I did a quick google search with the keyword "President for a Day", and I discovered some presidents in mankind's history who actually did serve as presidents for just 24 hours. Whatever the case! I strongly believe that these presidents did not expect their presidency to be so short-lived.
But here we are, and on this day, @zestimony has been appointed the president of the nation, so-called "The Giant of Africa-Nigeria". What will I be able to achieve in 24 hours?
Let's find out!
Clueless
Little me! How do I carry the weight of over 200 million people on my shoulders?
If proper care is not taken, I may need to spend the whole day trying to figure out how I can achieve this, and as a result, I may need an extra day, which is not available.
As a president, you are always in a dilemma, or sometimes a trilema, or even a multi-(ma), because you have the task of making balanced decisions. It would have been easy for me to come up and try to fix these three (3) pressing issues:
I will improve the educational system by pumping more funds into it, at least to put an end to the ongoing strike among academic staff of Nigerian universities. That's a good intention, but it only serves one population - those interested in formal education. So, how do I balance it up to provide satisfaction for all? The funds being allocated, how do I ensure that it doesn't eat into funds dedicated for other important national issues? What a day! Whatever the case, I strongly believe that my day as a president must surely bring an end, a satisfactory end to the repeatedly Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) industrial action.
What if I say I will try to eradicate unemployment? But how? This will eventually require me to employ a team of experts that needs to sit down and again to come up with the best and most reliable approach to this. But still, how do we ensure balance? Whatever the case, as Mr. President, I must come up with something. So, quickly, I will as for a quick statistics of open positions in the different ministries and parastatals and initiate a nationwide employment scheme.
I will definitely also love to create more production capabilities within the country, especially for tech products, at least to reduce our over reliance on China. Imagine China is sanctioned now. We Nigerians will be entirely lost on how to go about technology purchases. But a day will not be enough for this.
While a day won't be enough for all I have in mind for my country, at least, a day will be enough for me to think and maybe pitch ideas to the upper governmental body.
My first and last day as a president will definitely be really long day! A hectic one, a stressful one, and a tough one! However, I believe the presidential dish will be good enough to turn a bad day around!
The Greed
With thoughts and reasoning lost in a tight knot, I still managed to think about three pressing needs of my country and how to profer a solution. However, here are three things I would also like to do for myself.
If my stay as the president for one day doesn't secure me the perks of a retired president; one rational thing I can think of is trying to secure myself a better life after the presidency. However, with just one day as a president, I won't know all the ins and outs of the office of the president, even if I previously, in my early hours as a president, spent significant time familiarizing myself with this temporary office. Nonetheless, I am sure I will be able to hold a few hundred thousand and/or small millions, enough to become a whale on Hive. I am not suggesting I will steal, but I am just saying that from the president's daily budgets, most will be retained as liquid cash!
Secondly, my friends and family should be happy that I entered such a position naw! So, what better way to make them happy than providing a source of livelihood for them? I will definitely ensure that those of my own receive fair employment opportunities, good enough to move them a step further on the socioeconomic lather.
Other nice things to do
- Lift the ban on crytocurrencies.
- Encourage the development of more skill-based academic programmes.
- Enhance intercontinental trading (remove bank limits to international dollar transactions; or at least increase it from 20USD to 1000USD monthly).
The End
Honestly, at the 23.48 hour as a president, I will be more inspired on what to do and how best to do it; but by that time, it will be too late. So, my presidency for twenty-four hours will simply be marred by confusion and some level of modest greed, and I am not sure I will be the president I always craved in 24 hours.
I have only imagined being president for a day and have been left with a lot of dilemmas. That makes me rethink the role of our presidents. Honestly, even if they cannot meet our respective needs, they are truly doing their best (at least, most of the time), and their efforts are commendable.
This content just reawakened my thoughts to a serious reality:
Being a president is hard!
Imagine how difficult it already is to cater to oneself, then add the burden of your family to it, then add that of 200 million people to your worries. The truth remains, with all our best intentions, even if we are given 10 years as a president, we will still leave a significant proportion of the nation's population, unsatisfied. The only thing that's guaranteed to improve is our lives.