Posted by By TUNDE RAHIM and BOLU-OLU ESHO, Ado-Ekiti on
The Action Congress (AC) has described the first six months of the Yar'Adua administration as an exercise in tentative governance as well as inconsistent and incoherent policies, saying it is the exact opposite of what is expected from an administration presiding over a nation that is in a hurry to develop.
The Action Congress (AC) has described the first six months of the Yar'Adua administration as an exercise in tentative governance as well as inconsistent and incoherent policies, saying it is the exact opposite of what is expected from an administration presiding over a nation that is in a hurry to develop.
In a statement issued in Abuja on Tuesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said a critical assessment of the Yar'Adua administration's first six months in office, in some key areas, leads to an inevitable conclusion: This government has been groping in the dark while the citizens suffer!
AC said: 'Six months in the life of this administration offer enough opportunities to assess its performance, or at worst its sense of direction. This is because it is midway to the administration's first year, or one-eighth of its total life span of four years, all things being equal.
'But when we consider key areas in which the president committed himself to certain benchmarks during his electioneering, we can conveniently say that the administration has only been groping in the dark.''
The party did a sector by sector analysis of the performance of the administration and concluded that it lagged behind in the expectation of Nigerians.
On security, for instance, the party said: 'Perhaps this is one area in which this administration has failed woefully in the past six months. The main reason for the existence of any government is the welfare and security of its people. You have to be alive to enjoy economic prosperity, if at all there is any. But what do we have now? Life has become so short and brutish. Armed robbers are on the rampage, violent crimes are on the increase and the police seem to be overwhelmed. Even the government is at its wits end."
It equally noted the failure of the government to stabilize power supply, which it had made a priority during electioneering.
The party said: 'Six months on, no emergency has been declared, and no concrete effort has been taken to, at least, start addressing the situation. If anything, the power situation has worsened. Today, darkness has enveloped the land, providing the right atmosphere for evil forces to thrive.
'Instructively, the administration has even said it does not have the resources to continue with the power projects which the last administration hurriedly cobbled together to hoodwink an unsuspecting public.
'The issue of power is so critical to the health of the economy. A steady supply of electricity, or at the worst a fairly stable power supply, will create millions of jobs as industries crippled by the power shortage will burst to life."
On roads, it said the Yar'Adua administration has not charted any road map on how to rehabilitate the roads or even build new ones to reduce the pressure on the existing roads, while unemployment rate had worsened.
The party warned: 'If this issue of unemployment is not addressed urgently, we labour in vain trying to bring down the high crime rate. Unemployment and crime rate are ultimately a matter of cause and effect."
On Niger Delta, AC said the government has failed to make any headway in ending the crisis in the region.
The party also scored the Yar'Adua administration low in handling the economy, while conceding to it pass mark in the rule of law.
But it said 'the hood does not make the monk! After rule of law, the people need food on their tables, they need to be safe to carry out their daily chores. They need constant electricity. They need good roads. They need proper health care, just to mention a few.
'The administration must reach out to all stakeholders, irrespective of their political leanings, in seeking and getting their input into the evolvement of a policy that will fast-track the nation's development.
'We don't mean the kind of platform offered by the so-called Government of National Unity (GNU), which is a euphemism for ‘come and chop'. We don't want pigs to again gather at the trough in the name of finding solutions to our problems.
We mean a serious national mobilisation effort that will help turn things around for the better. Nigerians cannot afford a transition from a government that offered a lot a motion without movement to one that is simply an epitome of inaction, or at best a go-slow administration."