Opinionated Thought

The Stimulus Package

Politics - World

“There you go, It’s done.” With these words, President Obama signed into law   the largest stimulus pacakge in the history of the United States (fact check). With these simple words and the stroke of “Ten Pens,” $787 billion dollars will be released from the US Treasury into different projects that are aimed at “trying” to stabilize the economy. We don’t know if it will work, but we must commend him for taking on this challenge and passing this bill in his first month in office. The bill has a number of things in it that will help Americans and spur growth in the new “Green Economy.” This is the part of the bill that the Nigerian government needs to be concerned about. Why? Well with most of our revenues dependent on oil exports, we must face the reality that the fall of oil prices is not the end of our decline in export revenue. A lot of people do not understand how serious and future thinking this new president is. Forget the suits and political savvy of this man; we must realize that at heart he is focused on transforming the US and setting this country on a new path. Obama is not like most past presidents; he will most likely join the ranks of Lincoln, Kennedy and FDR who set a broad vision for the future of this nation. For those that don’t know, Obama’s owned a Ford Escape Hybrid from 2007. Before that, he leased a Chrysler 300 Hemi (ok gas guzzler, he had a change of heart).

He is pushing a strong agenda to restructure America for the future; talking about revamping the nations infrastructure for the 21st century; a power grid system that relies more on green power sources like wind, solar, water, waste etc, than it does on nuclear and fossil fuel power; cars that need less fossil fuel (derived from our dear Bonny Light crude) and powered by batteries and alternative sources of fuel like ethanol.

What happened to our Hydro-electric dams? If we don’t free our economy from its dependence on oil export, we will be in trouble pretty soon. We need to immediately focus our efforts on transforming our power generation and power distribution capability. If we don’t have an effecient power system, everything we try do will always fail.

Steady power supply is the first level of transforming a society. If we can do this, we can start down the path of educating the mass population on thier part in building our economy. We can then start to work on roads, water, agriculture, industry, broadband and/or wireless  network. We need to take bold and sweeping steps right now to build our infrastructure.

If you think this is impossible, please take a look at Ghana. This is not something that is a good idea, this is our responsibility not just to Nigeria, but to other developing nations. We have the oportunity to become the catalyst for the tranformation of Africa.

We celebrate Obama and his presidency, but the quicker we get over the party and see the reality of his vision for America, the sooner we will start to rebuild our society. I laugh when i hear African leaders saying that Obama will invest more in Africa and do this and that for Africa. Wake up!! He is an American and was elected to office by Americans. His first obligation is to them. Recently he was contemplating a “buy American” bill which would make America a protectionist state. This idea was quickly quashed and toned down, but trust me, sometimes a knee jerk reaction reveals the true intents of someones heart. Is this bad? No, right now his focus is to save his country. No other country will ever take precedent before America; it’s security and its economy.

It’s time to roll up our sleaves and get to work; set a vision for our country that will bring everyone together. There are more things that unite us than divide us and the sooner we are able to cast that vision, the earlier we will emerge from our current state of poverty.

Nigeria is a strong country and we will take our place among the super powers of the world. The world is waiting.