwarranted expenditures for the government. It improves the security of the county and helps to create job opportunities for the entire country because the indirect sectors use the electricity to power their businesses.
Essentially, in a country, development occurs when key drivers of the economy are unhindered by lack of infrastructural components of the country.
Therefore, if development is what Nigerians yearn for, we must support the present administration in its bid to provide and guarantee adequate power supply, without which there can be no development.
Other than supporting the administration, it is crucial for people to believe the president when he said that the government is extremely mindful of the pains that higher prices mean at this time and his administration does not take the sacrifices that all Nigerians have to make for granted.
It should be noted that it only takes an honest leader like the p to say: “Let me say frankly that like many Nigerians, I have been very unhappy about the quality of service given by the Discos, but there are many constraints including poor transmission capacity and distribution capacity.”
Other than that, the president also said that the federal government is not “insensitive to the current economic difficulties our people are going through and the very tough economic situation we face as a nation, and we certainly will not inflict hardship on our people.”
Still, on its part, the government should cushion the effects of pains caused the increase in fuel price and electricity tariff, especially among the most vulnerable people.
Resisting the temptation of tenure elongation
Speaking from the heart, President Muhammadu Buhari, this week, appealed to ECOWAS leaders to resist the temptation to elongate their tenure in office beyond constitutional limits.
Speaking while presenting Nigeria’s General Statement at the 57th Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Heads of State and Government in Niamey, Niger Republic, the president urged his colleagues to respect tenure constitutional provisions and, when time arose, conduct free and fair elections.
“…we need to adhere to the constitutional provisions of our countries, particularly on term limits,” he said, pointing out that “this is one area that generates crisis and political tension in our sub-region.”
On this note, the president cannot, in any way, be faulted. In fact, a survey showed that almost three-quarters of citizens in the 34 African countries support restricting leaders to two terms.
Of course, it’s not hard to see why: of the longest ruling non-royal leaders in the world, the top five are in Africa, and the likes of Cameroon, Western Sahara, Equatorial Guinea, and Chad have not only had the same ruler for decades but also rank among the lowest on human development indicators.
Popular protests against the personalisation of rule exemplify the discrepancy between the preferences of the political elite and the citizens they purport to represent.
The question of how to best reflect the will of the people in a country’s leadership cuts to the very heart of democracy. And the argument that people should be free to vote for whomever they want – even if that candidate has already been in power for two terms or longer – has some persuasive power.
However, all democracies face problems of representation, and emerging democracies in particular, tend to face high levels of inequality and authoritarian legacies – and with regards to these challenges, term limits offer a promising solution.
Of course, discussion over term limits is neither started by the president nor is it exclusive to Africa. In other continents too, some politicians favour scrapping term limits for elected representatives.
Opponents of the term limits argue that they are anti-democratic because they constrain voters’ choices. But, in reality, they do the opposite by lowering barriers to political participation which is an essential element of democracy.
No doubt, term limit serves as a mechanism to ensure equal opportunity to serve in government. Limiting terms plays a stabilising role, particularly in Africa, where leaders have authoritarian legacies and where political competition has a tendency to devolve into “zero-sum game.”
However, it is pertinent to note that authoritarian legacies in Africa have their roots in colonial state apparatuses, which were designed to facilitate resource extraction and relied on state control over its subjects.
The state became a bastion of wealth and a locus of exclusionary power, so access to the state guaranteed access to resources and security, usually at the expense of excluded groups.
Now, African states have achieved their independence from colonial masters and resources deposited by nature in the continent must belong to Africans.
In the end, it should be noted too that term limits play a stabilising role by levelling the political playing field and it has been shown to facilitate democratic development.
Again, just as the president has highlighted, term limits and respect for that offer a powerful antidote to many of the problems that lead to political violence in Africa.
Increasingly vocal civil society groups across many African countries clearly recognise that, and are striving to uphold the importance of term limits – but it remains to be seen whether the ECOWAS leaders will listen to the president and put the interests of their citizens ahead of personal ambition.
