Author: The Nation

By Tochukwu Ezukanma

History has demonstrated that democracy is a fount of political stability, social justice, rule of law, principled distribution of wealth and overall societal progress. It has improved the standards of political morality, elevated societal ethics and refined the value system in many countries of the world. Lamentably, in the topsy-turvy world of our beloved country, Nigeria, democracy has not been attended with any of these laudable outcomes. It has been fraught with social injustice, lawlessness, inequity, poverty, repression of free speech, and most disturbingly, insecurity and the demeaning of human lives.

Most Nigerians are not politically fastidious; our concerns are limited to the mundane and pedestrian. We long for the basic essentials of life: jobs, food on the table, education for children, electricity, water, security from criminal predators, and protection from the inhumanities of governing officials and agents of government. Unfortunately, after more than 20 years of democracy, our basic expectations of democracy continue to elude us.

In their hypocrisy, our rulers posture as democrats and sentinels of the public good, but are, in essence, tyrannical and voracious feudal lords. Shelter in their cocoons, they live in islands of affluence and extravagance in an ocean of poverty, gloom and misery. Their thievery and profligacy make it impossible for most Nigerians to share in the general prosperity of the country. So, while the political elite and their cronies maintain life-styles that amaze even the rich and the famous of the wealthiest countries of the world, a frightening proportion of Nigerians are trapped in extreme poverty.

A onetime United States of American Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, once called Nigeria “the poorest oil-rich nation in the world”. What an oxymoron – oil-rich poverty? It was an appropriate characterization of Nigeria because despite her oil wealth, she ranks with the poorest and war-torn countries of the world in life expectancy, child mortality, and other social indices. Life is a cruel grind for countless Nigerians; so many are consumed by the drudgery for daily existence. Many families can barely eat one square meal a day. Many survive as scavengers, rummaging through trash dumps for edibles, reusable items and sellable scraps; and as street hawkers, thronging the streets hoping to eke out a living by selling water, soft drinks, fruits, etc. to motorists and pedestrians.

Many Nigerians, even in urban areas, do not have access to clean drinkable water. Consequently, dirt borne diseases, like malaria and Typhoid fever, are very prevalent; people suffer and die from these readily preventable and treatable diseases. Many, especially, in urban areas, are homeless: living in open air and under the bridges. Some of the supposedly lucky ones that can afford housing inhabit decrepit and dilapidated houses, just hovels and pigsties. In them, people are crowded, sometimes, up to 10 persons in one room in dusty, filthy, festering, trash strewn neighborhoods, with gutters clogged with filth and debris, and streets pock-marked with pot holes.

While we generally train our focus and criticisms on the federal government, the state governors are just as corrupt, irresponsible and dictatorial. Without financial independence, state legislatures lack the independence and intrepidity of a serious parliament; they are rubber stamp parliaments. The governors are essentially provincial despots; their powers are uninhibited. Each governor appropriates from state coffers, at least, N500 million every month, as security vote. The security vote is unaccounted for; it is spent strictly at the discretion of the governor. In their avarice and wastefulness, some state governors refuse to pay state employees for months, sometimes, for more than twelve months. And those that demand a partial payment of their backlog salaries are severely punished.

It has been written that, “Money is like muck, not good unless it is spread”. As such, “the best antidote for political upheaval is equitable distribution of wealth”. Corollary, the most potent trigger of political turmoil is inequitable distribution of wealth. The social injustice and income disparity in Nigeria will inevitably lead to political turmoil. In our present political passivity and docility, we seem to have forgotten that we have, in the past, risen up, in protest, against exploitative and oppressive powers. Long ago, we successfully rallied against a colonial power and wrested the country from its grip. More recently, we rose up in protest against the repudiation of the collective will of the people – the annulment of the June 12 election – by gun-toting generals.

Nigerians need to break the vicious grip of our evil rulers, and bring to an end their looting and tearing down the country and deliberate impoverishment of the Nigerian masses. To do these, we must unite in agitation against the iniquitous cabal that rules this country. It is collective, courageous, sustained and strategically directed agitation that will break its ruthless grip on the country and force it to reform its ways.

The killing of peaceful, flag waving, national anthem-singing protesters was to intimidate Nigerians into passivity. However, Nigerians must muster the guts and gumption to start another more elaborate, better organized and protracted protest against maladministration. After all, has the cudgel of the International Criminal Court (ICC) not fallen on many dictators that wantonly murdered the innocent? Secondly, has history not demonstrated that those that wanted to maintain their power, with guns and bayonets in defiance of the legitimate aspirations of the people have always kissed the dust?

• Ezukanma writes from Lagos.

By Charles Onunaiju

As China’s comprehensive national aggregates soar and with outcome in the overall improvement in the quality of lives of its people of all ethnic nationalities, the social system justifies itself by practice and results and not by obtuse abstraction.

Against the previous grim and cynical predictions of some western experts and pundits, that the China’s development model would atrophy at some point, and ultimately seek economic and social redemption with all its political ramifications, in the western model of development did not happen and would likely never happen, ideologically fixated politicians in the western countries and their media surrogates seemed to have invented another soft belly which like Hong Kong and Taiwan, it would seek to embarrass and pile pressure and even attempt to contain China: the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

But history has consistently demonstrated that such measures designed to exert pressure on Beijing are usually dead on arrival. Why the West persists in the old path that leads to nowhere can only be explained, in the increasingly dysfunctional and extremely polarizing domestic political process resulting in racist and fascist violence that is becoming commonplace, especially in the United State of America. To be seen to be pontificating liberal values abroad while the home front is in a state of lethargy and disarray is an old trick of the Western ruling establishments.

The new fad of Western humanitarian concern is the China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, of a population of over 25million for which about 60% is from ethnic minorities with the Uygur ethnic group constituting appropriately 46.11%. The Uygur ethnic group, which are mainly Muslims are the target of western fabrications and slander against China. However, statistics show that the population of Uygur ethnic group has grown rapidly at a rate of 25.04% which is not only higher than the population growth of the entire Xinjiang region at 13.99% but of all minority ethnic groups and even considerably higher than the population of the ethnic Han majority which only grew at 2.0%.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012 when Xi Jinping was elected the General Secretary of the Party and consequently elected to the presidency in 2013, eliminating poverty in Xingjiang as in other parts of the country was given a high priority. Substantial progress has been recorded in the region through measures ranging from industrial development, relocation, education and infrastructure development to implementing urban and rural affordable housing projects, building potable water safety and ecological conservation facilities.

Between 2016 and 2020, all the administrative villages across the Xinjiang region were connected to the power grid and were all accessible by tarred concrete roads. More than 40,000 apartments were built for the relocation of nearly 170,000 people to more hospitable places where they would shake off the pangs of poverty and key into the road map of increased prosperity for all the Chinese people. In addition to this, potable water facilities were made available to a total of 1.52 million impoverished population and measures were taken to ensure that not a single child dropped out of school on account of poverty. Basic medical insurances and critical illness insurances became universal not only in Xinjiang region but across all China covering the entire previous poor population, with per-capital net income of registered poor households in Xingjian increasing by 32.32% per annum.

Last year, despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, over three million rural poor residents of the region were lifted out of poverty. All the 3,666 villages and 35 counties previously designated as extremely impoverished were delisted from the national register of poor people.

On the February 25, China declared the end of poverty among its 1.4 billion people, 10 years ahead of the UN target of 2030, with President Xi Jinping declaring that “the sunshine of poverty alleviation has shined to every corner, the destines of numerous people have hence changed, the dreams of millions were hence realized and happiness of countless individuals was hence accomplished.”

Xinjiang has the largest land area, longest land borderline among all provinces and equivalent administrative units in China.

Covering 1.66 million square kilometers, Xinjiang accounts for nearly one-sixth of China’s total land area. Its land borderline of over 5,700 kilometers accounts for nearly one-fourth of China’s total and bordering eight countries – Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

With the Eurasia continental bridge running through, Xinjiang is clearly identified as the core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt of the Belt and Road” framework of international cooperation initiated by China. As a priority locality in China’s national strategy of large-scale development of the western region, it serves as an important gateway for China’s west-ward opening up as well as an important energy base and transport thoroughfare for China.

Perhaps for its geographic and strategic location, the colourful mix of its ethnic composition, the western fabrications about human right and other alleged abuses, were designed to obliterate the fact of a region and its ethnically diverse residents, who have joined the rest of their compatriots in a fast train of inclusive development and shared prosperity.

Delegations upon delegation, including some from majority Muslim countries have visited the region to see and confirm the fact of all-round development of the region and its people. Vocational training centers provided in the region to build capacity and help wean off, those affected by extremist radical propaganda were claimed by some western politicians and media as detention facilities. While the CPC and the Chinese government believe that the problem of extremist violence should be dealt with more broadly by improving living conditions and giving people the opportunity to pursue better life for themselves, extremist ring leaders and their anti-social agenda must be dealt with according to law. The West and specifically United States of America, with the Guantanamo Bay detention facility of extremist violent Jihadists is the most exemplary fact, of the efforts to rein in, the excesses of violent extremists.

The fact on the ground in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, speaks louder than ideologically-motivated noise of western political establishment and its media outlets that is yet to reconcile itself to the fact of modern China, which proclaimed itself over seven decades ago to have stood up; and “will never again be an insulted nation.”

The United States has more to do for its for its native American population who still lives in reserve area without access to life improving basic amenities and any rudiment of self -governing mechanism for cultural expression and resource control. One only of the indigenous Native Americans was recently appointed to cabinet level position in the more than 200 years history of the US.

The political status of Puerto Rico which is considered a U.S territory but is citizens have no voting representation in the US federal government, except for one non-voting resident commissioner in the House of Representatives, has remained a conundrum for the US ruling establishment who care so much for distant Xinjiang region of China but has refused to ameliorate the situation in its own Puerto Rico.

• Onunaiju, is director of the Centre for China Studies, CCS Abuja.