“We acknowledge that our elections had some shortcomings. Thankfully, we have well-established legal avenues of redress, and I urge anyone aggrieved to pursue them. I also believe that our experiences represent an opportunity to learn from our mistakes. Accordingly, I will set up a panel to examine the entire electoral process with a view to ensuring that we raise the quality and standard of our general elections, and thereby deepen our democracy.”
President Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s inauguration Speech, May 29, 2007.
The above represents the statement of a soft-spoken chemistry lecturer who served as two term Governor of Katsina and eventually President of Nigeria.
He is the man who on May 29, 2007 was honest enough to admit that there were serious problems in the election that gave his ruling party massive landslides at the national, state and local levels but committed willingly to reforms.
Here was a man who vowed to work urgently to quell rising violence in the Niger Delta that had strong impacts on crude oil output in Africa’s biggest producer by a quarter.
That man is the late Umaru Musa Yar’adua. May 5, 2023 made it 13 years since Umaru Musa Yar’adua succumbed to the cold hands of death after a long illness.
Yar’adua had quite a number of policy initiatives that may have helped Nigeria greatly.
- Significant among them was the Niger Delta Amnesty Program which helped restore peace and stability to Niger Delta and helped to reduce violence in the region and increase oil production.
- He also implemented a fiscal responsibility act aimed at improving transparency and accountability in government spending, and established the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority to manage Nigeria’s oil wealth more effectively.
- To his credit, he set up the electoral reform committee spearheaded by the former Chief justice of Nigeria, Muhammadu Uwais. He was however unable to complete such reforms.
- He became the first President in Nigeria to reduced pump price without initially increasing the price. He met the price of petrol at N70 per litre. In June, 2007, just 3 weeks after assuming office, Yar’adua announced the reduction of pump price from N70 to N65 per litre.
There have been largely positive comments about the late President and you can’t help but imagine if he would have ranked as Nigeria’s best President if his life was not shortlived or if he would have succumbed to what they call they the evil juicy pressures/pleasure of public office?
Regardless, Yar’Adua’s life should be a reminder to public office holders that “while life is short, impact lives longer.”
