2023: Nigerians must elect the best President or face disaster – Petroleum expert; Says: ‘It’s now or never O. No margin for error!!’
Nigeria would be irretrievably grounded in 13 years’ time unless a president who knows what to do is elected in the 2023 general election, a petroleum industry expert, Professor Chijioke Nwaozuzu, has said, insisting that compatriots must recognise how crucial the upcoming polls are in order not to make an irreparable mistake when they cast their votes.
Professor Nwaozuzu, who is the Director of the Emerald Energy Institute of the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, who sounded the alarm at a recent event said that unless Nigerians elect a president who knows how to tackle the herculean challenges ahead of the country, its already troubled economy will become totally grounded.
He said, for instance, that the crude oil export upon which the country relies for more than 80% of its revenue will become virtually useless by 2035 as auto manufacturers abroad have been mandated to stop producing petrol and diesel engines by that year and foreign governments are already readjusting and realigning their energy policies accordingly, stressing that electrification of vehicles, which is already in top gear, will very soon become the order of the day.
What this means, he said, is that all those who are scrambling for the presidency in the hope that they will continue to preside over an era of massive crude oil exports that would be bringing in billions of dollars for sharing may wake up to discover that nobody wants the crude oil anymore and that there will thus be no more inflow of mega petro-dollars.
“The ‘pillow on which our collective heads are resting’- crude oil export- is about to slide, on or before 2035,” he alerted, noting that “Nigeria has 12 years left to deal with associated issues,” including “economic diversification to ICT, Mechanized Agriculture, Mining etc.; domestication of oil and gas resources via construction of new refineries and petrochemicals complexes and removal of fuel subsidies.
He said the country must also urgently deal “with landslide insecurities across the entire landscape, deal with power sector reforms to boost manufacturing and reduce importation drastically to shore up the Naira exchange rates to the Euro, Pounds Sterling and Dollars; deal with crushing poverty, via sound macroeconomic management, and navigate from crude oil export revenue for national budget funding to a natural gas budget base for the future,” if it is to survive the emerging global economic realities.
According to him, “the president we get in 2023 will be saddled with these onerous tasks, hopefully for the next eight years, if he or she is not incapacitated or doesn’t die in office.” If whoever is elected in 2023 does not know what to start doing immediately after being sworn in, or spends four or eight years in office unable to tackle these critical issues, the four years left before 2035 would be too short a time to remedy the dire situation the country would certainly face.
He, therefore, said that his “assessment is that these are not tasks for the regular Nigerian politicians, who are by now accustomed to making national appointments based on political patronages or based on who contributed financially to their political success.
“These are tasks for ‘thorough bred professionals and intellectuals dressed in political garbs,” he said, stressing that “one more mistake, and we can all kiss the future of this potentially great country and its citizens farewell and final goodbye. It’s now or never O. No margin for error!!”
