Reading Jon West's comments (on the article by Dr Martin Fregene), makes it clear that we will always recall the Jonathan regime with a large measure of ambivalence. I however beg to disagree with his assertion that the former President's mistakes or deliberate errors were few or minor. However nothing can devalue his administration's impact on the agricultural front.
The same ambivalence applies to our early reading of the nascent Buhari administration for which we have so few data points to hazard a (premature) judgement at this stage. All Nigerians, including those in the new ruling party, the APC, agree that President Buhari's take off is excruciatingly slow. The original bright promise has been undeniably dimmed. Perhaps we are being unduly hasty, but we are entitled to our expectations. It has been said time and again that GMB's administration would hit the ground running. Some rather uncharitable commentators have accused him of hitting the ground and sitting exactly where he landed.
That said, I must observe that I have found Dr Martin Fregene exceedingly fluent in the subject matter, agricultural transformation, that he chose to address. If I knew him any better, I would immediately conclude "There goes our new Minister of Agriculture!" I believe that he was a good understudy of Dr Adesina, the new boss at AfDB. . . I wonder if the Buhari administration has a more suitably qualified candidate in mind. Time will tell.
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