I just read a recent news report that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has launched the Electric Tricycle Empowerment Initiative, a national programme designed to reduce transportation costs, promote clean energy, and expand job opportunities for young Nigerians.

This initiative is a hallmark of what ails Nigeria. It illustrates the crippling lack of creativity within the ruling class to develop meaningful, transformative opportunities for our people. Even more troubling is the absence of a coherent national ideology capable of inspiring real socio-economic transformation.

It is, to say the least, preposterous that an oil-rich nation would champion electric tricycles as a transportation solution rather than advancing our comparative advantage in the oil and energy sectors. The fact that these tricycles are not produced locally deepens the irony and this is before mentioning that over 200 million Nigerians continue to battle with epileptic power supply.

The fundamental question remains: how do we expect to become globally competitive with policies such as this? How do we create genuine opportunities for our citizens?

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The troubling explanation is simple: the government adopts small, symbolic measures to placate the masses and prevent public outrage, while wealth and opportunities are quietly consolidated among friends and cronies. Sadly, it is precisely the absence of meaningful opportunities, driven by policies like this, that fuels insecurity across our nation. This pattern is not only counterproductive; it is dangerous and must be rejected.

We must remember that Nigeria’s current socio-economic and security crises do not stem from a lack of policies, but from irrational, poorly conceived, and badly implemented ones.

-Francis Onyema, 2027 presidential aspirant