ASUU salaries should be paid. Government continues to make the mistake that there are only a few Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU members when in fact there are millions affected by this decision of government and it will influence their actions at the polls. We are now told that government is withholding union dues. If government feels that it will make education better by hobbling or eliminating ASUU as a critic, the simple answer is it will not. A government with critics got education into the disgracefully large hole it is in. Imagine how poor education will be if government can provide only what it wants to provide and not what it should provide?
We must request for more caution from our professionals in the media and academia because publicly at conferences and in the media when analysing the security and election prospects, they often give ideas, suggestions, scenarios about how robbers, kidnappers and terrorists and fraudulent politicians could circumvent security and election strategies. We must remember that agents and sponsors of these nefarious activities are also listening and can say ‘what a good idea. Let us use that method?’ We must make every effort not to feed criminals fresh ideas.
Fortunately, the year ended on a strong infrastructural note of nearly completed projects among which the 50-year late Second Niger Bridge, the 15-year delayed Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and the deliberately scuttled monorail abandoned by Buhari with a penalty of $184m back in 1983 and inaugurated by the current governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. Yes of course we say ‘Hurray’ and Thank you’ to all those who saw the vision slowly and painfully translate into reality from presidents, governors, ministers, commissioners, engineers down to diverse to ordinary workers shifting earth and controlling traffic. They all had a spectacular role. Many motorists have attested to the relief experienced from the 2nd Niger Bridge and already millions have had their travel time on the Lagos-Ibadan Road cut from 4-8 hours to 1.5hours sometimes door to door like it was in the beginning 1976. It is that instant difference in time wasted, energy expended but not constructively, extra fuel consumed, lost hours of your life irretrievable that make Nigerians really angry with governments. The construction company barriers have caused billions of lost hours, lost business. Are they laid without traffic flow knowledge or empathy or with nonchalance and perhaps a corporate bullying strategy perpetrated by collusion of some workers?
The barriers came crashing back down again even though the initial promise was the thought to be January 15. Maybe we were wrong. Anyway, traffic is terrible again and lost and wasted hours accumulate in this new year at a terrific rate. When will it end? Maybe three months? We pray for an end to ‘Construction Obstruction’.
There is celebration about the 4th Mainland Bridge. Hurray. Judging from its nearest relative, the 2nd Niger Bridge, it will, with the best will in the world and the traditional Nigerian political attitude to these things, take 40 years or more, perhaps even 50years for this dream to come true. This is not a curse or a prediction of doom, just deductions from the facts of Nigerian government construction and maintenance timelines over history.
Remember that each succeeding government, even of the same political party as presently constituted and minister and commissioner and political party will seek to halt, re-examine and re-negotiate and revise the contract or parts of the contract always ‘in the interests of the citizens’ and always costing months and years adding unimagined and uncalculated delays to the timelines and overall contract time frame. Don’t say ‘no, not possible’ because it has happened consistently or repeatedly and with monotonous regularity in the past to a very single contract not completed within the time frame of a government’s lifecycle. So Nigerians and particularly this generation of drivers and commuters should not even begin to dream of practice driving or calculate the time saved when the bridge is open. Maybe in our children’s lifetime. Or perhaps in their own children’s lifetime.
As long as we have greed-driven politics and not service-driven politics for that long will we have delay upon delay and cancellation of contract upon contract cancellation. But we must start on this project, long or short, hard or easy, deep or shallow, if we want a better tomorrow. Remember Lagos State citizens from all parts of the country lost out when the so-called Jakande Rail was cancelled by the Buhari regime December 1983-1985 at a penalty clause fee of approximately $184m out of the approximately $600m cost of contract. It is only now almost 40 years later that a new railway is being inaugurated, strangely by the same man. If he had modified the contract to remove corruption, and not cancelled it, surely that railway would have been carrying its one billionth fellow Nigerian around Lagos by now, instead of zero. This demonstrates the unlimited harm contract cancellation and undue interference can cause and cost the citizenry. Of course, many contracts are purely evil, designed by specialists in fraudulent practices and corruption, with time frames and guidelines not to be fulfilled. Such contracts were never designed to be executed or completed and just conduits for the corrupt contractors, civil servants and the political class members to syphon money from the citizenry. May we be invisible to the enemy in 2023. Amen.
