2022 New Year Message, By Segun Showunmi

In a few hours we would have crossed over to the new year, in reflecting on the year gone by, I am drawn to thank the lord God Almighty for how far we have come as a people. Surely, with the pandemic supposedly in its 4th wave, we have noticed that its effect is not as devastating on our social life as the year before where we could hardly gather to sing the Christmas Carols. We must be happy for indeed the mercy of God endureth. We must nevertheless not be careless, we must pay attention to all the COVID19 protocols until the siege is finally over.

The year 2022 will be demanding on us as its a year leading to the election year 2023, and as it is expected the national space will be more politically energized with its attendant consequences. Bearing this in mind, it is important that moderation and civility must characterize our activities. I therefore call on all security agencies across the length and breath of our country to be more observant and responsive to any potential breach of the peace. Politicians must be made to conform to the dignity of democracy which in my opinion is a contest of ideas aimed at service to humanity.

On the economy, greater effort must be put into things that can grow the Nigerian economy and a sure place to start will be a reworked process by which small scale enterprises will be helped to grow and contribute more, for that is the surest way to stem the unemployment bulge which is very high right now.

We must soberly accept that our present arrangement is inappropriate for the security challenges we are confronted with which has not abated for so long. Only fools will refuse to change when change is all the needed effort to stem the orgy of violence and criminality that has characterized our nation. We cannot refuse to embrace multilayered policing if we mean to confront this ugly situation. States are matured enough to be allowed to have their police, the fear of abuse pans away in the face of our security challenges. It is brainless and lazy to think we cannot fathom how to do this even with the present governance structure that we presently have.

Electoral Reform; democracy as an ideal is not stagnant, as such, a people practicing democracy must never shy away from improving the accessibility of the people to the decision making process. In a democracy, without an improved electoral process we would be impeding the entire idea. People must be given an electoral process that is fit for the purpose. In our case we must liberalize the candidate selection process for that’s where the choices available to the people starts from. The present arrangements where a handful of Governors constitute themselves into bullies of the candidate selection process cannot truly be democratic. A system must be put in place where dues paying members of the political parties will have a say in who their flag bearers are, will to my mind be more democratic as it will encourage a larger number of our citizens to get involved in the democratic process at party levels, knowing that they have a stake in who is chosen to represent them.

There is no overstating that the transmission of results needs less human interference and electronic transfer of result right from the polling unit straight to the national collation centers is progress. We have observed continuously over the years that results are tampered with and outcomes changed as a direct consequence of how we handle the will of the people once they have casted their votes. There is nothing to be gained if the status quo is maintain save for bickering, endless litigations and most ashamedly the disenfranchisement of democracy, for what is the point in a flawed process that throwaway the will of the people.

Many conversations have occurred as to how do we live within the shared national boundary, Nigeria. Some have captured it under the popular term restructuring, which to their mind, a round table will be needed to take in the views of all ethnic nationalities. Much thoughts given to the idea has left me with a settled opinion that yes we must give more powers and authority to the constituents components of our country, as it will unleash our potential as a rainbow nation and it will engender peace, progress and prosperity. We have wobbled enough, it’s time to stand up and walk like the Giant of Africa that we are meant to be.

We must be decisive in our fight against corruption and I believe the best place to start is with the managers of our subnational economies aka The Governors. I cringe watching these set of people stride across our country in boastfulness and undue arrogance, many of who are just stealing their states blind with little or nothing to show for the huge resources that accrue to the state. All around you observe that the present effort at fighting corruption is way too selective and damn too lackadaisical making one to wonder if we are serious at all. A good place to start is to begin to profile and go after governors in the penultimate years as a way to slow down the graft we all are witnesses to, that way we will hold them to better account of their stewardship. We cannot continue to stumble on the same stone.

As we commenced the new year it is my prayer that according to the word of scripture “Change the former way of life that was part of the person you once were, corrupted by deceitful desires. Instead, renew the thinking in your mind by the Spirit and clothe yourself with the new person created according to God’s image in justice and true holiness.” — Ephesians 4:22-24.

I believe that if we all as Nigerians commit to this, we can be assured that our God who has been faithful to us in the past will be ever faithful to us in the new year.
Welcome to 2022 and May the lord bless and keep us all.

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