The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Restructuring: Appeal to Confab delegates

    Last week’s verdict by the Committee on Restructuring at the on-going National Conference to retain the existing unviable 36-state structure and 774 Local Government structure , which gobbles 74% of our recurrent expenditure, as the building block of our federalism  has only deepened the cynicism of those who  had said not much would  come from the N7billion project. To point out the irrationality of those opposed to political restructuring, Professor Gbadegesin, like many other model builders recently highlighted on the pages of this paper, “the simplicity and clarity of the principles that justify political restructuring along the line of true federalism”.

    Gbogun Gboro similarly pointed out the sheer idiocy of allowing some self-serving people to continue with a scheme “that degrades  our country into a land perpetually devastated and shamed by a monstrous federal government which enjoys the pleasure of toying around with weak and incompetent state governments, a land of hideous poverty and corruption, of hopelessness, conflicts and crimes”.

    Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary General, also  called for stronger regions as was the case in the pre-independence era, reminding that it is the “destructive control of power at the centre that exacerbates the primordial instinct in our people and also fans religious and ethnic differences with the result that rather than being a source of strength, our pluralism has become a harbinger for discrimination and disunity.”

    But long before the current interventions by Nigerian opinion leaders, the departing British, after a thorough appreciation of the deep-rooted mutual suspicion among our various nationalities over a period of 60 years had hinted that it was their presence alone that ‘prevented  a disastrous disintegration’ and that their withdrawal would mean for millions, a descent from nascent nationhood into the turmoil of warring sect’. The self-fulfilling prophesy came barely five years of their departure.

    And it wasn’t as if that tragedy couldn’t have been avoided if a segment of the political class bent on destroying what they couldn’t have had remained faithful to the policy thrust of the colonial masters as espoused by the then British colonial secretary of state, Oliver Stanley in 1945 when he made it clear that the policy thrust of Britain  was to “see the various peoples of the various  territories develop themselves along the line of their natural aptitude, their own culture and their tradition’.  Awo who saw federalism as “a philosophy of opportunities for the various ethnic nationalities to progress at their own rate” had on this score in his seminal work on Nigeria federalism in 1947 suggested the 10 Nigerian major ethnic groups as the building block of our federation.

    But sadly today, in spite of all the verifiable monumental achievement of our nation when we had a workable federal arrangement, and in spite of an on-going vigorous campaign by the United Nations for preservation of group identities, those who are benefiting from the current anarchy in our land will not listen.

    The committee report itself is a lesson in self denial  It pretends not to know that the on-going mindless killing by alleged Fulani herdsmen is closely linked with the past popular uprising in the Middle Belt violently suppressed by the military in the early 60s; the judicial battle successfully waged against Obasanjo’s fraudulent mainstreaming by the old South-west  was closely linked with the insurrection in the old Western Region following the rigged election of 1965; and that  the challenge of political Sharia under the presidency of Obasanjo  is not markedly different from the ongoing face-off  between President Jonathan, a minority, and Boko Haram insurgents.

    And those who have argued that we can continue with the current structure which defies rationality, by simply addressing the issues of values, and leadership, are missing the point. As P.C Loyd has said, Nigerian different nationalities are at different levels of cultural development. And since one culture is not superior to the other, we cannot impose our own standard or values on others. In some parts of the country, a governor may get away with donating millions to a musician. On the other hand, the late Professor Ambrose Alli who as governor of the then Mid-west spent state money to bury his father was ordered to refund the money by Awo, his party leader. In some parts of the country a defeated General comes back as a hero; in other parts, he commits suicide and if victorious, restricted to the outskirt of the city. If you think that was in the past, do a study of all the Yoruba leaders who were once perceived to have worked against the interest of the people. It is the erosion of values nationalities hold dear that has given way to a new Nigerian value of corruption, ineptitude and decadence.

    I also think restructuring will solve the problem of indigene-ship and settlers. Those comparing us with America are only being mischievous. Unlike the US, a nation of immigrants, excepts perhaps for the Fulani who as nomads and Jihadists came to Nigeria about 200 years ago and subsequently conquered the Hausa states, there is hardly any group that is not spiritually attached to its roots. The recent expulsion of Fulani herdsmen from Niger and the Tor of Tiv’s declaration that an inch of Tiv land would not be conceded as grazing ground for the Fulani herdsmen means it is not an issue we can wish away, We can add the unsettled issue of abandoned property in Port-Harcourt and the battle with Governor Amaechi over Okrika by the First Lady

    But we are not alone. We have seen how India , a more complex society creatively devised an harmonious relationship among its 1.3 billion peoples and over 2000 ethnic nationalities  through the creation of 27 strong regions We are today witnesses to the picture emerging from European Union after two devastating World Wars. Restructuring is the only way to stop any group that rigged its way to Abuja from insisting on determining how others live their lives.

    As for the contentious issue of resource control, I think what is needed is compromise. I do not for instance see anything provocative in the position paper of the North’s delegates to the National Conference.  If anything, I will think it is a quiet craving for return of the old three regions which hopefully will help each region confronts its own demons.

    I also think the call for the abrogation of onshore/offshore oil dichotomy in view of the “International law (1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea UNCLOS, Article 76 on territorial waters/boundaries which stipulated that 200 nautical miles off the continental shelves belongs to the central government exclusively,” is not in the least provocative.  The littoral states cannot eat their cake and have it. They have always been aligned with the north ostensibly for protection against their more aggressive neighbours. The rest of the country funded the war just as it made huge investments in the exploitation of the mineral deposits. With all institutions and programmes such as the Niger Delta Development Commission, the Ministry of Niger Delta and the Amnesty programme for the Niger Delta militants and components of the SURE-P, the HYPADEC, 13% of the on-shore oil revenue should be acceptable. It should not be too difficult to persuade Bayelsa State to see that earning in a month what Taraba earns in a year, negates the principles of justice and equity to the federating units.

    Of course, the fraud called local governments, an arbitrarily-created entities funded by federal government must revert back to the federating regions.

  • Youth, like dried leaves (2)

    The alpha myth presents a sociological dysfunction; men and women in their youth are mentally programmed to live as brutes, on our watch. Eventually, they fully evolve into beasts, half-formed humans and different forms of fiendish creatures but this hardly poses cause for concern; their bestiality essentially codifies the essence of the contemporary ‘alpha’ culture. Like all things affiliated with social class and boundaries, the ‘alpha’ myth manifests as a premeditated horror in the Nigerian psyche.

    The alpha civilization, like an infamous fad, has caught on amongst scions of Nigeria’s ‘high-society’ and in particular, the so-called ‘young, successful and upwardly mobile’ Nigerians.

    This culture is perpetuated as justification for aggressive, cut-throat, self-seeking and often sexually dominant behaviour by presumed elite specie of both genders.

    There was a time however, when such abnormality was identified as an exclusive perversion of the dominant male in a patriarchal culture but contemporary trends and happenstances reveal that the female gender is as culpable and romantically smitten to the bestial civilization as the male gender.

    This argument breeds true at the backdrop of feverish bids by the contemporary female to match her male counterpart in every sphere of endeavour; while this can never be condemned as an aspiration of the female gender, the latter’s simultaneous pursuits of the vain and the perverse to the detriment of self and society cannot be made light of. Further argumentation along this path may throw this discourse off its tangent hence the need to stay on track.

    There is no justification for the contemporary Nigerian youth’s obsession with the ‘alpha’ civilisation; but they are taken by it anyway and at every opportunity, they seek to justify it and their fascination with it.

    This justification could be likened to what Benny Goodman identifies as quasi pseudo-scientific principles largely drawing from evolutionary biology’s “survival of the fittest” philosophy and antiquated political economic theory misapplied to social life. This myth is persistently used to justify the alpha breed’s lust for dominance, and in pursuit of this objective, propagators of the alpha culture deliberately blur the lines of reason and morality by hinging their lusts for status and power on a farfetched natural order and superior individual traits.

    Truth is, the prevalent alpha culture afflicting the Nigerian youth and taking root in the society unmasks the depths of value erosion and unequal social relationships triggered by class, gender, ethnic and religious misrepresentations.

    Alpha lust is a vanity exercised by “those who can” based on their privileged backgrounds and abilities – often rich spoilt kids, the educated and elite – over “those who can’t” and “who may never can;” the latter have to do battle with several odds to overcome class, ethnic and gender barriers. The alpha stereotype also erodes the human capacity for empathy, without which it truly manifests as an alpha dog eat dog world. This debilitating mindset causes the self-styled alpha breed to assume that selfishness and cruelty are the only acceptable crutches to attaining their dreams of sophisticated individualism and materialism.

    There is great prestige attached to the ‘alpha’ club and daily, more segments of the Nigerian youth divide struggle against reason and humaneness to gain acceptance and belong to this presumed elite divide. Besides the usual rich, spoilt trash personified by children of perverse segments of the privileged and the ruling class, self-starters emerging from the backwaters and the comatose middle-class engage in mad, desperate pursuits to gain entrance into the contemporary alpha club.

    The fastest and surest routes to achieving alpha membership span access to enviable Ivy League education, topnotch employment in high-end industrial sectors, politics, advance fee fraud and entertainment endeavours. Thus it has become the norm to see the Nigerian youth of varying pedigree fall over each other in a sordid hustle to become part of the alpha. The attainment of acclaim and material success in whatever field of endeavour they engage in signifies their arrival into the elite league of Nigeria’s alphas. And in keeping up with their class, they indulge in excessive consumption and acquisition of material goods including expensive sex, automobiles, wristwatches, the ubiquitous bling bling and choice apartments in highbrow areas, among others. The successful acquisition of these things signifies their arrival in the elite club of alphas.

    Of these youth, the segment peopling the country’s economic and industrial divide provides a perfect illustration of Scambler’s ‘greedy bastards hypothesis.’ The hypothesis asserts that there are:  ”strategic behaviours at the core of the country’s capitalist-executive and power elite. The ‘capitalist-executive’ are a core ‘cabal’ of financiers, CEOs and Directors of large and largely transnational companies, and rentiers…This cabal have come to dominate the political class.”

    The tragedy of this reality subsists in the consequence of having such youth evolve as the driving force or leadership of the Nigerian youth and future. It is very important that Nigeria does not fall into the hands of this breed for the following reasons: the alpha breed suffer a lack of sociological imagination. They are unable to link their personal experiences and narratives to the structures and realities of society they live in, at the time they live in it.

    Goodman avers that to the alpha breed, persistent unemployment is simply a consequence of personal failures not a result of an insidious and unfairly tilted labour market structure to the advantage of the privileged; obesity is a personal and moral weakness unrelated to institutionalized laziness, availability of cheap calorie rich foods and entrapment in high carbon systems; poor people are basically poor because they lack a diligent work ethic not because of institutional and ethnic racism; countries are underdeveloped because they lack a capitalist ethic rather than as a result of past and current imperialism.

    The alpha breed persistently blames the individual, emphasize personal responsibility and ignore power relationships and structures, which are rigged in the privileged’s favour. Empathy is a luxury for the weak in this context, for to empathise would mean examining the real reasons for success and failure in one’s ‘peers’ to gain an understanding of the hopes and ambitions and the barriers to fulfilling such in an unjust world.

    The alpha however, behaves in this way because society enables them to do so; contemporary society thrives on a morbid and inordinate obsession with materialism – within this prevalent clime, money imbues its owner with power, and power and money are worshipped. This scary reality imbues the alpha with incontestable power amongst other facilities; and continual rationalization of it essentially sounds off as a self-aggrandizing myth of monstrosity, misappropriation of the society’s scarce resources and exploitation of the weak.

    It has no moral basis and contrary to claims by science that we are enslaved and ruled by our hormones, genes or “reptilian brains,” we have culture and society to civilise ourselves.

    Culture and society are human constructions that impacts upon us and leave us amenable to change thus even as the alpha breed wields the big stick and they determine the rules, they can be forced to lay down the sticks while we make conscious efforts to remould society to project more humanitarian ethics and behaviour.

    It’s about time we rid our psyche of monstrosities that have learnt to tout as the Nigerian spirit. How?

  • The road to Sambisa

    The road to Sambisa

    THE world is turning upside down. Man’s marriage to technology is in a strange turbulence, with all those machines that were forged to give maximum comfort turning agents of discomfort. Death ravages the world in a terrible rapacity that evokes melancholic thoughts on those end-time prophecies. Insanity is no longer an affliction of the drug addict and the wayward. It is everywhere – inside those glittering offices and in the dark forests seized by those preaching a return to the caves.

    South Korea is hobbled and humbled by a ferry disaster in which over 200 died. Many of the victims were students who had dreams of becoming stars. Their stars were dimmed by a shocking failure of technology. Weighed down by a remarkable sense of responsibility, the Prime Minister resigned.

    The disappearance of a Malaysian airliner with 239 passengers has confounded experts who have been battling to unravel the mystery. What happened? Sabotage? Failure of technology? Human error? Natural disaster? Nobody can tell – for now.

    These are just two of the big cases. To them add the mindless abduction of 234 girls in Chibok, Borno State, by Boko Haram gunmen and the sentencing to death in one fell swoop of 683 Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt. And throw in Russia’s  rumbling in Ukraine. Then, think about so many cases of depravity that go unreported in the media. What picture do we see? A world that has lost its balance in all ways.

    Technology may have shown its fatalistic side in other parts of the world, but here man has launched an inexplicable battle against humanity, shredding the very essence of living, with every one of us as collaborators in one way or the other.

    Boko Haram has rammed a big fear into our hearts – and our heads, some insist  – and we all seem so vulnerable. Helpless. We watch in awe as the fiendish sect strikes, in all its bestiality, where it hurts most, killing ordinary folks struggling to get by and snatching away school girls who do not know the root of its rage.

    The other day in Nyanya, near Abuja , the seat of power and home of the rich and powerful, Boko Haram unleashed suicide bombers who killed 75 people at a packed motor park. President Goodluck Jonathan was at the scene to behold the canvass of blood and at the hospital to comfort the injured. The next day, he was off to Kano for a rally, dancing Skelewu and Azonto. From Kano, he stormed Ibadan to join Oba Odulana in cutting his centenary birthday cake.

    It is two weeks that the girls – there are also many other innocent people who do not have anything to do with whatever may have sparked  the Boko Haram insanity – have been kidnapped, yet life goes on normally in Nigeria.

    It has been difficult getting the scene off my mind. A man crying like a baby, as he tells Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima of his agony. He and other parents had hired motorcycles and headed for the Sambisa forest in a desperate mission to find the girls. They were warned to turn back or never return, he said. Shettima too was in tears.

    Apparently moved by the heavy criticism of what many saw as its lack of insensitivity – and a shameful assault on public sensibility – the Presidency summoned a National Security Council meeting where, it was learnt, the military was ordered to rescue the girls. Almost one week after, the job remains undone.

    Now, the anger in the minds of distraught parents and all those who still see us as members of the human community is beginning to show. There was a protest in Lagos on Monday. Another was staged in Abuja yesterday. That is how it all begins. From little sparks that are ignored as mere irritation to some fire that may be difficult to put out and then – God forbid – a conflagration.

    The Senate reopened on Tuesday, asking the government to ask for help from Nigeria’s friends. I think our neighbours too should be asked to choose on whose side they want to be on this Boko Haram assault. There should be no ambivalence.

    Whichever way the battle goes, Boko Haram has bombed and gunned its way into our national consciousness. Hundreds of miles away from the epicentre of its militancy, echoes of its activities reverberate. Thousands of motorists were stranded last week on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway when text messages started going round that Boko Haram gunmen had seized Nigeria’s busiest highway. A massive security blanket was thrown over the area. It all turned out to be a hoax. A truck tripped over and spilled its contents, which some hungry and angry youths descended on. The police moved in to disperse them. This sparked the rumour that disrupted business and pleasure all day.

    Did the owner of the goods start the rumour to move security agents to action, thereby saving him from those would-be looters? Why did it take hours for the security agents to debunk the rumour? Can Boko Haram actually launch an open attack in the South? These are some of the conjectural disputations that followed the rumour.

    Whichever way you look at it, Boko Haram has become a tool of fear, used by mischievous minds to attain certain goals. Besides, it has shown the fecundity of the Nigerian mind. In the misery – and the mystery – that has unsettled us all, many have found the inspiration for rib-crackers and moving lines.

    Consider this that was sent to me yesterday by a colleague: “A Lagos  bus conductor asked a passenger, wey ya money? The passenger replied, I be staff. The conductor, frowning, asked him, which kind staff you be?U be police? Passenger, ‘no’. Navy? No. You be soldier? No? You be Air Force? No. So wetin you be now? Abeg pay ya money. The passenger replied: I be Boko Haram.

    “All the passengers began to scream. Driver, are you mad? Oga Boko, sorry sir. No vex. We go pay for you sir. Driver, na next junction I go drop o. O wa o. I wan drop o!”.

    And this about the girls: “To mum, she’s an Angel. To dad, a princess. To brothers, a priceless jewel. To sisters, a best friend. To aunties and uncles, an adorable sweet child. I am certain everyone reading this has one – a girl child, a joy to the world, to be pampered, protected and loved. Over 200 of these precious ones abducted and taken away from their loved ones, forced to become sex slaves, cooks, maids and every unimaginable thing to dark, evil, demented, dirty terrorists. What a tragedy!

    “Yes, they seem far away in Borno, born to poor, ordinary people, but just like you, to them these gals are princesses, angels, priceless jewels and sweet, adorable nieces. Don’t be numb to the pain. Days now counting and still no word. No daily progress report or any kind of info from the govt. This is unacceptable. I cannot launch a rescue mission and neither can you, but our government can. The buck stops on their table. Let’s come together and demand action. Please, rebroadcast and mount the pressure. It works. Say a prayer and keep talking about it until the Federal Government takes action and brings them home. Don’t do it for me; do it for the girl child in your life.”

    The abduction of the girls has renewed the debate about the leadership question. Are we truly helpless? Do we have the military capability –  the talk that this is no conventional war  –  to overwhelm Boko Haram? Does the conduct of our leaders inspire the troops? Are we treating Boko Haram as a national emergency? What is the line between politics and national interest? How much compassion have our leaders shown?  Can this happen to the children of the rich?

    In fact, the talk in town is that when Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s mum was kidnapped, the government moved fast and she was brought back home. When President Jonathan’s uncle was kidnapped recently, he was rescued or released – whichever is appropriate – in no time. So was Ijaw Chief E.K. Clark’s son. Why is this mass abduction taking time to resolve? Who can imagine the traumatic experience of the girls and their parents? Do their parents still sleep?

    There have been so many suggestions on how to free the girls. Many of them seem feasible; some are merely emotional and others are just naïve. A fellow suggested that all of us 140 million Nigerians – politicians, civil servants, teachers, reporters, lawyers; all – should move into the dreaded Sambisa forest and demand the return of the girls or live with the shame forever.

    Should we all decide to hit the road to Sambisa, who will lead? This is the big question. The lesson of it all is that we need men; real men who will think first of their sacred pact with the people and not the glamour of office; men of courage and character; men of honour. Real men.

    Who will lead the way to Sambisa?

    Show of shame in Abuja

    WHOEVER organised yesterday’s rally in Abuja to urge President Goodluck Jonathan to run in 2015 has dealt his image a bloody blow. Those who carried those placards of shame are shameless. Are the women among them true mothers? The rally coincided with a protest staged by women, many of them in tears, over the abduction of over 200 girls in Chibok, Borno State. They are yet to be found – two weeks after.

    These times demand soberness – in the face of a bare-knuckle assault on our seeming empty claim to civilisation. The President should order his campaigners to take a break. The mood is not right.

     

  • State of roads in Nigeria

    As a young man, I enjoyed driving on Nigerian roads. The roads were much better than they are now. It also seems as if the Ministry of Works took its job much more seriously than they do today. Their officials did not collude with contractors to reduce stones, cement and tar that were used for constructing the roads and they seemed to last longer than they are today. Of course there was less traffic and in those days, trains ran on the railways and heavy haulage was done by rail not by land. Some people have suggested that those put in charge of the railway corporation deliberately ran down the corporation so that their trailer business could thrive. Whatever the reasons for running down the railways, the consequences are that the haulage business and their huge articulated trucks have not only ruined the roads, they have become a health hazard to our people. Efforts to revive the railways have not succeeded. Apparently because of lack of commitment and poor funding the result is that the only way of moving goods and people in the country is by road. The aviation industry which could have contributed substantially to the movement of goods and people is expensive for most people. This is why the question of the roads is almost a matter of life and death (pardon the pun). Without movement of goods, services and people the economy will not grow. This is why government has to pay attention to the health of our roads. In the northern part of Nigeria where the rainy season is short and where the land is flat with little or no mountains and hills except on the Jos and Bauchi plateaux, roads are much more easily constructed and maintained than in the south. But up north, the spatial distribution of population in wide areas and the size of the land mass that had to be traversed increase cost of construction in the north. In the south, roads sometimes have to pass through mangrove swamps and the rain forest and on large bodies of water leading to high cost of road construction. Unlike in many parts of the world where colonialism led to infrastructural modernisation, Nigeria inherited from the British overlords, poor network of roads. Roads leading out of Lagos at independence were winding narrow roads going to Abeokuta and Ibadan and subsequently to the east. To go to the north one had to pass through the tortuous roads from Lagos to Ibadan then to Ilorin and to Jebba across the Niger then to Kotangora, Tegina, Kaduna and then to Kano, Jos, Bauchi and Maiduguri. These were narrow and meandering roads that are not comparable to the roads we now have even though the new roads are poorly maintained. There is a need for a comprehensive review of the road network in Nigeria. First of all, we have to agree that the hinterland of Nigeria has to be linked to the coast. What this immediately suggests is that there is need to have four longitudinal roads- one running in the western part of the country from Badagry to Sokoto, another from Lagos to Kano, a third one from Warri to Bauchi and another one from Calabar to Maiduguri. Then there should be an east-west road linking Lagos along the coast to Port-Harcourt. If we have this type of autobahnen in the country, then it will be easy to move around the country and this will foster a sense of unity and rapid economic development. The coastal road from Lagos to Port-Harcourt has been on the drawing boards for several decades yet no action has been taken. Because the road will have to pass through mangrove swamps necessitating the building of many bridges, it will be very expensive but it is doable. If we do not have the money, this is the kind of project that a country should borrow money to do because it will pay for itself. All these roads should be toll roads so that their maintenance and the recovery of the initial cost of construction can be seamlessly taken care of. This is what is done in civilised countries. And now that we have declared ourselves the largest economy in Africa, we should have something to show for it. Already there is a dual carriage way running from Lagos to Port-Harcourt through the Sagamu-Benin-Onitsha-Enugu-Port-Harcourt dual carriage way. There is another one running from Lagos to Oyo and on to Ilorin if and when the Oyo-Ogbomosho section is finished. There is a dual carriage way from Lagos to Abeokuta. This should have terminated in Ibadan if we have some sense. There is a dual carriage way from Abuja through Kaduna to Kano and then to Maiduguri. The Kano-Maiduguri dual carriage way is probably the longest in Nigeria and cannot be truly justified on economic grounds. The Abuja-Lokoja dual carriage way is under construction and substantial amount of work has been done. Perhaps in the future, the Lokoja-Benin sector would be constructed. The Benin-Warri-Yenagoa-Port-Harcourt east-west road is also at an advanced stage of completion. In all this road networks, the South-west is being short changed. The dual carriage way from Ibadan to Akure stops abruptly in Ilesa and this does not make economic sense because Ondo and Ekiti states produce 80 percent of Nigeria’s cocoa and substantial amount of hard wood timber. One would also have expected a dual carriage way to link Ado-Ekiti and Akure and Akure with Benin. If we have the current powers and resources of the federal government devolved into the regions or zones, roads to link areas with economic potentials and resource availability will be constructed but as it is today, roads are constructed on political basis thereby economically shooting ourselves in the feet.

    One of the ways to assess the economy of a country is through its transportation grid. A country that is not in permanent motion is underdeveloped if not a dead country. A visit to any modern country will show goods and peoples being moved around by water on the high seas, by rivers, by air, by surface trains, by tramp cars, by underground trains, by fast trains, and by roads so that there is no delay in moving goods around because time is an important factor in economic development. Our primitive level of development only uses roads in transportation and this shows how much far behind we are in relation to the rest of the world. The British left us with a functional railway system just as they did in India. As populous and chaotic as India is, (at least they are seven times larger than us), they have managed to keep the trains running while we have run our own down and out. It is a shame that unlike before, we no longer have development plans in this country. Before the advent of the military into power in Nigeria, we had quiquennial plans by which some of these issues I am raising would have been taken up and debated and then put in a plan of development over the years instead of just building roads on the spur of the moment and largely for the political and not economic considerations; things would have been done on rational basis. The time may have run out for people of my generation but certainly the younger people of Nigeria should take the bull by the horns and deal with the problems of today in a systemic and systematic way so that their future will be brighter than ours. The current leaders of Nigeria will not have an excuse for not handing over the country in a better way to future leaders because of lack of ideas. The ideas are blowing in the winds and all they have to do is catch the vision. The rest of the world is not going to wait for us; in fact they will laugh at us if we continue to remain static at this primitive level of development. We have the people and the resources, then what is the problem really apart from the greed and corruption of our people particularly our leaders? Let the word go out that this generation of Nigerians and the generation to come will hold the leaders of our country responsible for this terrible state of underdevelopment for which they have consigned the country. The backward network of roads is just the tip of the iceberg in our level of underdevelopment because every other aspect and facets of our life are crying for developmental attention.

  • Arise Nigeria: Bad news from National Conference

    We Nigerians must rise up to force the National Conference to change a decision arrived at by one of its committees late last week. The decision ignores the current realities of our country and the terrible poverty that has bedeviled our lives, and it must be changed – in the interest of all of us.

    I refer to the decision on the number of federating units in our federation. After examining the various proposals from Nigerians on this matter, a committee of the National Conference decided to recommend that our federation should continue to have 36 states. In fact, from the way the discussion is progressing in Abuja, the number of states could even rise to as many as 42. Here is how. First, the Igbo nation of the South-east, who now have five states, have long demanded one more state – so as to have six states like the South-west, South-south, North-central, and North-east. In all fairness, if we are to sustain the 36-state structure, there is no way we can reject the Igbo demand – and that would lift the number of states to 37. But that is not all. The other five zones of Nigeria are increasingly pointing out that the North-west zone has seven states, and that that is unfair to the other five zones. More and more people are now saying that to be fair across board, each zone should have seven states – and that would raise the total number of states to 42. That is how ridiculous this whole thing can get.

    The great wonder, the great pity, in all this is that all the Nigerians at the National Conference know that the excessively large number of governments and administrations in our country is one of the most important contributors to our poverty. Apart from the humongous and ponderous federal government, we have to pay  salaries and allowances for 36 governors, 36 deputy governors, hundreds of state commissioners, hundreds of advisers of governors, hundreds of top-level civil servants, tens of thousands of lower cadre civil servants, over a thousand state legislators and thousands of their assistants, etc. In many cases, the so-called states are so small that their crowds of employees have nothing important to do. In many cases also, state employees don’t report for work for many days in the month, and most of those who report for work spend much of the work hourswatching African Magic on television or playing some game. Forced to speak under pressure, most governors have lamented that almost all the money they bring from Abuja monthly goes into paying the salaries of government employees. Some citizens have suggested in the media that as much as 74% of all revenues of the states go into paying salaries. In the circumstance, the state governments have almost no funds left for vital development programmes – like construction and maintenance of infrastructures, or the provision of public services. In most cases, governors that want to be able to show some development resort to borrowing large loans – thereby saddling the future of their states with heavy debts that will be impossible to pay. One Senator cried out in Abuja some months ago that most of our states are on the brink of bankruptcy.

    This is not a mess that should be difficult for us Nigerians to recognize. We have lived in another situation before. In the 1950s we had only four governments – a federal government and three regional governments, and that period was the most achieving and most progressive period in our country’s history. Most of the military dictators who, between 1967 and 1999, broke our country into smaller and smaller states, did not do it in order to serve the best interests of our country. Their principal objective was to make the federal government nearly the sole ruler of our country, and creating small and impotent states was one good means of doing it. They succeeded in their great scheme – and they succeeded in degrading our country into a land perpetually devastated and shamed by a monstrous federal government which enjoys the pleasure of toying around with weak and incompetent state governments, a land of hideous poverty and corruption, of hopelessness, conflicts and crimes.

    But it is not surprising that most of the influential people in the National Conference should want Nigeria’s degradation to continue. It is not surprising that they desire to sustain the framework and structure upon which Nigeria’s degradation has been installed. Their central interest in Nigeria is to be able to continue to enrich themselves by reveling in Nigeria’s corruption, hopelessness and shame. For them, reducing the number of states in the Nigeria federation means only one thing – reducing their opportunities for public office and graft. There are examples in our world for them to emulate, but they will not do it. India is a country very similar to Nigeria in many dimensions – especially in history and ethnic composition. But India is much larger – about 2000 nationalities to Nigeria’s 300; 1.2 billion population to Nigeria’s 170 million; and territorial size of 1.3million square miles to Nigeria’s 357,000 square miles. Yet, when Indians sat down to restructure their federation, they decided to have only 28 states. Indians were motivated to have strong states that could competently promote development and progress; Nigerians are only looking for chances to benefit from the Nigerian culture of corruption.

    It should be shocking that the people at the National Conference would reject the alternative proposal before the conference – except that nothing done by Nigeria’s leaders now surprises the world. This other proposal would give our federation just six regions. The idea is that the six zones that we have been operating with for decades should now become our regions – with minor boundary adjustments here and there for the purpose of preserving the integrity of our nationalities (meaning that no nationality shall be split by any regional boundary). Each region would be a strong entity capable of promoting and advancing development and progress – almost similar to the Nigeria of the 1950s. Each region would have primary control over its natural resources, with the federal government having the power to levy taxes thereon. This would also greatly trim administrative expenses in our country – by cutting the number of state governments from 36 to six. Altogether, this is a powerful development-oriented arrangement which can quickly revive local initiative and morale in our country and quickly lead our country’s economy to new heights of achievement

    And so, what is the answer? The answer is that we Nigerians must respond strongly from all parts of Nigeria as well as from abroad, compel the delegates at the National Conference to junk their unpatriotic decision, and to adopt the latter proposal above. The world is surprised that we Nigerians allow our leaders, over and over again, to heap dung on us. Let us stand up and stop this one.

  • Buck stops on President Jonathan’s desk

    To the less cynical, with a temperament for PDP comedy and President Jonathan’s sardonic humour as they junket around the country, dancing with serial cross-carpenters and others with criminal charges hanging on their necks in a desperate bid for re-election in 2015 even as the nation burns, the recently concluded parley by governors of the 36 states of  the federation, service chiefs and religious leaders, may appear a genuine attempt at finding solution to the problem of security of lives and property especially in the besieged north-eastern part of the country. Hitherto the ruling party whose immoral seizure of disproportionate share of our national resources is the source of bitterness among the deprived has been blaming others for Boko Haram’s mindless killing of innocent Nigerians. It first fingered the suspended Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Lamido Sanusi shortly after falling out of favour with government for pointing out financial infractions in the NNPC presided over by some leading members of the party. From Sanusi, they moved to, General Buhari, former military Head of State and  President Jonathan’s main rival in the 2011 election. Lately, the party suddenly woke up to realise that the newly formed APC, the opposition party, is the sponsor of Boko Haram that has made the north-eastern part of the country ungovernable for close to three years.

    And as for the president, until the current effort, he has, besides engaging in mudslinging with Kashim Shettima and Murtala Nyako, governors of besieged Borno and Adamawa states, chosen to seek God’s intervention after each dastardly act by those who kill children, rob banks and abduct young school girls as sex slaves in the name of God on whose behest they claim to crusade.  From the synagogues of our home-based grace hawkers, he had embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and of late, to Rome where he also sought Pope Francis’s intercession on behalf of our nation.

    But to the cynical, who lack the stomach for hypocrisy and politics of perfidy of the president and his party, the meeting was totally unnecessary. And they seem to have been vindicated by its outcome which merely reinforced their strongly held position that the buck stops on the desk of the president and commander-in-chief.

    For instance we were told that the parley “stressed the importance of rising above partisanship when dealing with security issues, as well as tackling it in an objective manner with security agencies being professional”. I am sure most Nigerians have not forgotten it was the president who created a division among the governors by proclaiming losers in the governors’ forum election, winners. Nigerians also know that the  president is the one who has been going around exchanging words with victims of Boko Haram’s mindless killing who out of frustration wanted the president to live up to the oath of his office as commander-in-chief

    We were also informed that the meeting resolved that “data should be shared across board among security agencies”, and that “a holistic approach in curbing terrorist activities, including the anti-poverty approach should also be adopted.” This also, like other nebulous declarations are the exclusive preserve of the president and commander-in-chief. He is in charge of warring Generals who are not sharing data. If for inexplicable reason, 230 female students were ferried away by insurgents in a state under emergency where every five kilometre is expected to be manned by soldiers, there is nothing governors and religious leaders can do to help a commander-in-chief who chooses to dance while his garrison is under siege.

    It was also disclosed that security agencies were mandated to “do everything to ensure that the abducted children are rescued from their abductors which the military assured”. Again, we all know the assemblage had no power to mandate the military.  Such responsibility is conferred on the president and commander-in-chief by the constitution. In any case,  the military under whose nose, 230 of our promising female children studying science and humanities were snatched by sick minds knows it’s not only the integrity of the military that is at stake, they have been challenged to redeem the battered image of our nation which  has become a laughing stock in the comity of nations. There is nowhere else in the contemporary world except perhaps in Nazi Germany under Hitler that 230 young girls will be abducted by criminals for weeks without a national emergency being declared. The soldiers know what is at stake.

    And finally, it was claimed that in order to forestall further clashes between Fulani herdsmen and farmers, “the meeting agreed the Fulani herdsmen would be relocated as a short time measure with the final objective of ensuring all the grazing routes and the grazing areas that had not been gazetted, be properly gazetted for peace to reign”.

    But  the federal government, prior to this meeting had pretended not to know the identity of those behind the indiscriminate killings in the besieged states of Adamawa, Kaduna, Benue, Plateau and Katsina  The question to ask then is when did government that has in spite of its control of  the military, police, SSS, immigration etc. been unable to arrest any of the marauders who according surviving victims, often operate for several hours killing in hundreds and burning down whole villages discover they are Fulani herdsmen?

    But let us even accept for once that government has decided to stop playing the ostrich, that government is right and General Gowon and Senator Jubril Aminu who have tried to exonerate Fulani herdsmen are wrong, the directive of the meeting will still be an exercise in futility because it is only President Jonathan that is constitutionally empowered to perform such role.  To underscore this point, the president shortly before the parley last week mandated the minister of agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina to inaugurate a committee to look into the issue of grazing routes.

    The parley was unnecessary. Our tragedy is President Jonathan’s reluctance to perform his constitutional responsibilities. Yet he passionately loves the title president. He assiduously schemed to get the job by colluding with Obasanjo, his godfather and some northern leaders to subvert PDP constitution. He has even in a desperate bid to hold on to the job  denied ever giving an undertaking to spend only one term as alleged by his godfather, ex-President Obasanjo. He is prepared to fraternize with the forces that can retain him in power no matter how despicable.

    For instance, it is unimaginable that the president as commander-in-chief would not have had security report on Princess Stella Oduah and Coscharis’ armoured car scandal. Even after an indictment of the minister by a National Assembly probe, the president refused to act. It is equally doubtful that the president has no security report on petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke’s alleged frittering away of over N10 billion on hiring aircraft. Is it also really possible the president has no security report on those who have turned Middle Belt’s beautiful land into killing fields? It will be strange if President Jonathan has no access to security reports on those former northern governors that Ambassador Olu Dada  claimed hobnobbed with  Osama Bin Laden when he had his headquarters in Sudan as well as the names of northern youth sponsored for jihadist training in Al-Queda training camps.

    Unfortunately, cynics who believe that President Jonathan who value the company of indicted enemies of Nigeria and those with criminal charges because of their potential to influence his political fortunes also think he may for the same reason not be prepared to take on his PDP northern political Sharia advocates currently mortgaging the future of northern youths in the name of religion.

  • Bring back the girls

    Let me confess from the outset that the title of this article is taking from the speech of Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka presented at the Port Harcourt Book Festival  last week. In the speech titled: Republic of the mind and thralldom of fear,  the renowned playwright, in a play of words with the Bring back the book project of President Goodluck Jonathan launched in Lagos in 2010, noted that for now, we should be more concerned with bringing back the pupils.

    The pupils are the 234 girls of the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, who were abducted by members of the dreaded Islamic sect, Boko Haram, on April 14. Since these girls’ abdution, we have not heard anything about them. We are all in the dark as to what has become of them. Suffice to say that they may have become sex slaves to some deranged maniacs, who believe that they can instill fear in the populace through their sheer barbaric acts.

    For years, Boko Haram has held the nation by the jugular. There is nothing the sect has not done. Killing, looting, maiming, burning, raping, kidnapping, you name it; they have done it. With the abduction of the 234 girls in Chibok in one fell swoop last month, they introduced another dimension to their madness. The main task now is to free these girls from captivity since from the look of things their captors are not ready to let them go. We are between the devil and the deep blue  sea.

    How do we free the girls without bringing them to harm as Boko Haram may not let them go without a fight? While we fear for the lives of these girls during the rescue mission that may be launched by security operatives, what do we know about their present condition? This is the trauma their parents are going through and it can be killing. We all know what we go through when our children are not within our immediate vicinity. We will be calling at intervals just to know how they are faring.

    Can you now imagine what the parents of these girls, who are being held against their wish wherever they are being kept, are going through? Thinking about these  children daily and not knowing their condition can run them mad. This is why no matter what it takes everything must be done to bring back the girls. We should be prepared for the worst in rescuing these girls. As we know even in the best planned rescue  missions some things do go wrong, but we do not pray for such in these girls’ case.

    But, it seems efforts toward rescuing these girls by the government, which is the protector of every citizen, seem to be slow and this is why there has been a public outcry that it is not doing enough.  Yes, the government may say that whatever it is doing is not for public consumption. The problem is that for it to say that, it must be seen to be doing something. In this case, the public is not convinced that the government is acting to return these girls to their homes and that is why the people have been talking.

    In some cases, the government is being abused. We do not have to blame those doing that. They are expressing their feelings in equal measure as their anger over the abduction. And who else to vent their anger on than the government. The government’s actions shortly after  the incident also portrayed it in bad light. There is a time for everything, the Bible tells us. A time to laugh and a time to cry. A time to make merry and a time not to make merry. Unfortunately, the government did not  take this  admonition into account in he wake of the girls’ kidnap.

    We are all hitting  the government today  for its seeming insensibility to what befell the nation on April 14 when it went on a campaign rally while  some families were weeping over the kidnap of their children. Let those in government put themselves in those families’  shoes; would they have gone on such a junket if their children were the ones kidnapped. Let us be sensitive to others feelings. Being in government should not make us lose our sense of decency and humaneness.

    I do not want to belabour the point here. Mistakes have been made, no doubt. It is left for the government to correct itself by stepping up the efforts to rescue the girls without bringing  harm to any of them. If the government does not bring back the girls to their parents, it would have failed in its primary responsibility of being the custodian of law and order. The parents have taken the first step, out of love for the children, by going into the bush to look for them. It is left for the government to complete the process by taking it up from where they stopped.

    In this matter, President Goodluck Jonathan has a crucial role to play. Posterity will judge him the way he handles these girls’ matter. If he returns them  home safely to their parents, history will be fair to him, but if he fails to secure their release, history will be harsh on him.  He should hearken to the words of Soyinka at the  Port Harcourt book festival where the Nobel laureate said :

    ”Not all national leaders can be Fujimori of Peru, who personally directed his security forces during a crisis of hostage taking – no one demands bravura acts of presidents. However, any aspiring leader cannot be anything less than a rallying point for public morale in times of crisis and example for extraordinary exertion. Speaking personally, now my mind goes to the lead role played by President Jonathan in this nation in the erstwhile campaign to BRING BACK THE BOOK, an event at which we both read to hundreds of children. So, where are the successors to those children?

    ”The reality stares us in the face: Among the  walking wounded. Among the walking dead. In crude holdings of fear and terror. Today, we shall not even be demanding as to resurrect the slogan: BRING BACK THE BOOK – leave that to us. It will be quiet sufficient to see a demonstrable dedication that answers the agonising cry of BRING BACK THE PUPILS!”

    I only pray it is not true that some of the girls have been taken to Cameroun, Chad and Niger by their captors as reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Africa Service on Tuesday.

  • Tired Wings? (2)

    There is crisis with Arik Air. It is a crisis of confidence, customer rights and public trust. Arik Air’s current state could be likened to a sacred infirmity, a dilemma that defies redemption – as theologians might say – and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene and socio-politically incorrect.

    Several encounters with the bumbling airline have thought me to expect the worst every time I patronize its local and international air services. And no doubt, the passengers who travelled on the airline’s flight W3107 (from Lagos, Nigeria to JFK, New York) on March 31, 2014, would have colourful fright stories to tell about the horridness and discomfort inflicted on them by the airline’s “55-minute” or “one hour” delay of its flight departure and the failure of the aircraft’s air-conditioning system prior to departure. Although the management of Arik Air issued a statement to tender unreserved apology to the maltreated passengers, such apology pales in significance in the face of Arik Air’s institutional inefficiency and disregard for its teeming customers.

    Despite the airline’s boastful dedication to customer satisfaction on its website; “Excellent customer care is the core philosophy of Arik Air’s business. Our commitment to our customers is reflected in how we have built our network, the product range we offer, the services we provide and how quickly we respond to customers’ feedback.

    “In the air and on the ground, online and on the telephone, our guests can expect respect, courtesy, fairness and honesty from the airline at all times,” the airline claims. However, this claim by Arik Air presents a glaring disconnect with reality as my several encounters with the airline – as indicated in first part of this article – acutely contradicts the airline’s claims.

    Arik Air goes further to claim that: “We exceed our guests’ expectations through the continuous pursuit of excellence and are considerate and respectful of, and responsive to, the needs of our guests…”

    The rancidness of the airline’s claims to honour and graceful corporate citizenship, as quoted in preceding paragraphs, rankles an ominous note; it accentuates the failure or non-existence – if you like – of a resilient and dependable value system within the mercantile circuits of corporate Nigeria. Arik Air brazenly dresses itself in oversized robes and apportions to itself unearned greatness by claiming that it satisfies and exceeds its customers’ expectations while being “respectful” of its customers and “responsive to their needs.”

    By perpetuating such frivolous reality, the airline barefacedly abuses the core values by which it ought to mature and evolve — respect for its customers rights, the pursuit and safeguarding of customer satisfaction, the preservation of customer dignity, fiscal integrity and discipline.

    Rather than engage in conscious pursuits indicative of its dedication to these crucial values, Arik Air clings desperately during the long nightmare of its aviation venture to an unrealistic corporate goal: “To make Nigeria proud of its aviation industry” by offering “a superior level of customer service” while delivering “on all promises made” to the airline’s customers.

    This moral and value fragmentation—using a highfaluting claim to honour and distinction to define its aviation practice, while ignoring its vast corporate assault on its numerous and often helpless customers, symbolizes moral and corporate value capitulation. It fails to confront and address the organisation’s glaring inefficiencies and the blundering boor it has become.

    The Arik Air dream has run out of gas. Its touted machinery sputters like a vehicle engine in excruciating spells of devastating wear. Today, it fails to deliver to its customers, that superior, quality service it blatantly arrogates to itself on its corporate website. Is it over? Is Arik Air gradually preparing our minds for the baleful notes of that proverbial devastation characteristic of the Nigerian aviation sector? What is wrong with Arik Air?

    While I lay no claim to accurate answers to the questions, I dare say that Arik Air has become grossly insensitive to its customers’ needs. The airline, contrary to its grand claims of excellence in service delivery and commitment to customer satisfaction, actually perpetuates a corporate service culture which intent it seems, is to alienate its prospective patrons and further reduce its customers to disposable integers in its pursuit of a lush and supple entrepreneurial bottom-line. How could this be beneficial to its enterprise?

    Arik Air deserves to encounter stronger competition; the lack of a formidable aviation enterprise and competitor (s) apparently enables its unforgivable arrogance and descent the steep slope customer satisfaction. Arik Air currently suffers no challenge; the airline currently enjoys the monopoly of plying certain routes, like the Lagos to Abuja to Gombe air route for instance. This fosters its several incapacities, like its refusal to improve on quality of its service delivery in such region. Due to the absence of competition in such zone, the airline feels no pressure to review its performance and initiate strategies for reform and improvement in service delivery in the areas.

    The airline will do well to improve the quality of in-house training it gives its staff; there is no greater ugliness than encountering a pretty or handsome ill-mannered ticketing officer or station manager at the airline’s numerous transaction points within and outside the country. Arik Air staff members need to be retrained and habituated with core competencies required of their jobs as staff of an airline of its magnitude.

    Arik Air also needs to check the excesses of airport touts working in connivance with its ticketing staff to fleece its helpless customers of hard-earned money. It has become an eyesore to see Arik Air staff connive with airport touts to close the ticketing counter before due time often in calculated bid to inflate price of air travel tickets for those customers who are forced by circumstance to purchase their tickets off the counter.

    It is also a very ugly sight to see Arik Air staff condone several excesses from the airport touts; for instance, it has become the norm at Arik Air’s Lagos ticketing counter for airport touts to jump the queue and march to the front to indulge in backdoor transactions with Arik Air staff on behalf of certain customers who are “too big” or “too high society” to queue like other law-abiding travelers. Consequently, Arik Air counters consistently present a raucous and chaotic sight particularly during peak periods of very busy mornings – it’s supposed to be an elite airline operation not a chaotic enterprise reminiscent of mad scrambles for the now outlawed Lagos Molue bus.

    Arik Air by virtue of the privileged position it occupies should endeavour to create and efficiently marshal and sustain its “Blue Ocean” to advantage amid Nigerian aviation sector’s “Red Ocean.” But that would require visionary corporate strategy and scenario planning; areas Arik Air needs to shore up its staff competencies and so on.

    No degree of frenzied or premeditated public relations campaign and advertising strategy will compensate for Arik Air’s current shoddy operations and crappy service. Advertisement placements in major mainstream media, carefully designed and sponsored PR feature articles in local and international newspapers or an ignore-the-gadfly approach will never correct imagery of the airline’s lackluster performance in the memories and minds of its teeming customers. Arik Air should do better. Could this be tantamount to seeking raindrops in the ocean?

  • Rebasing of Nigeria’s GDP

    After more than two decades, the announcement of $507 billion GDP, almost an 80 percent rise on Nigeria’s last GDP should not come as a surprise. Imagine what it could have been if this country were well run and if this country had patriotic and knowledgeable leaders since independence. Imagine what it would have been if agriculture still had the pride of place and if we were still the largest exporter of palm produce, peanuts, gum Arabic and substantial amount of cotton and cocoa as well as rubber and hard wood timber. Imagine what it would have been if we still exported tin and columbine and if we were tapping the huge deposits of minerals like gold, uranium, bauxite, coal, bitumen and if we can feed ourselves from the vast arable land of our country. Imagine if we had peace and security at home and if Boko Haram did not exist and if we did not have the constant killing of farmers by herdsmen in many parts of Nigeria, we would have had a GDP substantially more than what was declared.

    Unlike many critics I do not see anything wrong in declaring that Nigeria has the biggest economy in Africa. Ordinarily, this should not be news at all; it should be the normal expectation of a country of 170 million people. What these figures do not mean is that we are a rich people because we are not.

    Sixty percent of Nigerians or more still live on one dollar a day. What these figures actually show is what lies in the future for us. If we get our acts right, Nigeria should be comparing itself with Brazil rather than with puny African countries. We have always known that in Africa, Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt belong in the same league. Although until now our economy was rated third but it is good news that we are number one. Of course in per capital GDP we are way down the ladder. If we get our acts together, we can only move forward. Imagine if we had 50,000 mega-watts of electricity supplied to Nigerian homes and industries we would not only have our youths in gainful employment, there will also be peace and security in our country. The cost and availability of energy is a great factor in industrialisation. If we had sufficient energy to industrialise our country and with a huge market of 170 million people internally and almost the same captive market in West Africa, we will not only be prosperous but also live in a co-prosperity area in West Africa.

    My hope is that rather than our leaders celebrating this rebased GDP it should be a clarion call for action. We need to open this economy much wider to foreign direct investment than we have done previously. The stupendous growth of the Chinese economy in recent times is due primarily to investment of overseas Chinese money and western capitalist investment. Admittedly these investments are predicated on excellent Chinese manpower and skill but without the opening up of China by Den Xioping, China would still have remained the back waters of the world as it was several generations ago but today China rivals the US economy and may yet catch up and surpass the US economy by year 2020s. Imagine if we did not have the level of corruption we have in this country and if we have the legal and governance regime that are attractive to foreign and domestic investments, the sky will be the limit for our country because we have huge agricultural land spread across equatorial, tropical, savannah and sahel regions of Africa. This geographical diversity makes us able to grow several types of crops both for domestic use and for export. We have a lot of work to do in Nigeria and if this country were working, we would not need all the time we spend on constitution making and politicking rather than on development. If most of our people were productively engaged, it will not matter which ethnic group is in or out of power because every region of the country will be contributing to the national purse from areas where they have comparative advantages. It is because we are not working that we have time to exaggerate the little differences in our languages and culture. Let us take this revelation of our GDP as a first step on a long journey to development. We are still a very poor country in spite of our rich endowments; we need to add value to our primary produce including the hydrocarbons that has put us on a high global pedestal. Is it not a shame that a country that has been exporting crude oil since 1956 and that has four refineries built is still importing refined petroleum products because of our inability to maintain the refineries? Instead of selling these refineries to whoever wants to buy them even at give away prices, we continue to corruptly make budgetary provisions for their maintenance when we know that such provisions are meant to fill the pockets of some of our rapacious leaders because the refineries never work and when they work, they only produce at minimal level. What amazes many commentators about Nigeria is the inability of our leaders to see that if the right kind of policies are adopted and best practices are inculcated into our system of governance, Nigeria will be in a win-win situation because the potentialities of this country are so great and enormous that all we need to actualise them is to find that leader or group of leaders who will galvanise them both material and human into productive processes. Let it be said that many patriotic Nigerians see this rebasing of our GDP as a pointer to the trajectory of development Nigeria must take. It is not the end; in fact it is the beginning. It is not something the current leadership should celebrate because they did not make it. It is a challenge to all of us. It is a revelation that we belong to a country that has a destiny which though not manifest can be attained if all work together for the good of all. To get to our destination, we will need friends in the international community as well as on the continent of Africa. We will need to harness our resources, we will sometimes need to throw our pride away and listen to our trading partners.

    Some leaders of South Africa have justly remarked about that country’s contribution to the rise of our GDP. We are all witnesses to South African investment in our retail trade, telecommunication and banking industries. That is the truth and we can also turn back and tell the South Africans that we also contributed to their political liberation and that is the truth also. We can still draw more support from South Africa with its vast pool of technological know-how and investible capital. South Africa has a more sophisticated economy and banking system and we can draw support from them. We also need to open up to Asia particularly India and China because of their vast pool of foreign reserves which we will need to open up our infrastructure which right now is at the primitive stage of development. We need to build railways to crisscross our country to move goods and people across the country. We must of course never forget our traditional trading partners in the west with which we have had more than a century and a half of economic collaboration. In other words, continuing rise in our GDP which hopefully will be rebased normally every five years should be a collaborative effort in which we will enlist the support of international community and graft this support on our own domestic readiness and ability to work and to resolve whatever internal political contradictions inhibiting progress in Nigeria.

    In conclusion, any progress recorded in any aspect of Nigeria’s life is worth-celebrating because we have very little to celebrate. Therefore becoming the biggest economy in Africa is worth celebrating but we must not get drunk on it because this rebased GDP is just the end of the beginning of an end which will not only see our economy grow, but also our people lifted from the morass of poverty which the insensitive policies and poor leadership of the past and present have condemned us to.

  • Damsels in distress

    What won’t a parent do for the love of his child? We have seen parental love on display since the abduction of 234 pupils on April 14 at the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State. The parents took to the thick Sambisa Forest, the hide-out of the dreaded Boko Haram in search of their children, but drew blank at the end of the day. It was not for want of trying that they did not make a headway in their search.

    At that point, wisdom dictated that they returned home and continue the search another day. He who fights and runs away, we are told, lives to fight another day. The parents must be commended for their bravery. It takes a man of gut and courage to do what they did. Go into a thick forest with its attendant risk without a thought for their lives? They are men of valour.

    These valiant men could have gone further in their rescue mission if they had got the necessary back up. They could even have come back with the kids, if their efforts had been complemented by the federal might. Is it fair that we left these parents alone to wander in the bush for days without support from the government whose job it is to ensure the safety of life and property? These girls were in school when they were abducted; they were not on a frolic of their own for which some can snigger : ”they got what they deserved”.

    Nobody can say that because what they got is what they do not deserve. Schooling is important for a child in order to widen his horizon. But, members of the Boko Haram sect, who kidnapped these girls, want to give schooling another name. They won’t succeed no matter what they do. Their desire is to impose their will on society in line with their credo : ”western education is a sin”. If it is, they are free to withdraw their own children from school. They have no right to force other parents to follow their own thinking.

    This is the more reason why the government must do everything possible to protect those still going to school in the three Northeast states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. Boko Haram should not be allowed to succeed in its aim to get parents to withdraw their children from school for the fear of the sect. Boko Haram or no Boko Haram, education must thrive not only in the Northeast but in the entire North. Boko Haram should not get away with its plan to make the North an illiterate region.

    So, we owe it a duty to find these girls and return them to their parents safely. These are the poster girls for the education of the girl-child in the North. Boko Haram’s wish is to stop education in the North. We should not allow the sect to have its way. There is grave danger in keeping quiet over Boko Haram’s devilish plan. Yes, Boko Haram is deadly, yes, Boko Haram is evil. Must we then keep quiet in the face of evil? We cannot pretend not to hear or see evil. We must find a way of stopping this Boko Haram menace before it stops us.

    As Nigerians, we must wake up from our slumber and give it back to Boko Haram. Yes, they have weapons, but we have the number. Are we ready to use our number? If we are ready, Boko Haram will become history in no time. But the sect has instilled fear in us that at the mention of its name, we cringe. In running for cover, we invest the group with the myth it does not have. Boko Haram members are human beings like us. The only difference between us and them is that they are mean, irrational and wicked, while we are meek and rational.

    But, we should not allow the sect to take our meekness for timidity. It is becoming daring by the day because of its belief that we lack what it takes to challenge it. The day we stand up to Boko Haram collectively will mark the beginning of its end. If we continue to shy away from meeting the sect force for force, it will continue to treat us as canon fodders. What we need do is to be angry enough to say no more to what Boko Haram is doing. We should not make a mistake about it. What is happening in the Northeast is not the problem of that part of the country alone, it is the problem of the entire country.

    If we continue to see it as a Northeast problem per se, we will not get out of this endless cycle of killing, kidnapping, robbing and maiming. Boko Haram is not invincible. The parents of the missing girls have shattered that myth by going into the sect’s lair and coming back. If we are ready to work as a team like these brave men, we will wipe Boko Haram away from the face of the earth. The anger in these parents should also burn in us. If it does, we will be on the way to checking this terror. For too long, we have been wringing our hands, whining and complaining about the excesses of Boko Haram.

    We cannot keep on complaining when Boko Haram is still on the loose. Albeit, the parents of the missing girls were like us until what happened on April 14 in Chibok. If for not that incident, we would not have seen the other side of those parents. Like them, it is time we showed Boko Haram our other side too. We have kept quiet for too long. If the government does not want to help us, we should take our fate in our hands and confront this Boko Haram monster just as those men did. They have shown us the way, but are we ready to follow the lead?

    If those men had been backed by soldiers, just imagine what would have happened in the Sambisa Forest during the search for the missing girls. Boko Haram may have been caught unawares and those girls freed. For their efforts not to be in vain, the government must act swiftly to take up the search from where they stopped. The parents too will be happy if the government comes to their aid at this point. Hear one of them, ,Mallam Shettima Haruna, who relived their experience in the bush to Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima on Easter Monday :

    ”I want to say clearly on behalf of the parents that about 230 girls are still missing. This is because only 39 girls have so far escaped to safety. After the girls were abducted last Monday (April 14), we became disturbed as parents. So, we formed a search party on Thursday and stormed Sambisa Forest based on information that our children were being held there. We rode on about 1,500 motorcycles, each carrying between one and three persons. We went to several places asking questions, but each time we were directed to a new place, until we reached a particular place in the middle of the forest with only two houses.

    “As we kept searching, we met a Fulani man, who gave us information that he saw our girls with the abductors ahead. But our motorcycles began to develop problems due to the intensity of the search. The man actually told us that our children were not far from the place. But, he warned that the people(abductors) were well armed and kill at will, so we decided to save our lives and returned”. Haruna begged Shettima to prevail on security agents to comb the area and rescue the girls.

    Must the security agents be told what to do? By now, they ought to have found those children and reunited them with their parents. I hope that after today’s meeting of the expanded security council things will begin to move fast towards the finding of these girls. May God touch the hearts of their captors to release them.