May 5, 2021, marked 11 years of the demise of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the day all Nigerians were in tears over the loss of one whose agenda were likely to salvage the country.
The 7-point agenda of Yar’adua gave priority to the following area: Nigeria has been experiencing power problem, resulting in the nation’s industries not working, and the few ones functioning are getting moribund. As such, Nigeria depended largely on importation, as our locally made products lack quantity and quality.
Yar’Adua’s target as number one agenda was to revamp the power sector aimed at the developing sufficient and adequate power supply to ensure Nigeria’s ability to compete as a modern economy and achieve full industrialization by 2015. He declared a national emergency on energy and power supply to increase power supply to 10,000 megawatts (mw) in 2011 and 50,000 mw by 2015.
On infrastructural development, Yar’Adua developed a plan aimed of deploying resource through joint venture cash calls for development of the social sector institutions such as education and health; to ensure every person in Nigeria receives free education and have access to well equipped health facility.
Toward boosting agricultural in order to make food cheaper and available to every Nigerian, Yar’Adua set an agendum of coming on with agrarian based, anchored program on the desire for wealth creation in order to make a shift from the undue emphasis on oil.
The emphasis would be on the development of modern technology, research, financial injection into research, production and the development of agricultural inputs, among others. This is expected to revolutionalise the agricultural sector, leading to a 5-10 fold increase in yield and food production in the country.
On creation of wealth to the nation, as Nigeria depends largely on revenue from non-renewal oil, Nigeria is yet to develop industrial capacity; he developed a plan focused on wealth creation through the diversification of production, especially, in the agricultural and solid mineral sub-sectors.
The nation’s transport sector is characterised by poor state and network of roads with inefficient means of mass transportation of people and goods. Transportation involves road and rail development. He planned to kick off the rehabilitation and modernization of the Nigerian railway and the construction of new road network across the country as well as constant rehabilitation of existing ones.
He set an agendum to reform the land law system, the main aim of the land reform was to change the existing land laws and ensure the emergence of land reforms that will optimize Nigeria’s growth through the release of land for commercial farming and other large scale business by the private sector. Achieving this will ensure unhindered access to land to boost output and improve capacity for wealth creation.
Yar’Adua was trying to shape the nation’s security architecture by ensuring that security of lives and property of every citizen is guarantee by improving the internal and external investment climate. Security should not only be seen as a constitutional requirement but also a necessary infrastructure for the development of a modern Nigeria.
Education as the last agendum; Yar’Adua wanted to ensure free and qualitative education for every Nigerian child. He came up which two-fold reforms in the education sector, one is to ensure the minimum acceptable international standards of education for all, and second is to achieve, a strategic educational development plan that will ensure excellence in both the tutoring and learning of skills in science and technology by students who will be seen as the future innovators and industrialists of Nigeria.
On this basis, the Buhari administration should reconsider the aforementioned agenda, build on their own so as to have an urgent solution to the nation’s problems; it will also serve as a reminder for Nigerians in memory of the late president.
Abubakar Iliya,
Department of Mass Communication,
University of Maiduguri
