Barely one week after president Jonathan was sworn into office in 2011, the opposition unleashed their well planned "propaganda agenda" tailored towards frustrating the president's "transformation agenda" and designed to paint him as "clueless, incompetent & weak" so as to necessitate the need for "CHANGE". A good strategy you would say given the level of education of majority of Nigerians and the class hatred that has now become the norm.

They developed a "marking scheme" for him, which was based primarily on his mannerisms, dress code, intonation, wife's grammatical competence, remoteness of village, course of study in the university and of couse the language his body speaks. This list contains several other soft stuff that has made gossip magazines our prime news source in today's Nigeria and forced real news outfits to turn to "press release" centres in order to stay in business.

As a citizen of Nigeria with my roots in the south western parts of this nation, but who has a tendency to root for the under dog, i sought to develop my own marking scheme based on truth, fairness and within the borders of reasonability and here are the conclusion i came to.

Firstly, i set out what i thought were the essentials required to dig out Nigeria from the hole it was in, in 2011 and proceeded to isolate the things that a reasonable person would do to bring about enduring improvements. Issues like setting out a clear national vision, breaking them down to sectoral visions, recruiting the right leaders to develop masterplans with clear deliverables and timelines for each sector and drive their implementation, give them the political protection and backing to do their jobs and maintain a clear line of communication with the general populace while the job is being done.

What did this president do? He developed his vision which he christened, the transformation agenda, proceeded on an expansive head hunting process within the confines of "national spread & federal character", ensured that every major and some sub-sectors got well thought out masterplans with widespread input from critical stakeholders based on which he signed performance bonds with these employees of his, giving them all the freedom, authority and political backing to get the job done and has since been implementing these plans with varying degrees of success, fine tunning these plans as the need arose, and firing some of these line managers and hiring new ones for better results.

My conclusion is that no "reasonable" and "knowledgeable" analyst can fault his approach although the last leg which has to do with carrying the general populace along has not been competently done in my opinion.

However, the sectoral result is where some questions might be asked, and justifiably so, as to how successful this administration has been in its often touted transformation agenda. While sectors like roads & briges(federal interstate), seaports, aviation, agriculture, automobile manufacturing & ancilliary sub-sectors, railways, msme development, education(federal infrastruce and funding), oil & gas(but for the stagnation of the PIB in the NA), power and housing dev. & finance are obviously going in the right direction, security and to some extent the fight against corruption(depending on who you talk to) have gotten worse. (PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT ALMOST ALL OUR NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE HAS FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMPONENTS)

I decided to isolate the duo of security and fight against corruption (both law enforcement issues) which seems to have become the rallying point of the Nigerian opposition and look at them objectively vis-a-vis our peculiarities as a nation and the subsisting ethno-religious and volatile political realities which a democratically elected, civilian government is faced with while trying to better the lot of society. After a thorough examination of the state of this 2 sub-sectors and through scenario building, considering all the options available to an administration like the present one (not a coupist military admin) and given the several division points up and down the Niger, i came to a conclusion that the only reasonable approach, if Nigeria is to remain one, was to find a way to quickly ramp up physical infrastructure and other inputs that will help to better the lot and wean a sizeable majority of Nigerians off the apron strings of their ethno-religious-political champions, make true, committed, patriotic Nigerians of them and then and only then can we truly, truly deal with these 2 hydra headed monsters (both the creations of thesame voiciferious politicians) in a permanent and sustainable manner.

My question at the end is this simple minded analysis of mine, given the realities of today's Nigeria and the facts at our disposal, has this administration done well or not?

Are there truly areas of our lives, save security(without a doubt), where the situation has worsened under the watch of this administration?

Can an honest observer point out one sector or project that this administration inherited from a previous one and made things worse?

Please discuss intelligently for and against, no name calling pleeeaaaase. Thank you.