As 2012 winds up, Nigerians are assessing the performance of politicians in position of authority vis-à-vis the promises and targets they set at the beginning of the year.
The Executive Director of the Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development, Otive Igbuzor, who was a guest on Channels Television’s flagship, News at 10, assessed the performance of President Goodluck Jonathan in 2012.
Mr Igbuzor based his assessment of President Jonathan’s performance on how the Nigerian leader had dealt with the challenges of infrastructural development, Security, delivery of services, corruption, and poverty.
“There are certain positive things the government did for the past one year,” Mr Igbuzor said.
He gave examples of the positive things the Jonathan-led government have done in 2012 to include the signing of the Freedom of Information (FOI) act, the investigation into alleged fraud in the fuel subsidy fund management and the review of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
“However, there are huge challenges for instance in the area of security,” Mr Igbuzor said.
He said he expected that the government would have formulated a strategy that would involve both the security operatives and the citizens in the fight against terrorism in Nigeria.
“In other countries where you have these kind of challenges; challenges of bombing, challenges of terrorist attacks; the citizens have roles to play in terms of even the awareness and what to do and where to report to. Up till today they don’t have any concrete simple number you can call when you have people who are suspicious,” he said.
Mr Igbuzor said though Nigerians thought President Jonathan appointed the right people to lead the fight against corruption “but there is a major challenge with the anti-corruption fight in the country.”
On power generation and supply, Mr Igbuzor said though it was good to have drafted a roadmap towards reforming the power sector, “but in reality the quantity of power – the level of megawatt – is not improving as expected by citizens.”
