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Buhari’s request and Europe’s interest

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3 years ago

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari, in an article he wrote to mark Nigeria’s participation at the just concluded 6th EU-Africa summit in Brussels, Belgium, called on European leaders to create employment opportunities for Africans in Africa to stem the tide of migration to Europe.

The President, in the article published in Politico, called for collaboration between Africa and Europe to stop the mass migration of African youths to Europe, noting that while the development drains the continent of its talent pool, it also provokes political crises in Europe.

The concerns raised by President Buhari in the article are quite germane. One of the major challenges of Nigeria as a country is high unemployment rate. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), unemployment rate currently stands at 33.3 per cent. The unengaged youths champion restiveness, violence and other vices. So, I share the President’s concern about the growing unemployment rate. But his request sounds outré. Why should Europe embark on a project that would deprive it of great talents from Africa? Why should the continent take a position that is not to its advantage? A survey of all major sectors in Europe would reveal Africans playing critical roles in such sectors. To think that Europe would support any scheme that would keep highly qualified and talented Africans away from Europe is to think amiss. As it was in the past when Africans’ brawns built Europe, so it is now when Africans’ brains are developing Europe.

Although Europe may support job creation in Africa, the best it can give is tokenism. The hope of Africa’s economic growth cannot be hinged on Europe’s intervention. To expect anything better is to wait for yesterday. The earlier African leaders understand this, the better for the continent and its people.

The question President Buhari and other African leaders should answer is why do Africans stake their all to migrate to Europe and other parts of the world? There have been stories of Nigerians leaving plum jobs, pawning all they have just to travel abroad. There have been instances of those who died in Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea in their bid to get to Europe. Why would anyone risk their lives to live in another country if they could be assured of minimal comfort in their own country?

Buhari’s challenge is to transform Nigeria into a country that cares for the generality of her people, not just a few. He should make Nigeria a country that retains her talents. He should transform Nigeria into a country where the nationals would feel at home and feel wanted.

For him to achieve this, he has to ensure the provision of jobs for as many Nigerians as are willing to work. He also has to ensure that they are well remunerated and are provided an environment that will enable them give their best to the country. To many Nigerians who live abroad, east or west home is the best. They would have opted to stay in their country were there opportunities for them to thrive. But since the opportunities in the country are daily petering out, many Nigerians have decided to look for opportunities beyond the shores of their fatherland.

The President promised to provide job opportunities for Nigerians and efforts are on in that area but the number being bandied around is a far cry from the nation’s requirement. Government cannot employ everyone that needs a job; it has to work with the private sector to accomplish this. At the moment, private companies are groaning under the burden of having to pay so much for diesel with which they power their generators. The cost of generating power has bloated the cost of doing business in the country. This has made imported materials cheaper than the ones produced locally. So, while importers, who add little value to imported items and employ insignificant number of people, are smiling to the banks, manufacturers are daily counting their losses and are forced to lay off workers. Therefore, for the Buhari government to create more employment opportunities in the country, it has to take seriously the issue of power generation and distribution.

I am aware that Buhari is working hard to solve the electricity conundrum. I am also aware that the President believes that if he is able to tackle this particular problem, he will be regarded by many Nigerians as very successful. But I am also aware that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo had good intentions about ensuring the provision of stable electricity. His administration voted about $10billion to revive the sector through the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP). Similarly, late President Umaru Yar’Adua had good intentions about improving electricity generation in the country. For this reason, his administration approved a special intervention fund of about $5.09bn to the sector to facilitate the generation of 6,000 megawatts by the end of 2009. Immediate Past President Goodluck Jonathan also voted huge sums of money to electricity generation, transmission and distribution. But despite these huge investments, adequate electricity supply seems to be light years ahead of Nigerians. Why?

Corruption is at the root of the problem. The investment between 1999 and 2022 of over $30 billion in the energy sector should have yielded better results but because corruption is institutionalised in Nigeria, the bulk of the money went down the drain. While it is true that Buhari is striving to succeed where his predecessors failed, unless he is willing to root out corruption completely from the system, he should not expect any result different from theirs.

But the war against corruption should be total, not selective. Everyone who had wrongly dipped his finger into the nation’s till should have his rendezvous with justice. If the President fights this war and wins, then Nigeria will have stable electricity supply, abundant job opportunities and even Nigerians in the Diaspora will want to return home. However, if he makes it selective, it will not matter what else he does because the demon of corruption will swallow the fruits of his efforts.

It is almost impossible to fight a war without casualties. The casualties of the Buhari-corruption war will be some well-heeled members of the political class who the president may not want to hurt. He has to decide between them and the rest of us. If he fails to fight this battle rightly, he will be an ‘also ran’ president and that will be a terrible bungling of this second and final chance because he won’t be anybody’s hero, not even his well-heeled friends.

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