This minute, hope falters in the hearts of natives in the districts where the city dream never reaches, nationwide. This minute, people in Lagos are not smiling. People in Cross River, Taraba, Plateau, Benue, and Ogun state, to mention a few, are hardly as cheery as they ought to be, still.
Where they live, their fates remain irritable constants like specks of dirt…and death; still. They are still ordinary playthings caught in the familiar vortex of inharmonious processes that comforts and swells the ranks of the city dwellers, even as the odds make forgettable constituencies of them who pass as “village dwellers.”
If our governors could go visiting, they could get to travel and experience the worst of roads where like the dead, foul dirt and dust still leap from the earth, to discolour and shut tight, the natives’ doors; particularly along the mud tracts where forgettable veterans retire to make the best of a saddening situation.
For all the beauty of Governor Fashola’s megacity project, In Lagos, it’s still a terrible life some natives live. Particularly in Ipaja-Ayobo, Agbado Kollington, Dalemo, Akera, Ijaye-Jankara. You need only travel the cratered paths and bypasses of Abule-Egba, Ahmadiyya, Meiran, Ipaja and Ajasa-Command.
There is stress and madness on the road linking Ayobo with Itele, the roads in Iju-Ishaga, Akute, Ojodu and Ajegunle, just before Ogun state. Trust me; there is hardly anything excellent about these Lagos areas.
And yet around the corner, at the point where the Lagos ghetto meshes with Ogun state palpitates the most hideous kind of filth, still. There is ugliness in Lafenwa, Aiyetoro, Olugbode, and every other community along Itele road.
Life remains an everlasting eyesore in Owode-Ota, Owode-Ijako, Agoro, Iyana-Ilogbo, Ijoko, Oju Ore, Ilo-Awela and Oke Aro. At Joju, Temidire and environ, mucky pools still stagnate in devastating craters on bypasses because these hotspots are allegedly inconsequential?
In Ogun State, it’s still the same old story, same old misery…same old filth. There is devastation in Alade, Elekunmefa, Imise, Onihale, Singer, Ijako to mention a few. Nobody knows if Governor Ibikunle Amosu will rise above the incompetency of his predecessor and thus facilitate electricity for the people of Lafenwa, Olugbode, Itele and Old Ota road and better the lives of people in his state.
And the world obviously sees the poverty and squalor in Sankwala. For all its gift of tourism and splendour, the mountain village playing host to the Obudu Mountain Resort (OMR) in Obanliku Local Government Area of Cross River State, still gravitates in a mélange of poverty and splendour.
In Gembu, the stars are still a backdrop for the human condition. Guess his Excellency in Taraba state has learnt to glance without flinching at the straggle of human settlement with scarcely a streetlight to illumine the pale ghost of his domain popularly known as the Mambilla Plateau. Wonder if he is unaware of the squalor in Gembu; perhaps he simply chose to ignore the tourist tract where poverty and bliss spit at each other, like cats; every day.
Squalid scenery elongate beyond the forgotten streets of Lagos, past the capital city, bypasses and transit townships of Ogun; they are drawn out beyond the tourist tracts of Sankwala, in Cross River and the Mambilla Plateau, in Taraba to mention a few.
The affected state governors are probably unmoved to affect heart-felt responses to the malaise. Perhaps they are making spirited gestures, even as you read, to extend citizenry-centred governance cum democratic dividends to the disillusioned natives of the forgotten parts; perhaps they just don’t know how to go about it.
Ignorance is not an excuse for denying the citizenry good governance and their fundamental human rights. It shall no longer be tenable to hoodwink the citizenry by platitudinous avowal to abolish poverty and foster general prosperity; time has revealed what section of the citizenry such benefits are meant for.
It shall no longer be “politically expedient” to neglect a class of the governed just because, by will or circumstance, they inhabit parts of state the ruling class would rather not lose sleep over; except at the time of election or re-election.
It is no longer acceptable for our governors, Mr. President and other serving public officers to feign ignorance of bad roads, total absence of electricity and various other infrastructural lack and eyesores bedeviling Nigeria’s decrepit suburbs – just because the latter do not fall within the parts of state they consider “metro.”
The state of Nigeria’s suburbs leaves too much to be desired. No governor, president or local government chairman should evade or ignore so great a horror on so vast a scale. Leadership need not be an ignorance of or perversion of the will and rights of the people.
Nor should any leader or public administrator assume haughtily that he is doing anything extraordinary if perchance he is applauded for providing requisite social infrastructure for the survival and smooth running of the society; this is because such functions are basically the statutory duties of his office and for which we pay, by tax; and for which he is being handsomely rewarded too.
Let every serving public officer be wary of those who would influence them to mistake squalor for paradise and bestiality as the essence of greatness, as long as it constitutes no bother to their lives. Let them be wary of sycophants, lobbyists, party thugs, columnists of note et al – for these lots among so many others, embody evils of all shades and conduct and from which they ought to keep the greatest distance.
Let them not be intoxicated by the barrage of mostly undeserved commendations and encomiums. Let them not be fooled by hastily composed, currency-activated eulogies ceaselessly heaped upon them by individuals and groups desperate enough to consider them “great” and thus dressing them in over-sized cloaks.
Greatness should be earned. There is nothing as unreal and neurotic in concept as unearned greatness as it makes a wretch of the leader who seeks it. To substantiate it is in fact, impossible, thus the Nigerian leader caught in the web of such deceitfulness, dwells on highfaluting, indefinable sound-bites of altruism and collectivism. To give a semi-plausible form to his nameless vanity and anchor it on reality – to support his own self-deception and deceive his victims; the citizenry.
Such deception does not last very long. There is no short-cut to greatness. Let leaders we have now improve our lives now. December is too far away for electricity or a semblance of it to arrive in Itele, Olugbode and Lafenwa town in Ogun state.
It is taking forever for government presence to be felt in Owode-Ijako, Atan and Ado Odo in Ogun state. It is taking forever for the megacity bliss to extend to Ayobo, Ahmadiyya, Abule Egba, Meiran, Ijaiye-Ojokoro, Ekoro, Ajegunle and other forgotten areas of Lagos.
The good life remains far-fetched in Sankwala, Cross River state; Gembu and the Mambilla Plateau in Taraba. It gets worse in other parts of the nation. One cannot make the words too strong; last dispensation, our dreams asphyxiated in the hands of leadership we hoped would improve our lives. This dispensation, let leadership we have endeavour to improve our lives. Right now.